Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 26, 2020

The Torah has always shown great compassion and mercy for the weak and unfortunate: the orphan, the widow, and the stranger.

In the Torah section last week called Parsha Mishpatim, however, Gd takes up the plight of these hapless individuals by declaring that any cruelty shown to them incurs His wrath. In verse 22:22, the repetition of the verbs If you oppress, afflict him [beware,] for if he cries, cries out to Me, I will hear, hearken to his cry, underscore the severity of tormenting these downcast people.

Even more, the Midrash asserts the strange position that A great affliction and a small affliction are all the same.

Rav Soloveitchik elaborates: The degree of hurt is irrelevant; causing transient humiliation and causing severe physical pain are both subsumed under affliction. A word, a gesture, a facial expression by which the widow or the orphan feels hurt; in short, whatever causes an accelerated heartbeat that comes under oppression Neither the nature nor the magnitude of the oppression mitigates the punishment. (Chumash Mesoras HaRav, Shemos pp.202-203)

The Talmud (Semachos 8:4) tells the story of R. Shimon b. Gamliel who was told by R. Yishmael that perhaps he was being punished because, You were at the table or asleep and a woman came to inquire about her ritual purity, and the attendant told her: He is asleep; for the Torah said: If you torment them (the widow and orphan) . . . and continued: Then I shall kill you by the sword.

Again, in the Ravs dramatization of the event: What was wrong in R. Shimons conduct? He had come home exhausted after a full days work and lay down for a short rest. It had been a busy day: an entire load of communal responsibilities pressed heavily on his frail shoulders. Cruel Rome continued its ruthless policy of religious persecution and the economic ruin of the people While he was dozing, a woman entered with an inquiry: is she ritually pure or impure? The attendant, knowing how fatigued R. Shimon was, advised her to wait until he awoke; he did not wish to disturb R. Shimon. How, then, the question arises, did R. Shimon afflict the woman?

The woman was a poor widow, and extremely sensitive. While waiting for R. Shimon, the thought may have gone through her head: had my rich neighbor come with a similar question, the attendant would have acted differently: he would have aroused R. Shimon. Because of my poverty and loneliness, she may have thought, he didnt mind making me wait; she sighed and brushed away a tear. So, R. Shimon did afflict a widow, and thus violated a Biblical prohibition. Her tear was responsible for the tragic death of R. Shimon. (See the Ravs essay The Community in Tradition 17:2, pp.17-18)

The question, of course, is why should the penalty of aggrieving the orphan, widow and stranger be so harsh and exacting? To this, the Rav offers this fundamental insight whose application goes well beyond the specific command against afflicting these individuals. Here are the Ravs own words:

Each individual possesses something unique, rare, which is unknown to others; each individual has a unique message to communicate, a special color to add to the communal spectrum. Hence, when a lonely man joins the community, he adds a new dimension to community awareness. He contributes something which no one else could have contributed. He enriches the community existentially; he is irreplaceable. Judaism has always looked upon the individual as if he were a little world (microcosm); with the death of the individual, this little world comes to an end.

In the Ravs view, this existential worth of the individual is rooted in the religious belief that man as a natural being exists once in an eternity, that the very singleness of man makes him indispensable and hence infinitely precious.

When I recognize this truth, my perception of the thou goes far beyond the physical. It is more than that: it is an act of identifying him existentially, of affirming his singular role as a person who has a job to do and that only he can do properly.

If so, what must inexorably follow from this belief is this: To hurt a person means to tell him that he is expendable, that there is no need for him. The Halacha equated the act of publicly embarrassing a person with murder. Why? Because humiliation is tantamount to destroying an existential community and driving the individual into solitude. It is not enough for the charitable person to extend help to the needy. He must do more than that: he must try to restore to the dependent person a sense of dignity and worth. That is why Jews have developed special sensitivity regarding orphans and widows since these persons are extremely sensitive and lose their self-confidence at the slightest provocation. [Therefore] The Bible warned us against afflicting an orphan or a widow. (Ibid, p.16)

In other words, for the Rav, the Torahs admonition against afflicting those less fortunate extends to treating anyone with disdain and dismissive contempt.

To act as if you have no use for someone, to be apathetic to their struggles, to ignore their distress is to be guilty of oppressing the widow. In fact, Ibn Ezra comments on the transition in verse 22:21 from the plural to the singular and back by asserting that not only the oppressor but the passive observer as well will be considered equally culpable of the same transgression if upon witnessing the degradation the shaming of another human being, he chooses to remain silent. There are no other instances in the Torah where the onlooker receives the same punishment as the instigator.

When we take a step back and contemplate the content of our culture, it certainly appears that our world is increasingly becoming a place where all too many are just out for themselves, that the other is devalued as an it rather than a thou, exploited consciously or otherwise, it matters little for the selfish ambitions and pleasures of the urbane human predator.

To refuse to grant to any person the dignity he deserves as a human being created in the image of G-d is to perpetrate an unforgivable crime upon the self-esteem and innate respectability of that person not to mention the sacrilegious rejection of Gds purpose in placing him in this world in the first place.

The Jew is uniquely chosen to fight the battles for the weak and unfortunate. We were strangers in Egypt and G-d brought us out and said to never forget the experience.

It is the Jew that is in the forefront of Civil Rights, even if it goes against our interest.

