Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on February 14, 2020

From when does one read the shma in the evening?Opening words, Mishnah and Talmud

Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

This simple sentence in the Hebrew Bible, known by its first word as the shma (hear), is also the first subject addressed in the Talmud and the first biblical verse taught to Jewish children. It is, at once, the most famous affirmation of Jewish belief and the most misunderstood. To appreciate this paradox, we must begin with the text itself, two of whose three brief sections make up a key element in Moses string of passionate valedictory charges to his people in the book of Deuteronomy. Here is the first section (6:4-9), in which the greatest of prophets sums up Jewish theology:

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thy heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

From the words urging that this teaching be recited when thou liest down, and when thou risest up came the central inclusion of the shma in, respectively, the evening and morning liturgy. And yet, in reciting it, Jews for millennia have added another sentence immediately after the first, and before proceeding to the rest. It is a sentence that appears neither in Deuteronomy nor anywhere else in the Bible and that, notably, is recited in a hushed tone, thereby signaling that it is both a part of and apart from the shma prayer as a whole:

Blessed be His glorious sovereign Name, for ever and ever.

Needless to say, the addition of this sentencethe exact date of its inclusion is unknowndid not evade the gimlet-eyed exegesis of the talmudic sages, who were struck by its oddity. Why is it there in the first place, and, if it is part of the liturgy, why not recite it aloud? In responding, the Talmud tells a tale, according to which the shma originated not with Moses but long before him: with his ancestors, and specifically with one of the biblical patriarchs and his family.

The story goes like this: at the end of his days, Jacob, as described in Genesis, gathers all twelve of his sons around him. Feeling his life and his powers of prophecy slipping away, he expresses concern that one of his children might abandon the Abrahamic mission (something that had already occurred with a child of Abraham himself as well as with a child of Isaac). Seeking to reassure their father on this point, his sons address him by the covenantal name bestowed upon him by an angel (Genesis 32: 22-32). The rabbis explain:

His sons said to him: Hear, Israel our father, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One. They were saying that just as there is only one God in your heart, so, too, there is only one in our hearts. At that moment Jacob our father, [reassured that all of his children were righteous], replied in praise: Blessed be His glorious sovereign Name for ever and ever. (Psaim 56a)

For the rabbis, Jacobs relieved exclamation linked the Almightys eternity with his own. That is to say: Gods name will be blessed forever because Jacobs family will serve Him forever. Now included in the shma prayer, this same sentence links Gods immortality with the posterity of every Jewish family. Because the words are not actually those of Moses, the rabbis stipulate that the sentence is to be voiced quietly.

This rabbinic story and its accompanying explanation have been embraced in Jewish law as the normative foundation for the shma as it has been recited until today. Even Maimonides, who so often reads talmudic tales as other than literal, included the ruling in the Mishneh Torah, his code of Jewish law.

In short, in the recitation of the shma, two different statements from two different moments in biblical history are being made simultaneously. In one and the same act, Jews quote the words of Moses speaking to the people of Israel and then the response to the twelve sons by their father Jacob, the original Israel. In the first, the shma is a theological-political statement; in the second, it is an assurance of Jewish continuity. The first is philosophical, the second familial; the first is public and ceremonial, the second private and emotional. Even as Hear O Israel is being sounded aloud, Jews quietly reaffirm their solidarity with the patriarch and his children.

That latter commitment is reenacted with particular force and poignancy in the longstanding practice of reciting the shma before sleep at night. For Jewish parents putting their children to bed and saying it together with them, few rituals are more powerful. At that moment, we are uniquely aware that our children will not always be small and safe under our protection, and that one day we in turn will become dependent on them, and on the family they perpetuate, for our own immortality. As Rabbi Norman Lamm once put it, in saying the shma aloud and then, quietly to ourselves, blessed be His glorious sovereign name for ever and ever, we, just like Jacob, and together with our own progeny, play our part in ensuring that Gods name will continue to be blessed here on earth.

And therein lies another lesson, this one about the nature of Judaism itself. For this purpose, we can compare the Talmuds tale about Jacob and his sons, about the recovery by a dying Jewish patriarch of his familys immortality, with the account of another famous deathbed scene in the ancient world.

In that account, related by Plato in the Phaedo, the Greek philosopher Socrates finds himself on the brink of death in an Athenian cell, attended by his students, pondering his legacy, and reviewing with them the great issues that had long absorbed his mind, not least the immortality of the soul. Serenely he assures these students that he welcomes his impending, self-inflicted death by hemlock as a release from the bonds of physicality that are the curse of earthly humanity. Freed from the constraints of the body and its passions, Socrates hopes for an afterlife happily occupied with the contemplation of eternal verities.

One could hardly imagine a starker contrast between two men. Socrates is wholly absorbed in his students and in his own immortal soul; he seems utterly uninterested in his family, calmly dismissing his wife and their baby son with nary a tear or emotional farewell. Jacob, the father who in creating and rearing faithful children has united his physical life with his spiritual legacy, commands those children to bear his lifeless body to the Holy Land. By rooting it in sacred soil, he will have prepared the way for the eventual return of his offspring to their national home.

