Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on September 13, 2014

Ruth Calderon Gives Voice to Characters Who Have Been Excluded

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Galvanizing Figure: Calderons Knesset speech attracted more than 250,000 YouTube views.

Published September 12, 2014.

A Bride For One Night: Talmud Tales By Ruth Calderon, translated by Ilana Kurshan The Jewish Publication Society, 184 pages, $21.95

If Ruth Calderon did not exist, it would be necessary to dream of someone like her.

For almost half a century, American expatriates and a small group of native Israelis have creatively and courageously re-engaged with traditional Jewish texts Talmud, Midrash, piyutim, or liturgical poetry that had long been the provenance of religious elites. Many of these, like Calderon herself, are not traditionally religious but have discovered that these texts, and the lives they illuminate, are rich in literary and philosophical meaning, whether or not one finds them religiously normative.

To those of us who have been part of this community in Israel at the Pardes Institute; at Elul and Alma, two institutions Calderon founded; in singing communities around the country, or in a growing handful of other locations the immersion within these textual and experiential worlds is often what we love most about Israel itself. And yet we know that these spaces remain at the margins of Israeli life, little countercultures with little impact on the mainstream.

It was a surprise when Calderon was elected to the Knesset in 2012. She was 13th on a list (Yesh Atid) that was expected to win half a dozen. Yet it won 19, and there she was, one of us.

It was an even bigger surprise when Calderons inaugural speech, in February 2013, included a lesson in Talmud (Ketubot 62b, if you wanted to follow along). Most freshman politicians would have given the pat, expected talk, full of vague and lofty rhetoric. But this was Calderon as Calderon, wasting no time confounding expectations of what a member of Knesset could be.

Read the original:

How Ruth Calderon Transforms Israeli Politics and Talmud

Category: Talmud
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