Henry Fonda had the words in the famous movie the Grapes of Wrath, but they are taken from the bible as if G-d had said them:

Wherever theres a fight, so hungry people can eat, Ill be there. Ill be all around in the dark. Ill be everywhere. Wherever you can lookwherever theres a fight so hungry people can eat, Ill be there.

Yehuda Lave writes a daily (except on Shabbat and Hags) motivational Torah blog at YehudaLave.comLoving-kindness my specialty.Internationally Known Speaker and Lecturer and Author. Self Help through Bible and Psychology. Classes in controlling anger and finding Joy. Now living and working in Israel. Remember, it only takes a moment to change your life. Learn to have all the joy in your life that you deserve!!! There are great masters here to interpret Spirituality. Studied Kabbalah and being a good human being with Rabbi Plizken and Rabbi Ephraim Sprecher, my Rabbi. Torah is the name of the game in Israel, with 3,500 years of mystics and scholars interpreting G-D's word. Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement

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G-d has always shown great compassion for the weak - The Times of Israel

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Posted By admin on February 26, 2020

Dear all,

If you had the chance to call God for just one moment (after all, the call rates are out of this world), what would you ask?

What happens after I die?

Why do bad things happen?

Where are You?

Do You understand me?

Do You ever need help?

The truth is, a call to God is not long distance. We can call out at any time. But we should be aware that the conversation is two-way. According to a section in the Talmud (Shabbat 31a) God has questions for us as well:

Are you ethical in your business?

Are you being the real you?

Do you make time for your spiritual life?

Do you have hope?

Are you planting seeds for the next generation?

We all have the opportunity to take a moment in time each day to both call out as well as to listen closely to the important questions of life. Whats on your mind? And how might you respond to the questions posed in return?

With love and Shalom,

Rabbi Zach Shapiro

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A Moment in Time: If You Had One Moment to Speak With God . - Jewish Journal

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Posted By admin on February 26, 2020

A stopped clock hung prominently in the Wrocaw apartment where I was trying to finish translating Olga Tokarczuks monumental latest novel, The Books of Jacob, in time for my 31 December 2019 deadline. It was the studios only artwork. Jet lag and anxiety made it hard for me to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time and, whenever I opened my eyes, I would see those gargantuan hands and think, How can it already be so late? No matter that the clocks face read 5:25, an eternal neither-day-nor-night. Inever saw that. I only ever saw the time I thought it might be there or in New York or London or Los Angeles an hour so advanced I could never possibly catch up with, let alone accomplish, my slippery task: the re-creation in English of a 1,000-page masterpiece of historical fiction, buzzing with present-day relevance, by an author who had just been awarded the Nobel Prize.

Olgas 12th book, The Books of Jacob, is, without a doubt, her magnum opus. Published in Polish in 2014, it followed on the heels of Flights (2007), her inventive constellation novel as the author described it which I translated, and her feminist eco-thriller, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (2009), translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Olga was always a critical and popular success in Poland, one of those rare writers who manages to balance dazzling literary feats with consummate accessibility, deftly navigating new narrative structures and even genres while maintaining an inviting, easy-going style. Like a number of her previous works, The Books of Jacob was a national bestseller for months. Then, in 2015, shortly before the elections that installed the right-wing Law and Justice party in Poland, when tensions in the country were exceptionally high, Olga received Polands highest literary prize, the Nike, and everything changed.

Instantly, and for the first time, Olga became notorious in circles of people who did not read her books. She, her publisher and I were inundated with death threats, rape threats and every possible variation of racist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic abuse. The basis for the mounting controversy was the perceived political content of The Books of Jacob; the basis for that perception was a televised post-prize interview in which Olga said, among other things: We have come up with this history of Poland as a tolerant country [] Yet, we committed hideous acts as colonizers, as slave owners and as murderers of Jews.

The Books of Jacob begins in 1752 in Rohatyn, in what is now western Ukraine, and winds up in a cave near Korolwka, now eastern Poland, where a family of local Jews has hidden from the Holocaust. Between mid-18th-century Rohatyn and mid-20th-century Korolwka, in a swirling succession of third-person accounts, Olga escorts her readers across present-day Turkey, Greece, Austria and Germany, as well as different territories of Poland and Ukraine, capturing the spirit and climate of each location in rich description and in the enactment of the interesting customs particular to each place.

The novel is divided into seven books: The Book of Fog, The Book of Sand, The Book of the Road, The Book of the Comet, The Book of Metal and Sulfur, The Book of the Distant Country and The Book of Names. Together, these seven sections tackle love, hate, birth, death, sex, the sacred, prejudice, exile, torture, class, language, languages, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 so influential on Voltaire, Immanuel Kant and other Enlightenment thinkers, Halleys Comet in 1758, seen as an omen of the end of the world, plague outbreak, alchemy, Kabbalah, friendship, parenthood, Talmud-burning, blood libel, geopolitical machinations, gender, serfdom, the earnest search for truth, the cynical manipulation of perception, medicine, transcendence, power and more, always subtly, carefully, in keeping with Olgas intellectual project, which despite the wild controversy her televised statement provoked isnt one of timeliness so much as timelessness.