As Eric Cohen has written, for all its renown, the death of Socrates seems less fully human than the death of Jacob, which unites the private drama of father and sons with the public drama of Israels beginnings as a nation. Just so; and in contrasting these two very different deaths, Cohen also points to one of the central differences between Greek and Jewish civilization.

In Aristotelian texts, the family merely provides preparation for service to the polis, and the great-souled man embodies the ideal of excellence. Plato goes farther, having Socrates declare in his Republic that in the truly just city, the philosopher-king will produce anonymous offspring whom he will pointedly not raise as his own lest he thereby compromise the universal compassion for all citizens that justice requires.

This, to a Jew, could not be more distant from Gods explanation for his choice of Abraham: For I have known him, that he will command his children and household after him, to keep the ways of the Lord, to perform righteousness and justice (Genesis 18:19). For Jews, the domain of the family is where the blood bond and the spiritual bond are joined, where transmission takes place, where children are taught about the God of their fathers, where the realm of the truly sacred and the truly human conjoin.

The Greek world is not the Jewish world; even attempts to find similarities reveal more about the differences. Take, for example, the frequent likening of the Passover seder to the Greek symposium. Both meals involve a choreographed series of imbibings and a discussion of philosophical and theological subjects.

And yet: would a Greek symposium welcome children, much less focus on them? Is a single child to be found in Platos Symposium? On the contrary, we find the best and the brightest of Greek society: Socrates is there; Alcibiades is there, physicians and philosophers, scholars and statesmen are there. No one has brought his progeny; to do so would ruin the conversation.

The ritual of the seder, for its part, though it may seem superficially Greco-Roman, is actually the inverse: it is all about children and family. In the Haggadah, philosophical inquiry is balanced by imaginative storytelling and covenantal re-creation. Father and mother teach children about the Almighty taking to Himself a people, and in going to sleep the children joyously respond: Hear O -Israel-Father, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

This, finally, returns us to the opening question of the Talmudfrom what time may one recite the shma in the evening?and its seemingly technical answer: from the time that the priests enter to eat their trumah.

The reference in the final word is to the end of twilight, when the priests of the Temple are once again permitted to partake of food they may eat only while ritually pure. But if thats when recitation of the shma can begin, what is the last point at which it can still be recited? Here a debate emerges, with three opinions followed by a story:

Until the end of the first watch. These are the words of Rabbi Eliezer.The sages say: until midnight. Rabbi Gamliel says: until the dawn comes up. Once it happened that [Gamliels] sons came home [late] from a wedding feast and they said to him: we have not yet recited the [evening]shma. He said to them: if the dawn has not yet come up, you are still bound to recite. . . . Why, then, did the sages say until midnight? In order to keep a man far from transgression. (Brakhot 2a).

The children of Gamliel, arriving after midnight but before dawn, and therefore assuming that, since the law accorded with the sages, they could no longer fulfill their obligation, are informed by their father that the sages established midnight only as an ideal deadline, in order to encourage early recital; but as long as dawn has not occurred, the commandment can still be obeyed.

Stop for a moment and consider who is telling this story. The author of the Mishnah is Rabbi Judah the Prince, a grandson of none other than Rabbi Gamliel. Judahs story therefore concerns his own father and uncles interacting with their father. This small succinct story thus shares a subject with the shma itself: the subject, that is, of familial fidelity.

Where, Rabbi Judah is asking, is true wisdom to be found? Gamliels sons have been to a drinking party: the term is often rendered as a wedding, but no textual evidence supports such a reading. More likely, in the Greco-Roman world in which the Mishnah was composed, it referred to a symposium, an event at which, by the lights of that culture, true sophistication and wisdom were to be found. Yet, for these aspiring young rabbis, the symposium has caused them to forget the central obligation of Jewish life. They arrive home thinking that the deadline has passed and contritely confess that they have failed.

At that point, new wisdom is transmitted from parent to child: it is not too late. In the darkness before dawn, this family can still give full-throated voice to the foundational words of Jacobs sons to their father Israel: Hear O Israel-Father, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

That is why the practices and regulations surrounding this sentence, than which no other sentence is more powerful, are the very first matter taken up by the rabbis of the Talmud, and why it is the sentence occupying so central a place in every evening and morning prayer service, the sentence proclaimed in their dying breath by martyrs throughout history, the sentence repeated in gratitude and joy with children as they drift off to sleep, the sentence uttered as one prepares to bid farewell to this world, sanctifying the Lords name for ever and ever.

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The Mysteries of the Sh'ma - Mosaic

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Posted By admin on February 14, 2020

After having fought them for years, now religious Zionist rabbis glorify learned women like Professor Vered Noam and hold them up as a shining example

The welcome and well-deserved awarding of the Israel Prize in Talmud Studies to Noam is another stamp of approval for the success of the religious feminist movement, and a moment of triumph for liberalism in Israel.

Noam is the first woman to win the Israel Prize for Talmud Studies. Its not surprising that no woman has been awarded this prize before, because there were no potential candidates since women did not have the opportunity to study Talmud. The fight over teaching Gemara to women was the first struggle of religious Orthodox feminism in Israel, and in the beginning, nearly seemed like a mission impossible.