To my mind, Olgas discourse hinges upon a couple of questions. First, whether human beings, who are inevitably fragile and flawed, can (and should) be forgiven mistakes and bad actions by those who get to know them, possibly (or probably) aided by narratives like novels and works of non-fiction. In other words, is empathy, fuelled by an understanding of the progression of another persons struggles over time, enough to allow the wounds of the past to fully heal? Like other European writers of her generation, Olga does seem to have faith in the power of story to reconcile. As Lars Saabye Christensen says in his recent novel Echoes of the City (2019), translated from Norwegian by Don Bartlett: Memory is sorrow. History is reconciliation. Lexically, Olga emphasizes the delicacy of the characters who populate her books but, structurally, she permits paragraphs and pages to wash over them until they seem less breakable than honed, smooth and perfectly integrated into the honed smoothness of all those with whom they have interacted, for better or for worse, over the course of the text.

If narrative can fill in where human beings are found lacking, the next key questions of Olgas project still loom large: who gets to tell those stories or those histories and how can she, bogged down in time and fragility, know what she knows?

As I was translating Flights, and then The Books of Jacob, and then her Nobel Prize acceptance speech committing to memory Wikipedia entries on modes of transportation and anatomy, historical hats and hairstyles Olgas own feelings about information and the internet evolved. In 2007s Flights, she dedicated a section to Wikipedia:

As far as I can tell, this is mankinds most honest knowledge project. It is frank about the fact that all the information we have about the world comes straight out of our own heads, like Athena out of Zeuss. People bring to Wikipedia everything they know. If the project succeeds, then this encyclopedia undergoing perpetual renewal will be the greatest wonder of the world. It has everything we know in it every thing, definition, event and problem our brains have worked on; we shall cite sources, provide links. And so we will start to stitch together our version of the world, be able to bundle up the globe in our own story. It will hold everything. Lets get to work! Let everyone write even just a sentence on whatever it is they know best.

At that time, Olgas only caveat had to do with the capacity of language to organize knowledge and information; the section goes on to suggest an alternative to Wikipedia that somehow represents the chaos of everything we dont know. For the vastness of these contents, she writes, cannot be traversed from word to word you have to step in between the words, into the unfathomable abysses between ideas. With every step well slip and fall.

Olga has noted that the idea to write The Books of Jacob began not with Jacob Frank, charismatic cult leader, but rather with Benedykt Chmielowski, priest and author of the very first Polish encyclopedia, published between 1745 and 1746. Less sexy at first glance, perhaps, but Chmielowskis compendia of knowledge, available to all, were the building blocks of the Enlightenment, their guiding principle the same as that of Western democracy: he who knows acts wisely, in accordance with his knowledge. Cataloguing information was another reaction to the hunger for structural change that propelled the Frankists to rebel against the laws of the Talmud, then convert to Catholicism, try for noble titles and then rebel against those, too. Many of the Frankists sought to deepen and expand their understanding, not through wider reading la Chmielowski, but rather through mystical experiments such as prophesying and Kabbalah. Olgas novel weaves together these separate but related efforts from the perspective of a third party who effortlessly knows all: the matriarch Yente, in limbo between life and death, looking down upon all of Olgas characters and, in the end, Olga herself.

Olga delivered her Nobel acceptance speech in Stockholm on 7 December 2019. In it, she noted: John Amos Comenius, the great 17th-century pedagogue, coined the term pansophism, by which he meant the idea of potential omniscience, universal knowledge that would contain within it all possible cognition. This was also, and above all, a dream of information available to everyone. Would not access to facts about the world transform an illiterate peasant into a reflective individual conscious of himself and the world? Will not knowledge within easy reach mean that people will become sensible, that they will direct the progress of their lives with equanimity and wisdom?

When the internet first came about, it seemed that this notion would finally be realized in a total way. Wikipedia, which I admire and support, might have seemed to Comenius, like many like-minded philosophers, the fulfilment of the dream of humanity now we can create and receive an enormous store of facts being ceaselessly supplemented and updated that is democratically accessible to just about every place on Earth.

A dream fulfilled is often disappointing. It has turned out that we are not capable of bearing this enormity of information, which instead of uniting, generalizing and freeing, has different-ated, divided, enclosed in individual little bubbles, creating a multitude of stories that are incompatible with one another or even openly hostile toward each other, mutually antagonizing.

Furthermore, the internet, completely and unreflectively subject to market processes and dedicated to monopolists, controls gigantic quantities of data used not at all pansophically, for the broader access to information, but, on the contrary, serving above all to programme the behaviour of users, as we learned after the Cambridge Analytica affair. Instead of hearing the harmony of the world, we have heard a cacophony of sounds, an unbearable static in which we try, in despair, to pick up on some quieter melody, even the weakest beat. The famous Shakespeare quote has never been a better fit than it is for this cacophonous new reality: more and more often, the internet is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.

Now it would seem that the so-called information superhighway has driven all of us in between the words, into the unfathomable abysses between ideas, though not in the productively mystical mode Olga had entertained in Flights. Her professed disappointment verges on despair: the question of who gets to tell all our necessary stories is now more vexed than it ever was before. Now understanding is bogged down in time and fragility and the internet, deafened by the roar of trolls with their death threats and rape threats and anti-Semitic abuse, by wilful misinformation, by marketing and propaganda.

Many of us, in Wrocaw or New York or London or Los Angeles, or anywhere in the world, now wonder how it can already be so late. The climate has changed. We let that happen. Obsessed with our own history, regardless of its source, we have ignored the planet that makes us capable of stories at all.