In 1971, my late mother-in-law, Hava Frankel-Goldschmidt, sent a carefully explained proposal to the Education Ministrys religious education department, requesting that Gemara studies be permitted for girls in the state religious school system. Her letter was published in the journal of teachers of Jewish subjects in the state religious school system and the opposition was swift and adamant: Four letters opposing the idea were published and not a single letter in support. The objectors argued that this idea muddled the distinct roles of the sexes, that it would lead to sin and the ruin of the Jewish home, and that it attested to the foolishness of the person who proposed it. One letter quoted the words of Rabbi Eliezer in the Mishna: Whoever teaches his daughter Torah, it is as if he taught hertiflut (variously understood as lasciviousness or vanities).

Her proposal was rejected out of hand and that was the end of that discussion. But a few years later, when Professor Alice Shalvi took over the administration of the Pelech religious school for girls, she introduced Talmud studies there and made the school into a stronghold of religious feminism. Meanwhile, the process of founding the first Beit Midrash for women, Midreshet Lindenbaum, was also beginning.

What aroused such strong opposition in the 1970s is now accepted even by conservative groups within religious Zionism. The fight over the Beit Midrash has been decided. The fact that Rabbi Rafi Peretz, a representative of the conservative hardali (haredi religious Zionist) wing in the Knesset, is awarding the prize, is further proof of the revolutions success. Religious Zionist rabbis now glorify learned women and hold them up to todays religious feminists as a shining example of how to conduct a revolution quietly and with humility. Because this is how traditional societies operate: They will never welcome a revolution, but once it has taken root, they will treat the change as something obvious and turn their attention to heading off the next revolution.

Professor Shalvi spoke of the three houses (batim) in Judaism: the Beit Midrash (study hall), the Beit Knesset (synagogue) and Beit Din (rabbinical court). She believed that in order to complete the religious feminist revolution, the status of women needed to change in each of these three houses. Following the success of the Torah study revolution, what remains is to change womens status in the synagogues and rabbinical courts.

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Now were in the heart of the struggle in the synagogue, for the right of women to pray as equals among equals. Lately it has been gaining momentum and there are already dozens of womens minyans around the country and egalitarian minyans in which women are called up to the Torah, read the weekly portion and lead the services. This is a long struggle that has been going on for several decades in religious Zionism, but in recent years even in the more conservative regions of religious Zionism, women dance with the Sefer Torah on Simhat Torah and read the Megilla on Purim acts which were typical of the first stage of the feminist revolution in the synagogue.

Not long ago, Rabbi Eliezer Melamed, a leading figure in the conservative wing of religious Zionism, wrote in his column in BSheva, the popular weekly paper for a religious Zionist audience, that it was not worth fighting women who want to read the Megilla or dance with a Sefer Torah. Even regarding women being called up to the Torah, he expressed a relatively moderate position. So even in the hardali strongholds, the revolution in the synagogue has already begun. And as with Torah study for women, here too the conservative wing will embrace yesterdays revolution of womens Megilla reading but will oppose the next stage of the struggle about equal status for women in the synagogue.

The big struggle that has yet to begin is the struggle for equal status for women in the rabbinical courts. Its hard to imagine such a change, to picture women dayyanot (religious court judges) and arbiters of Jewish law, but recall the reactions to the initial suggestion that women learn Gemara. That process is one of the greatest victories of liberalism in Israel. Liberal ideas are also seeping into the strongholds of Israeli conservatism. The idea that women are of equal worth, that women have liberties, that they have the right to study and be part of the congregation, and in the future to also be dayyanot in the religious courts This idea was born out of the values of liberalism and has been too deeply assimilated for anyone to uproot. Even in the strongholds of Israeli conservatism, no one can now envision life, or the State of Israel, without liberal ideas.

Unlike conservatism, which embraces yesterdays revolution and resists the current struggle, liberalism encourages the next struggle for freedom, dignity and equality. Perhaps it is no coincidence that Professor Noam teaches at Tel Aviv University a stronghold of Israeli liberalism. The university hired her in the late 1990s when Talmud studies for women was not something to be taken for granted. Thus it was liberals who enabled her to ultimately win the Israel Prize, which will be presented to her by Rabbi Peretz, representative of the conservatives in the Knesset. Noam receiving the prize is a reminder that even the staunchest conservatives in Israel will eventually adopt more liberal ideas, but only after a fight and with some delay. After the uproar that was sparked by the interview with Professor Nissim Mizrahi (Haaretz Magazine, December 26) and at a time when liberalism is under attack, here we have a moment of satisfaction and a reminder that liberalism is one of the cornerstones upon which Israeli society and the State of Israel are based.

The writer is a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem and MK who served as chairwoman of the Knesset Reforms Committee, and is a leader of the fight against the exclusion of women in the public sphere.

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The battle of the Beit Midrash has been decided - Haaretz

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Posted By admin on February 14, 2020

Writer answers defenses of presidents behavior

Id like to address some issues Dave Alston raised in his recent letter. I spoke to Christianity because they are the majority in this county. However, the many sincere Muslims, Hindus, etc. who live here also do not approve of Trumps ethics. Its a moral lack that offends kind and thoughtful folks. The Quran, Talmud, Bhagavad Gita, etc. because they all denounce lying, cheating and adultery. Christians dont have a monopoly on decent behavior.