I turned in my translation of The Books of Jacob 12 days late. Afterwards, I was overcome by a sense of loss: this magisterial creation that belonged to me alone for all those years, in all those different places the thing that has kept me company no matter what was gone. Then I realized that, on the other side of the globe, Olga was hard at work on her next novel, and I moved on. Yet, I was unable to shake the sense of belatedness that is, perhaps, the only truly timeless element of literature, though I hope Olga and others will keep trying to identify more.

This article first appeared infriezeissue 209 with the headline Frozen Time.

Main Image:The Lisbon Earthquake of1755, 1755, copper engraving. Courtesy: New Kozak Collection, Prague

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International Booker Prize-Winner Jennifer Croft on the Highs and Lows of Translating Olga Tokarczuk - frieze.com

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Posted By admin on February 26, 2020

Editors Note: This is part seven in a series of Religion News Service interviews with experts discussing what the new decade may bring in religion.

Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin (Courtesy photo)

The Talmud says: Ever since the destruction of the Temple, prophecy has been given into the hands of children and fools. I am neither, but let me tell you what I see in the stars for world Jewry in the coming year. The picture is not pretty. This past year has seen the rapid acceleration of anti-Semitic incidents both in Europe and in the United States. The social contract, complete with an immune system that guarded against the excesses of hate, has vanished.

No, this is not Berlin, 1938. And yet, it is disturbing and disorienting. European Jews are accustomed to this; it has been part of their narrative for the past thousand years. For American Jews, this is something for which nothing in their history or experience has prepared them.

More disconcerting: With the exception of certain major cities, synagogue affiliation rates are dropping. Fewer young people are getting a quality Jewish education. With a shrinking sense of religious community less communal Velcro young Jews, and others, will be less prepared to meet the external challenges they will face.

But there is hope.

Synagogues might be shrinking, but alternative kinds of communities and structures are growing. The number of Jewish startups, and the energy within them, is admirable. The Jewish arts are experiencing a new vitality.

So, in 2020: There will be more hate. The election year will cause more of it to spew out of the body politic. Jews will need to figure out how to creatively face that challenge. It will not be easy, but my money is on the Jews.

Salkin writes the award-winning column Martini Judaism at RNS. He also serves as the senior rabbi of Temple Solel in Hollywood, Fla.

Rabbi Joshua Stanton (Courtesy CLAL)

Who is a Jew?

In the next decade, progressive denominations may succeed in promoting a more inclusive definition, both in the United States and Israel. In the United States, arobust new studyindicates that at least 12% to 15% of the American Jewish population are people of color. These American Jews have been underrepresented both in population studies and (far more importantly) in most communal institutions and places of leadership.

Major denominations and organizations are alreadyworking to ensure that all Jews feel at home and are treated as equal members of the Jewish people, and more will follow suit.

You can expect stronger relationships,allyship and coalitions with communities of color, so that Jews of color can proudly embrace all of their identities. American Jewish denominations would do well to listen to Jewish millennials and members of Generation Z, who are coming of age in record numbers before our eyes.

These rising generations require our willingness to see each person as a unique individual, rather than as part of a broader category or binary. The jury is out as to whether we will learn to do so.

In Israel, the ultra-Orthodox Rabbinates monopoly over marriage and life-cycle events may end, breaking its power to tell hundreds of thousands of people that they are not really Jews at all.More than two-thirds of Israeliswant this change already.

Eight hundred thousand Israelis now identify as Reform or Conservative Jews, and they are less and less likely to allow fundamentalists who dominate niche areas of government to tell them what to do.

Prepare for a comeback by progressive Jewish movements in both countries, if we are able to listen to those who are chronically underserved and collaboratively create new opportunities for spiritual experience with them.

Stanton leads East End Temple in Manhattan. He is a senior fellow at the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.

Next installment: The future of the religious right, digital religion, collective leadership

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2020s in Religion: Facing the challenge of more hate, rethinking Jewish identity - The Oakland Press

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Posted By admin on February 26, 2020

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Two words we read towards the end of our parsha naaseh ve-nishma, We will do and we will hear are among the most famous in Judaism. They are what our ancestors said when they accepted the covenant at Sinai. They stand in the sharpest possible contrast to the complaints, sins, backslidings and rebellions that seem to mark so much of the Torahs account of the wilderness years.

There is a tradition in the Talmud that G-d had to suspend the mountain over the heads of the Israelites to persuade them to accept the Torah. But our verse seems to suggest the opposite, that the Israelites accepted the covenant voluntarily and enthusiastically:

Then [Moshe] took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, We will do and hear [naaseh ve-nishma] everything the L-rd has said. (Ex. 24:7)

On the basis of this, a counter tradition developed, that in saying these words, the assembled Israelites ascended to the level of the angels.

Rabbi Simlai said, when the Israelites rushed to say We will do before saying We will hear, sixty myriads of ministering angels came down and fastened two crowns on each person in Israel, one as a reward for saying We will do and the other as a reward for saying We will hear.

Rabbi Eliezer said, when the Israelites rushed to say We will do before saying We will hear a Divine voice went forth and said: Who has revealed to My children this secret which only the ministering angels make use of?

What, though, do the words actually mean? Naaseh is straightforward. It means, We will do. It is about action, behavior, deed. But readers of my work will know that the word nishma is anything but clear. It could mean We will hear. But it could also mean, We will obey. Or it could mean We will understand. These suggest that there is more than one way of interpreting naaseh ve-nishma. Here are some:

1) It means We will do and then we will hear. This is the view of the Talmud (Shabbat 88a) and Rashi. The people expressed their total faith in G-d. They accepted the covenant even before they heard its terms. They said we will do before they knew what it was that G-d wanted them to do. This is a beautiful interpretation, but it depends on reading Exodus 24 out of sequence. According to a straightforward reading of the events in the order in which they occurred, first the Israelites agreed to the covenant (Ex. 19:8), then G-d revealed to them the Ten Commandments (Ex. 20), then Moses outlined many of the details of the law (Ex. 21-23), and only then did the Israelites say naaseh ve-nishma, by which time they had already heard much of the Torah.

2) We will do [what we have already been commanded until now] and we will obey [all future commands]. This is the view of Rashbam. The Israelites statement thus looked both back and forward. The people understood that they were on a spiritual as well as a physical journey and they might not know all the details of the law at once. Nishma here means not to hear but to hearken, to obey, to respond faithfully in deed.

3) We will obediently do (Sforno). On this view the words naaseh and nishma are a hendiadys, that is, a single idea expressed by two words. The Israelites were saying that they would do what G-d asked of them, not because they sought any benefit but simply because they sought to do His will. He had saved them from slavery, led and fed them through the wilderness, and they sought to express their complete loyalty to Him as their redeemer and lawgiver.

4) We will do and we will understand (Isaac Arama in Akeidat Yitzchak). The word shema can have the sense of understanding as in G-ds statement about the Tower of Babel: Let us, then, go down and confound their speech there, so that they shall not understand [yishmeu] one anothers speech (Gen. 11:7). According to this explanation, when the Israelites put doing before understanding, they were giving expression to a profound philosophical truth. There are certain things we only understand by doing. We only understand leadership by leading. We only understand authorship by writing. We only understand music by listening. Reading books about these things is not enough. So it is with faith. We only truly understand Judaism by living in accordance with its commands. You cannot comprehend a faith from the outside. Doing leads to understanding.

Staying with this interpretation, we may be able to hear a further and important implication. If you look carefully at Exodus chapters 19 and 24 you will see that the Israelites accepted the covenant three times. But the three verses in which these acceptances took place are significantly different:

Only the third of these contains the phrase naaseh ve-nishma. And only the third lacks a statement about the peoples unanimity. The other two are emphatic in saying that the people were as one: the people responded together and responded with one voice. Are these differences connected?

It is possible that they are. At the level of naaseh, the Jewish deed, we are one. To be sure, there are differences between Ashkenazim and Sefardim. In every generation there are disagreements between leading poskim, halachic authorities. That is true in every legal system. Poor is the Supreme Court that leaves no space for dissenting opinions. Yet these differences are minor in comparison with the area of agreement on the fundamentals of halachah.

This is what historically united the Jewish people. Judaism is a legal system. It is a code of behavior. It is a community of deed. That is where we require consensus. Hence, when it came to doing naaseh the Israelites spoke together and with one voice. Despite the differences between Hillel and Shammai, Abaye and Rava, Rambam and Rosh, R. Yosef Karo and R. Moshe Isserles, we are bound together by the choreography of the Jewish deed.

At the level of nishma, understanding, however, we are not called on to be one. Judaism has had its rationalists and its mystics, its philosophers and poets, scholars whose minds were firmly fixed on earth and saints whose souls soared to heaven. The Rabbis said that at Sinai, everyone received the revelation in his or her own way:

And all the people saw (Ex. 20:15): the sounds of sounds and the flames of flames. How many sounds were there and how many flames were there? Each heard according to their own level of understanding what they were experiencing, and this is what it means when it says (Ps. 29:4) the voice of the L-rd in power, the voice of the L-rd in majesty.

What unites Jews, or should do, is action, not reflection. We do the same deeds but we understand them differently. There is agreement on the naaseh but not the nishma. That is what Maimonides meant when he wrote in his Commentary to the Mishnah, that When there is a disagreement between the Sages and it does not concern an action, but only the establishment of an opinion (sevarah), it is not appropriate to make a halachic ruling in favor of one of the sides.

This does not mean that Judaism does not have strong beliefs. It does. The simplest formulation according to R. Shimon ben Zemach Duran and Joseph Albo, and in the twentieth century, Franz Rosenzweig consists of three fundamental beliefs: in creation, revelation and redemption. Maimonides 13 principles elaborate this basic structure. And as I have shown in my Introduction to the Siddur, these three beliefs form the pattern of Jewish prayer.

Creation means seeing the universe as G-ds work. Revelation means seeing Torah as G-ds word. Redemption means seeing history as G-ds deed and G-ds call. But within these broad parameters, we must each find our own understanding, guided by the Sages of the past, instructed by our teachers in the present, and finding our own route to the Divine presence.

Judaism is a matter of creed as well as deed. But we should allow people great leeway in how they understand the faith of our ancestors. Heresy-hunting is not our happiest activity. One of the great ironies of Jewish history is that no one did more than Maimonides himself to elevate creed to the level of halachically normative dogma, and he became the first victim of this doctrine. In his lifetime, he was accused of heresy, and after his death his books were burned. These were shameful episodes.

We will do and we will understand, means: we will do in the same way; we will understand in our own way.

I believe that action unites us, leaving us space to find our own way to faith.

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Listening To Gd - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

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Posted By admin on February 26, 2020

At California State University, Northridge, the mission of the Younes and Soraya Nazarian Center for the Performing Arts (The Soraya) is to present performances that include new and original work from Los Angeles, as well as work from around the world that appeals to its diverse communities.