Mr. Alston seems to imply the end justifies the means. The falseness of which most of us learned at our mothers knee. I look askance at any who say, He might be a jerk but hes OUR jerk. By their fruits ye shall know them is a valued clich because we know fruits of a poison tree are rarely good for anyone.

Washington and Lincoln are our paragons of thoughtfulness and intelligence. They should be the example all who seek office aspire to emulate. If I have a choice, I would pick an electric chainsaw if I dont care for smoke and noise, to use Alstons example.

Politics aint bean-bag is true because its a rough-and-tumble business. But, you dont have to be a jerk to succeed, just tough-skinned and have some guts. Neither describe Trump.

Finally, any regular reader of this column knows I hold progressive views but havent been a Democrat for decades. There are no saints in either party. Its always the lesser of two evils. By the by, I wonder why Dave put sins in parenthesis. Does he think they arent?

John Allen, Demi-John Island

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Letter to the editor for Feb. 14, 2020 | Opinion - Brazosport Facts

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Posted By admin on February 14, 2020

Last week, on February 3, George Steiner, literary critic, author, and philosopher passed away at the age of 90. While Steiner will undoubtedly be remembered internationally for a whole array of achievements, in my own mind, Steiner will live on forever as the man who posed the greatest and most profound critique of Zionism.

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George Steiner, 2006

Steiners critique stemmed from what he viewed as an inherent pathology that would result in an attempt to re-nationalize what had become an ethno-religious tradition. Ever since Jews were cast into exile two thousand years ago, Judaism has taken shape divorced from a national context and attached to a religious, ethnic one. Our exile entailed a complete reshaping of Jewish identity, transforming Judaism from a people in a land to the people of the book.

Of course, this transformation couldnt have taken place without its own theological implications. While Christians came to see the Jewish diaspora as theological proof of their own supremacy above that of the Jews, Jewish thought incorporated exile into our religious outlook. God afflicts those he loves, the Talmud teaches in a variety of places; the suffering of the Jewish people is a symptom of Jewish divine chosenness, not proof of its absence. In this way, our existential homelessness, the state of the Jewish people for nearly 2,000 years, ceased to be simply a supremely unlucky historical event and took on new meaning as an inherent part of the Jewish tradition.

Theres little debate about this straightforward historical facts. But for Steiner, they amounted to an argument against Zionism. Exile was Judaism, Steiner believed, whereas Zionism was a movement that sought to create a Jewish state, binding the Jews once more to a nation state like any other, with all the banalities and corruption that all nation states contain. And there was something truly perverse, even unholy, to have 2,000 years of a deep religious tradition bound to the inevitable pettiness and corruption of nation-state building, Steiner wrote.

It was to go backwards, he thought. To have a tradition unbound by physicality, infinite in scope and imagination, rebound to a government and a country surrounded by the very finite and even ephemeral attributes of statehood was fundamentally wrong, per Steiner. Just as Judaism strongly teaches that one should not have idols, because our prophets and Rabbis understood the dangers in trying to capture an infinite God in anything finite, so too Steiner maintained we should not attempt to create a Jewish state.

In an essay called Our Homeland, the Text, Steiner used the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem as a poignant example. A beautiful exhibit in the Israel Museum houses the famous Dead Sea Scrolls, Jewish manuscripts dating back over 2,100 years found in Qumran. Steiner pointed out that there is a security system in place that, in case of attack, that will sink the texts underground, protecting them from incoming bombardment. Words cannot be broken by artillery, nor thought live in bomb-shelters, Steiner writes. To acknowledge the Shrine of the Book as just that, a shrine, is to lose sense of what is truly important in the realm of Jewish ideas and writings: that they cannot be lost in a physical attack.

Its a moving passage, and a deeply Jewish one. It reminds me of the famous talmudic story of Rabbi Chananya where he is wrapped in a Torah scroll and subsequently burned by the Romans as punishment. When asked by his students what he sees, Rabbi Chananya said, I see the parchment being consumed by the flames, but the letters, the letters I see flying off; they remain. Judaisms ability to survive and be such a profound source of truth stems from the fact that we have always been able to separate the letters from the parchment.

With Israel, Steiner was worried that the Jewish state implied that the words could no longer escape, bound as they were to a new material Jewish entity.

I dont agree with Steiner. I myself am a very ardent Zionist and Israel is always in my heart and Jewish worldview. I am proud Israel exists as the Jewish state and will continue to support it with my whole self. We cant be so naive as to build up an idyllic picture of Judaism, and the Jews need a Jewish state.

But there is something utterly profound about Steiners criticism of Israel, something that gives me much more pause than conversations about the Nakba, occupation or colonialism, for which every accusation has an equally strong rationalization.

Steiners is a criticism that we would be foolish to ignore and avoid as we continue to wrap up our religious, cultural, national, and ethnic identities in a nation-state across the world. There is a risk to our binding the infinite nature of Judaism to something finite, a risk we must keep in mind even as we take it, if we are to honor our history, and who it has made us.

Moshe Daniel Levine is the Senior Jewish Educator at OC Hillel and a Jewish blogger. He can be reached at dlevine21@gmail.com.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

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George Steiners profound criticism of Zionism will haunt us forever - Forward

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Posted By admin on February 14, 2020

"The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts," by Karen Armstrong. Bodley Head/Penguin/Random House, 549 pages. $35.

This has to be Karen Armstrongs ultimate tome after all her learned, readable, fascinating and often mesmerizing books on religion in general, myth, Islam, the history of God and more. Beginning with the beginning of civilization in Sumer (Iraq) circa 3500 BCE, she retraces the history of religion, rituals, scriptures and beliefs from Greece and Israel to India and China.

Her mission is clear. Scripture is not mere text. It involves chanting, reciting, singing, rituals and performance. Dance and dogma intermingle and are indivisible. One cannot really exist in all its fullness without the other, like reading the lyrics of a song without hearing the music. The scriptures, "embedded in ritual," aim for personal transformation, liberation, harmony and transcendence. Armstrongs mission is to rescue the original performance of scripture from its written form, which gets confused with historical fact and factions.

We live in a modern world that, for example, rests on Descartes notion: "I think, therefore I am." This is the ego, the Logos of rational, analytical science and invention. External facts rule: "Logos must relate accurately to facts and correspond to external realities ..." We investigate, control, establish provable theories (well, of course theres quantum theory which eludes Logos ...). Its a left-brain thing.

Myth, on the other hand, is never intended to be factual. It is intended to express timeless, essential ideas, initiations and events. Its an early form of psychology, exploring the labyrinthine densities of the unconscious. It may have happened once Christs crucifixion but then is repeated over and over to extract an eternal meaning of liberation, the emptying out of the voracious ego, a rite of passage. Its a right-brain thing.

Myth wrestles with mystery, Logos with measurement. Mystery lies beyond the logic of language and remains obscure and hidden. Logos performs in the light with specific problems to solve.

Armstrong explores, contextualizes and helps to explain prophets, gurus, teachers, disciples, Chinese hexagrams, the Indian Rig Veda, the Torah, the Talmud, midrash, Buddhism, Hinduism (Western constructs of various religious sects), the Jains, Islam, Christianity, Confucius, Augustines "catastrophic" notion of original sin, fundamentalisms bizarre compulsion to read the Bible literally, scrolls, the Assyrians, the Persians, imams, mystics, the Vulgate, the Septuagint, premillenialists, everything in historical terms and how their scriptures and rites change, and are meant to do so, through continual improvisation.

For me, Heideggers sense of Being gets at the heart of the mystery, "a fundamental energy that supports and pervades everything that exists." You cant see it or quantify it, but its "all encompassing," indefinable and all pervasive, and we can never get outside it to describe it. Beings exist. Being underlies and powers them. Rituals celebrate it, try to connect us to it, get us to oerleap dogma and join the dance.

This astounding book looks at how four cultures over the centuries have wrestled with "the underlying unity of reality" or at least have posited and worshiped such a vision. It is triumphant, saturated with history and ritual and sacred writings, is remarkably "easy" to read, and suggests an immanent and transcendent deity who is in the fire but not the fire. Armstrong burns with authenticity and spiritual commitment.

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Book review: Rediscovering the sacred at the heart of scriptures - The Providence Journal

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Posted By admin on February 14, 2020

Immediately preceding the giving of the Ten Commandments, the Jewish people are instructed to set boundaries around the mountain with a warning that read: Beware of ascending the mountain or touching its edge.

After three days of preparation, Moses is summoned to the peak of the mountain and God tells him to warn the people not to come up the mountain. Moses suggests it is not necessary to repeat the warning, but God insists that theyre warned a second time.

We have to ask, what is the significance of this footnote that is almost lost in the momentous revelation episode? Of what interest to us is the method of crowd control that was employed at that time?

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The 12th Century French Tosafist medieval Talmud commentator, Bechor Shor, explains that a close reading of the text reveals this wasnt just a physical fence around the mountain instead it was the people who had to make a figurative boundary for themselves and be warned not to pass through it.

In other words, this wasnt a simple Keep off the Grass sign to protect the mountain, but a very important message to them and every generation.

The prerequisite for the Torah is to know when and where to set our own boundaries: we have to be constantly conscious that there are limits. In our daily routine, in our ambitions and in all areas of life, self-control is essential. The Torah was given to human beings, not animals, and what sets us apart is the fact that were endowed with free will.

But with freedom comes responsibility and the expectation that we exercise self-restraint.

The challenge of Sinai today is to be guided by the teachings of the Torah and be self-disciplined enough to set ourselves limits, beyond which we are not prepared to pass.

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Sedra of the Week: Yitro - Jewish News

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Posted By admin on February 14, 2020

Bill Hamblin and I published the column below back in the early 2000s. To which particular terrorist atrocity was it referring? I can no longer recall. But since, alas, there are constantly new terrorist atrocities, it scarcely matters.

What is the Islamist Movement?