In a first since in 2011, this year The Soraya is engaging its first artist-in-residence, acclaimed violinist Niv Ashkenazi.

Ashkenazis residency is part of a collaboration between The Sorayas Art Education program, which serves CSUN students and more than 10,000 K-12 local students, four Southern California symphony orchestras and The Violins of Hope a collection of instruments rescued from and restored after the holocaust, in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Niv Ashkenazi. Photo courtesy of Joseph Solano.

Its an honor to be the first artist-in-residence at The Soraya and to get to collaborate with them on their Violins of Hope programming this year, Ashkenazi said. Ive had the opportunity to see firsthand how much care the team puts into everything they do and how passionate they are about presenting the most impactful performances in the best possible way.As someone who grew up in Northridge, it means a lot to me to have a venue of this caliber close to home.

As the only individual in North America entrusted with a rescued violin on long-term loan from The Violins of Hope collection, Ashkenazi will share the stories of the violins with students in the San Fernando Valley in more than 30 in-school visits. During these visits, students learn the history of the Holocaust and the violins in the collection, listen to Ashkenazi play the violin and hear Anthony Cantrell, director of The Sorayas Arts Education program, read aloud a story from the book Violins of Hope by James A. Grymes.

Each school is a unique experience, because of the diversity in the communities that we are visiting, and also because we are working with a wide range of ages, Ashkenazi said. My primary goal is to represent those stories and that message in the best way that I can. I hope that our workshops are giving students a way to engage with a very difficult subject in a way that gives them a new perspective and a vehicle to continue to ask questions and learn from their teachers.

The Violins of Hope concert series will consist of three concerts featuring performers and soloists using instruments from The Violins of Hope collection. On March 22, Noreen Green will conduct the Los Angeles Jewish Symphony featuring violinist Lindsay Deutsch. On March 25, Lahav Shani will conduct the Rotterdam Philharmonic. The Jerusalem Quartet will close out The Sorayas Violins of Hope concert series April 5 with works by Haydn, Shostakovich and Brahms.

In my time here, this is absolutely the most significant, the most potentially impactful, and the most ambitious program weve ever done, Cantrell said. To have professional artists and Nivs residency partnered with us to fulfill The Sorayas mission, is extraordinary.

Violins of Hope was founded by Amnon Weinstein, a master violin maker in Tel Aviv. For the past two decades, Weinstein has restored violins played by Jewish musicians during the Holocaust. His work is dedicated to the relatives he lost when his parents immigrated to Palestine in 1938. Although most of the musicians who played these instruments were silenced by the Holocaust, their voices and spirits live on through the violins Weinstein has restored.

For more information on The Violins of Hope, visithttps://www.thesoraya.org/violinsofhopela.

Arts Education, Community, CSUN, Niv Ashkenazi, The Soraya, Violins of Hope

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The Soraya Engages Its First Artist-in-Residence With Violins of Hope - CSUN Today

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Posted By admin on February 26, 2020

Blue and White leader MK Benny Gantz on Tuesday made a pitch for the religious right-wing vote in a speech emphasizing the importance of respect for the institutions of state and ethical behavior, which the religious-Zionist community has traditionally lionized.In a speech laden with religious overtones, he spoke at the Jerusalem Conference of the Besheva newspaper about the Jewish value of respecting ones fellow man and taking care of the weaker sectors of society.But he cited the Talmudic principle of respecting the law of the land in an implicit criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has fiercely attacked the Israel Police and State Attorneys Office over criminal indictments against him.Gantz said he entered politics after his military career out of a sense of duty, which he said was a central component of the ethos of the religious-Zionist community.This is my mission, and in my eyes, this is the idea behind the national and state-respecting camp, which loves this country, which is moved by the return to Zion, which is willing to fight for the security of the country, to settle its land, to take care of the weak, protect its Jewish identity and respect the rules of the democratic game, he said.The national and state-respecting camp is about accepting upon ourselves: The law of the land is the law, Gantz said in reference to the Talmudic principle that Halacha requires people to respect the civil law of the country where they live.The idea is not to fight against the legal system and bring about anarchy not because there is nothing to fix in the system, for sure there is, but because the way to fix things does mean destroying it from the foundations, he said.Gantz reiterated his pledge to introduce term limits for prime ministers, either eight years or two terms in office.He deplored the situation in the Gaza Strip periphery, which bore the brunt of terrorist rocket fire on Monday. It was the result of hesitation and the absence of initiative, he said.Gantz promised to appoint Blue and White MK and former IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi as defense minister to tackle the challenge from Gaza.In response, the Likud said Gantzs promise to appoint Ashkenazi was empty of meaning, saying he could not serve as defense minister due to the Harpaz Affair, in which Ashkenazi was suspected, although ultimately cleared, of seeking to influence the appointment of the next chief of staff.

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Gantz invokes Talmudic principle in pitch to right-wing religious camp - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on February 26, 2020

Blue and White chairman MK Benny Gantz promised on Monday that he will appoint MK Gabi Ashkenazi as Defense Minister if he forms the next government.

"There are security challenges facing us in all areas, including the health emergency in the face of the coronavirus, which I am not sure is being properly addressed. The Israeli defense establishment must give an orderly response to all the challenges we are facing - in the south, north, east, near and far, including Iran," said Gantz during a visit to the Gaza envelope region.