Following last weeks terrorist atrocity, many people have been wondering about Islamic fundamentalists, or, as they are more commonly (and less misleadingly) called today, Islamists. What is the Islamist movement? During the lifetime of Muhammad, the founder of Islam (570-632), he became not only a prophet but the ruler of a kingdom, which, in the last two years of his life, encompassed most of Arabia. The Quran (Koran)the collected revelations of God to Muhammad, revered as Islamic scripturecontains numerous, sometimes lengthy passages presenting the legal principles upon which an authentic Muslim society should be governed. At its core, Islamic law (Arabic shariah) is Quranic law, a mixture of civil, criminal and religious regulations.

Following the death of Muhammad, the principles of law and government in the Quran were interpreted by generations of legal scholars. When facing new legal and political questions not explicitly answered in the Quran, judges and rulers would try to formulate scholarly consensus on how to answer a question based on logical extrapolation and analogy. The result was the development of a complex Islamic law code, which in many ways parallels the role of the Talmud in medieval Jewish life. There were enough fundamental differences between differing models of interpretation that eventually five major different legal systems developed in the Islamic world, which agree in fundamentals but often differ on many particulars. For over a thousand years, countries with Muslim majorities, including most of the Middle East, were governed by one of these five schools of Islamic law. (It should be noted that Orthodox Judaism is also distinguished by its strict adherence to rabbinic Law as codified in the Talmud. One of the goals of the Orthodox in Israel is to establish Talmud principles and rabbinic Law as the official legal and political system of Israelwhich currently has a European-style, secular system.)

In the nineteenth century, European imperialists managed either to conquer nearly all Middle Eastern countries or render them tributary. In the process, the imperial powers brought European ideas about government and law to the region, promising liberty and equality. In reality, however, for over a century Muslims were generally treated by European powers as second-class citizens in their own lands. The usual Muslim experience was, therefore, that the European system of constitutionalism, parliamentary government, equality, and democracy was a cynical farce, intended only as a means to subdue conquered peoples.

The Islamists want to change this situation, seeking to restore what they feel is the authentic Muslim political and legal system that had been in force before the coming of the Europeans. At the most basic level, Islamists believe that their societies should be based upon, organized, and run according to Islamic law as it is found in the Quran and its schools of orthodox interpretations. Another general Islamist goal is that the moral decadence of the Westimmodesty, sexual promiscuity, drinking, drug use, greed, secularism, vulgarityshould be minimized in their societies through strict moral and legal codes.

Whereas all Islamists agree that majority Muslim countries should reestablish Islamic law as their foundational legal and political system, they often differ as to the best means to attain this goal. The vast majority of Islamists opt for moderate and peaceful means of renovation, via religious revival, education, and legal transformation through legitimate political and legal channels. Thus, many Muslim countries have Islamist political parties advocating peaceful change. Unfortunately, many governments in the Near Eastlike Iran under the former shahsare oppressive and tyrannical military dictatorships that brook no opposition (and that, like the shah, are often supported by Western powers, including the United States). Thus, peaceful change is often impossible, leading to the radicalization of Islamist groups, who come to see violent revolution as the only means of obtaining their legitimate political aspirations, precisely as happened in the Islamic revolution in Iran. The Hamas movement in Palestine is another examplean Islamist group which, after fifty years of failed negotiations, sees violent revolution as the only means to obtain independence for Arab Palestine.

There are many facets and factions to Islamist movements today. A large minority of Muslims throughout the Near East are Islamists, and the vast majority of these advocate peaceful and moderate means to obtain their goals. Unfortunately, however, a small but growing minority are increasingly turning to violence and terrorism. Usama bin Ladins terrorist organization is one of these; in a future column we will explore why Usama and his supporters view the United States as their major enemy.

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What is the Islamist Movement? | Dan Peterson - Patheos

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Posted By admin on February 14, 2020

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Some have questioned our columns implication two weeks ago that the previous Lubavitcher Rebbes arrival here in 1940 saved Yiddishkeit in America. America then was not a spiritual wasteland, they maintain, pointing to several prominent long-existing yeshivos, many Orthodox shuls, kashrus supervision agencies, and notable personalities who had painstakingly invested great efforts in building Torah schools and organizations before the Rebbe Rayatzs arrival.

It is crucial to note, however, that, although of great significance, these were usually like oases in the desert isolated areas of great accomplishment but affecting quite small numbers. Primarily, they catered to those who were already conscientiously Torah-observant and willing to raise their spiritual level mostly families of relatively recent immigrants yearning for levels of Yiddishkeit they remembered from the Old Country.

When refugee roshei yeshiva started arriving from Europe and re-establishing their yeshivos here, they too catered to the youth of Torah-observant families with little ambition of influencing those less observant.

The innovation of Lubavitch was launching a wide-ranging movement to advance Yiddishkeit on all fronts and for all Jews, fearlessly advocating observance of all mitzvos and traditional customs at the highest standards, as close as possible to levels once prevailing in Eastern Europe.

Many dont realize that standards of Orthodox Jewry here before 1940 were incomparably lower than today. Jewish schools hardly existed outside New York, and even those in New York emphasized secular studies, with Torah studied not more than an hour or two a day, often after noon. Hebrew teachers often werent even Torah-observant, and most schools taught little more than Hebrew and basic texts, without instilling traditional Torah faith.

Standards of kashrus were deplorable. For example, butchers often dipped chickens into boiling water after shechting them before salting to facilitate the removal of their feathers. But this practice rendered the meat non-kosher! Chalav Yisrael barely existed (while leniencies exist for cases of great need, conscientious Jews strive to observe this halacha from the Talmud).

Orthodox shuls, particularly the larger ones, often had microphones and did not have mechitzos. Their members, with little Torah knowledge, usually didnt realize the importance of sending their children to Jewish schools (if their community even had one). Most rabbis were too embarrassed to explain the laws of taharas hamishpacha to marrying couples. Continuing even into the 1960s was a tendency for Orthodox congregations, particularly out of town, to become non-Orthodox. Well into the 1950s, rabbinical graduates of some pre-1940 yeshivos often accepted more lucrative positions at non-Orthodox congregations.

Above all, the prevailing attitude among most Jews here was that America is different, maintaining it was impossible to observe Yiddishkeit here like it had been observed in the Old Country.

Despite the Rebbe Rayatzs feeble health and shortage of both followers and resources, upon his arrival on these shores, he immediately plunged into his declared task of disproving this fallacy and transforming America into a place of Torah. Among his many activities:

He established Jewish day schools in scores of localities, insisting on Torah-observant teachers and a Torah-true curriculum taught for over half the school day, starting specifically in the morning to emphasize its primacy. He filled the previous lack of Torah-true literature for children and adults with books and periodicals in English, Yiddish, and Hebrew.

He took advantage of a recent Supreme Court ruling to send his students to teach Yiddishkeit to public school children every week for an hour. His students used their lunch breaks to persuade Jewish storekeepers to close their businesses on Shabbos. He sent followers to influence Jews in small towns and farmers in rural areas to observe Yiddishkeit and give their children a Jewish education.

While demanding high standards of observance from his students and followers, the Rebbe Rayatz emphasized the importance of all Jews observing even one mitzvah at a time, to re-establish their bond with their Divine source.

The establishment of a movement to strengthen and spread Yiddishkeit encouraged many other Jews to participate in its efforts, and yet others to emulate them. Chabads campaigns encouraged levels of Yiddishkeit to rise among other Torah-observant Jews, too, and existing Jewish schools started raising their standards accordingly.

Against all odds, Lubavitch succeeded in changing the atmosphere here into one of optimism for the future of Yiddishkeit. The influx of Jewish refugees after World War II found an environment where they could now thrive as Torah Jews, feeding students to all yeshivos and enabling growth of other chassidic groups. Without Lubavitch having plowed the ground first, it is doubtful these could have succeeded.

The succeeding 80 years have built on these accomplishments. Today over 30 percent of shuls in the United States are Chabad Houses, drawing Jews of all backgrounds closer to their father in heaven.

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Posted By admin on February 14, 2020

Yeshua (Jesus) may have walked on her waters, but Israelis are jumping up and down for joy as the Sea of Galilee finally fills up. For a long time, the precious water levels have receded to dangerous lows due to lack of rainfall, turning the freshwater sea into a wretched saltwater lake.

In the past week alone, water levels rose 18 centimeters (seven inches), bringing the current level up to 210.04 meters below sea level (689.10 feet). That means that the water level is just 1.24 meters from the red line, or about four feet from its full capacity. When that level is reached, the dam located at the southern tip, which has been closed since 1995, will be opened to allow waters to rush down the Jordan River and replenish the entire Jordan Valley all the way down to the Dead Sea. And dont forget, the Kinneret is the lowest freshwater sea on earth and the second lowest body of water in the world (after the Dead Sea).

Like many places in Israel, Lake Kinneret has many names that were used throughout history, usually depending on the who was living in the area at the time. Here is a list so that you wont get lost trying to find the sea, which can be called any one of these names even on road signs along the highways.

Sea of Kinneret

The modern name in Hebrew, Kinneret, comes from the Hebrew Bible in Numbers 34:11 and Joshua 13:27. The most commonly accepted reason for this name comes from the shape of the lake, which looks like a harp or lyre, wide and rounded on the northern part and narrower on the southern. There was an important Bronze and Iron Age city called Kinneret close by the lake, but no one is sure which came first, the city or the sea.

Lake of Gennesaret

All of the Old and New Testament writers call the Kinneret a sea in both Hebrew and Greek. Only Luke calls it the Lake of Gennesaret (Luke 5:1) taken from the Greek Gennsaret, which anglicized reads Chinnereth, or harp in Hebrew. What goes around comes around!

Sea of Ginosar

Flavius Josephus and the Babylonian Talmud mention the Sea of Ginosar after the small fertile plain of Ginosar that lies on the seas western side just north of Tiberius. Ginosar is just another local version of the Hellenized Gennesaret, or Kinneret. I hate to keep harping on the point.

Sea of Galilee, Sea of Tiberias, Lake Tiberias

These terms are more commonly used in modern English but are also found in antiquity. In the Greek New Testament Sea of Galilee is used in the Gospel of Matthew 4:18; 15:29, and Mark 1:16; 7:31. In the Gospel of John we read the Sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias (6:1). Even back then travelers needed instructions to get to the right place! Sea of Tiberias is also the name mentioned in Roman texts and in the Jerusalem Talmud, which in Arabic is translated into Lake Tiberias.