He added, "In order to deal with these challenges and put an end to Netanyahu's failure against [Hamas leader Ismail] Haniyeh and the other challenges - we have here the man who will be Israel's Defense Minister - Gabi Ashkenazi. I am convinced that Gabi, together with me as Prime Minister and Bogie [Yaalon] as a senior member of the Political-Security Cabinet, will lead the system, put all the necessary systems in order, and properly exercise power in all areas in general and in the south in particular. Israel will have to choose between a Defense Minister and a professional cabinet, or a Defense Minister who is a political nominee and an amateur cabinet of puppets."

Ashkenazi said, "We have come to strengthen the Israeli envelope. To express appreciation to the IDF soldiers who are even now working to keep the area safe. The general feeling of the residents is that it is permissible to fire on the south. I want to say to the citizens and the people of Israel - this is not a decree. This reality is unbearable and everyone who lives here knows it didn't start yesterday with the explosives [on the border].

"This is not the first time we have been dealing with terrorist organizations. A sense of security can be provided here. There are children on the northern border who have not heard a siren for 15 years. Hamas has two options: A long-term arrangement which we prefer, bringing back the boys and complete quiet, in exchange for an improvement in the economic situation in Gaza. If that doesn't work - we'll have to act forcefully, he added.

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Benny Gantz: Gabi Ashkenazi will be appointed Minister of Defense in my government - Inside Israel - Arutz Sheva

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Posted By admin on February 26, 2020

Three of the legendary Israeli singer Ofra Hazas 42 years remain the focus of almost every treatment of her after her death, and especially as this weeks 20th anniversary of her death approached. Her last three years from when she married Doron Ashkenazi in 1997 until her death in 2000, are repeatedly put under a microscope, scrutinized, mapped out and deciphered her relationship with her husband, her longing for a child, the breakup with her longtime manager Bezalel Aloni, her illness, the secrecy and ultimately her death.

Her death did not just cause shock and deep sadness because of the sudden passing of a great, admired and relatively young singer, but also because of the total contradiction between the circumstances of her death and Hazas image, which was all pleasantness, innocence and clarity. She was a beautiful crystal ball that suddenly shattered without anyone knowing it was cracked.

Since Hazas last three years have been so repeatedly documented that they have come to overshadow the other periods of her life, its worthwhile, 20 years after her death, to focus on three other years, those in which she reached her peak as a singer (and also discovered herself as an artist). This happened between 1984 and 1987.

Haza had already passed the stage of being Israel Radios Singer of the Year, which she had won the previous four years running, from 1980-83. But from an artistic perspective, these were the years in which she produced her best and most interesting songs and albums, those that have stood the test of time.

These three dramatic years began with the 1984 recording that at the time wasnt perceived as a resounding event, but in retrospect turned out to be a defining moment in her career and one of the vocal pinnacles of Israeli music altogether: the recording of Im Ninalu, and in particular the first near-minute that Haza sang a cappella.

The link between Hazas Yemenite roots and the pop music world in which she operated was an innovation at the time, but what stands out in Im Ninalu is not the concept but the execution. It was perfection. Benny Nagari, who produced the song and the album on which it appeared (Yemenite Songs), did amazing work (which has been somewhat forgotten following the pioneering remix of Im Ninalu by Yizhar Ashdot and Yair Nitzani, which a few years later advanced Hazas international career).

But the main wonderment is Hazas singing. In retrospect she sounds like shes gone through a true metamorphosis. Within 50 seconds, Haza turned from a gifted and successful but limited singer in terms of the quality of her songs and the range of her expression, into a singer with a much greater emotional and artistic range.

Two problems

There is no intention here to dismiss what Haza did before Im Ninalu. She was the most successful female Israeli singer in the first half of the 1980s, she recorded quite a few lovely songs, but when you listen today to her albums from that period, the flaws and shortcomings are just as evident as the strengths.

These were eclectic recordings, a bit from here and a bit from there. American-inspired pop, between soul and disco; a local version of mainstream; even a bit of rock; for adults but for children too. Haza and Bezalel Aloni (Aloni is usually seen as the man who exclusively directed Hazas career, but we cannot rule out the possibility that Haza had a significant influence on her own career, even in the early stages) tried in those albums to do whatever could work at that moment, the way things are done in the pop industry.

The song Im Ninalu was a formative moment in her career, and one of the vocal heights in all of Israeli music.

But there were two problems. First, the songs were not good enough. Aloni was not satisfied with the role of manager and guide; he also wrote the words and music to most of the songs in Hazas first album, although he is limited as a songwriter and composer.

Another problem was related to Hazas image. Her albums were pop albums, but something in her did not totally adopt the persona of a pop singer, largely because the ethos of Israeli music didnt reward female singers who went in that direction. On the contrary. At the start of her career, her hit song Shir Hafrecha, (Song of the Bimbo), created anostensibly cheap image for her, and she and her manager didnt want to repeat the same mistake. Pop at its best is the music of passion and liberation, but those characteristics were there after totally absent from Hazas music.

The songs themselves, especially Alonis songs, emphasized this lacking. They often hovered in some kind of imaginary childish world of exaggerated innocence. Shmor na aleinu kemo yeladim (Watch over us like children, from Tefila), Bayit cham, bayit cham, yalda rotza bayit cham (A warm home, a warm home, a girl wants a warm home from Bayit Cham), Lihiyot itach baagadot, malkat kesamim veniflaot (To be with you in the fairy tales, queen of magic and wonders from Malkat Kesamim) and others.