The Kinnerets stunningly beautiful landscape (Maor Kinsbursky/Flash90).

There is something magical about the Kinneret that has inspired people from around the globe to visit its pleasant shores. Israelis love the Kinneret, not only because it is their main source of fresh water in a dry and barren land. Even the Messiah Yeshua chose to spend most of his time and ministry along its shores.

The usually scornful Mark Twain, who visited Galilee on his horse in 1867, was deeply moved by the significance of the Kinneret. In his famous Innocents Abroad he writes:

In the starlight, Galilee has no boundaries but the broad compass of the heavens, and is a theatre meet for great events; meet for the birth of a religion able to save a world; and meet for the stately Figure appointed to stand upon its stage and proclaim its high decrees.

But in the sunlight, one says: Is it for the deeds which were done and the words which were spoken in this little acre of rocks and sand eighteen centuries gone, that the bells are ringing to-day in the remote islands of the sea and far and wide over continents that clasp the circumference of the huge globe?

Naomi Shemer, considered the First Lady of Israeli song and poetry, composed Yerushalayim Shel Zahav(Jerusalem of Gold) in 1967, which became Israels second unofficial anthem after Israel won the Six-Day War that year and reunited Jerusalem. Shemer, who was born and grew up in Kibbutz Kinneret, was also taken with the seas enchantments.

Here are the final words from her beloved song Kinneret.

Even should I become impoverished and walk hunched over, or my heart disturbed by foreign attractions how can I betray you my Kinneret how could I forget as though I could forget the innocence of youth?

Listen to Shemers beautiful song about the Kinneret

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Posted By admin on February 14, 2020

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad.

President Donald Trump is the most pro-Israel president in history, and proved it again with his precedent-setting peace initiative. The plan recognizes that Israel will never compromise on the indivisibility of its capital in Jerusalem and that the Jewish people have a legitimate claim to Judea and Samaria. The plan also prioritizes Israels security needs.

But I want to focus on a question the plan brings into sharp focus: who gave Israel to the Jews? Do the Jewish people have Israel as a grant from the United Nations, the United States, and the great powers? Or is it bequeathed to the Jewish people by divine right?

The very first comment by Rashi on the Torah says that all of the book of Genesis is superfluous. The haunting stories of Abrahams sacrifice of Isaac, Jacobs love of Rachel, Josephs colorful dreams, and the Jewish peoples move to Egypt its all extraneous. He says the Torah should have started with the first commandment, to bless the new moon and declare new lunar months, found about a third into the book of Exodus.

So why does the book of Genesis exist? For one reason. To teach us that God created the world. The earth belongs to Him. He gives it to whom he sees fit. And he gave a tiny sliver of land in the Middle East to the Jews as an eternal inheritance. Its called Israel. And, Rashi adds, the time will come when the nations of the world will tell the Jews you have no home. You belong nowhere. Not in France. Not in Germany. Not in England. And certainly not in Israel. Perhaps you Jews belong on the moon. And at that time, the Jews will show the world the book of Genesis along with its declaration that God created all the earth and parceled out the lands to those who were fit in His eyes. And He gave Israel to the Jews. For all eternity.

February 13, 2020 11:42 am

This Rashi interpretation is 1,000 years old. The Talmud upon which its based is 2,500 years old. How utterly prophetic. The Jews today are accused of stealing Israel from the Arabs, a people who came to the land only after the Jews were expelled by the Romans.

It amazes me that the Arabs can speak with such conviction of their holy places and their divine rights. Catholics can speak of the Vatican belonging to them as an eternal city, even though it is merely 100 acres carved out of the city of Rome. Yet we Jews feel that such arguments of divine right and religious connection lack sophistication in the world of modern politics.

Donald Trump is the best friend Israel has ever had in the Oval Office. Likewise, the United States is Israels stalwart friend and ally. But Israel is not given to the Jewish people by the most powerful man in the world, nor by the worlds mightiest nation but by a source infinitely more powerful.

Our evangelical brethren understand this argument much more than the Jews. To them, the Bible is a land deed that dare not be questioned. The presidents plan to allow Israel to annex the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria is precedent-setting and is a recognition of the divine right of the Jewish people to the land. Judea and Samaria is the region where 80 percent of all Biblical events occurred. They are intrinsically connected to Jewish identity.

The coming weeks will see the gradual unfolding of the Trump peace plan, whether it is realistic, and how it is embraced by Israel and the world. But one thing is certain. Its focus on Israel in general, and Judea and Samaria in particular, finally puts the lie to the European argument that the Jews essentially have no home and any land given to the Jews is a byproduct of the Balfour Declaration or some other act of European benevolence. Rather, Israel was gifted to the Jews by God as an eternal inheritance that no power on earth can undo.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whom The Washington Post calls the most famous Rabbi in America, is the international best-selling author of 33 books, including the upcoming Holocaust Holiday: One Familys Descent into Genocide Memory Hell. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram @RabbiShmuley.

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God, Not Balfour, Gave Israel to the Jews - Algemeiner

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