In these songs Haza was not portrayed as a total woman, but as a kind of child-woman, one who believes in the good and in divine power. Today, when God can be found around every corner in Israeli pop, and the outright secular worldview is an almost lunatic minority opinion in our contemporary soundtrack, we can forget how different the situation was decades ago. Israeli pop of the 1980s, not to mention Israeli rock, were almost totally secular arenas. Religious feeling was not well received by the radio editors and other gatekeepers.

Almost nobody sang about God. Ofra Haza did, a lot. Bechol hamidbarot ani lecha tefila (In all the deserts I am a prayer for you Azor Li), Belechticha li lakachta tefilati haachrona (When you left me you took my last prayer Halachta), Yesh od tefilat lev harishit (Theres another silent prayer in my heart Acharei Hahagim) and many others. That may have been another profound reason why many Israelis, religious or traditional, felt connected to her.

Of course there is a basic difference between this nave, one-dimensional writing about God and the profound call of Rabbi Shalom Shabazi: Im ninalu daltei nedivim / Daltei marom lo ninalu (If the doors of benefactors are locked / The doors of heaven are not locked). That doesnt mean that Haza stopped looking at the world in her nave way from the moment she sang Im Ninalu, and yet it seems that something basic changed in her. Her singing sounded different, more expressive, and the way in which she directed her career together with Aloni was transformed.

Aloni wrote fewer songs, Haza began to write herself, and if until the mid-1980s her albums included a bit of everything, from the middle of the decade there was a clear conceptual separation between one album and the next. This change in approach was one of the reasons for the excellent series of Hazas albums between 1984 and 1987.

After the album Shirei Teiman (Yemenite Songs), Haza was expected to return to pop, full of a sense of mission to create as many hits as possible. She did so, but in an interesting way. First, in 1985 she released the album Adama (Earth), which looked back at Hebrew song, but not in the routine way of offering new versions of old favorites (something that Haza did in three other 1980s albums).

In Adama, Haza performed new songs composed by Naomi Shemer, Sasha Argov, Effi Netzer, Shem Tov Levy and Yair Klinger. The result was a kind of modern Hebrew song. Haza may have gone to these materials because she was envious of the great success of Yardena Arazi with songs in a similar vein. Whatever the case, Adama was a very beautiful album, which produced some of Hazas most beloved songs.

Almost a jaw-dropper

Your jaw almost drops when you finish listening to Adama and go on immediately to the album Yamim Nishbarim (Broken Days), which was released a year later, in 1986. Theres a tremendous difference between the two albums, both in sound and content. Yamim Nishbarim, produced by Yizhar Ashdot, is a synthesized, direct and visual pop album.

After the Yemenite songs, the contemporary song of Adama and the old-time song of the album Shirei Moledet B (Songs of the Homeland 2), which was also released in 1985, Haza dove into the world of synthesizers and drum machines of the mid-80s, and not only did she experiment with a sound that was not at all identified with her, she also did so, for the first time, with songs for which she wrote the words and the melody (in some cases together with Ashdot).

It sounds on paper like a recipe for failure too many experiments for one album but Yamim Nishbarim is a wonderful album. The courage paid off. This may have been the first time when Haza expressed herself in the full sense of the word, and she sounds complete, exposed and liberated.

Hazas experiments continued in 1987 with the remix of Im Ninalu. The ability of a single remix to open locked doors and launch an international career is well known today, but in the 1980s the remix was still a suspicious entity. Haza could have panicked at Ashdot and Nitzanis work of dismantling and assembly, which included a distortion of her most precious resource, her voice, and the introduction of a heavy hip-hop rhythm and meaty basses on a synagogue piyyut (liturgical poem). But she didnt panic, and the remix became a major hit that opened the world market to her music.

Naturally and inevitably, the international channel became the main avenue of creativity in Hazas remaining years, from 1987 until her death 13 years later. In purely artistic terms, there was a price for the international success. Hazas unique vocal quality was so profound and characteristic, that it came through even when she sang in English, to the delight of millions of non-Israelis who loved her singing.

But the way she expressed herself in English was not nearly as beautiful and natural as in Hebrew or Yemenite. There was also some kind of artificiality in the way her image was marketed to the international audience. She was presented as an exotic diva, with characteristics that did not suit her personality.

When she was active in this country, Haza was able to shed these artificial additions. But there were not many opportunities. She recorded only one Hebrew album after her international breakthrough. The songs she recorded right before this breakthrough, in those three years of experimentation and maturation, remain her most impressive artistic legacy.

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Looking back at Ofra Haza's transformation, 20 years after the death of Israel's iconic singer - Haaretz

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Posted By admin on February 26, 2020

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu slammed former IDF chief of staff, and current Blue and White member Gabi Ashkenazi on Tuesday, saying he offended the Druze community. The offensive content was allegedly recorded and never released to the public. Ashkenazi responded by saying that he will not stoop to the level of Netanyahu and that even if the Israeli leader is not ashamed of his own lies, Ashkenazi is ashamed for him. If he thinks I cant stay in politics, he asked, why did he offer the role of Defense Minister a short time ago? In response, the Likud party tweeted a so-called final warning to Ashkenazi warning him for the last time that unless he apologizes to the Druze community they will release how he tried to join Likud and also the refusals you got because of your awful words in your recordings.

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Netanyahu slams former IDF chief of staff: Apologize to the Druze - The Jerusalem Post

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