Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on August 11, 2017

Are you Team Latke or Team Hamentashn?

By Julian Cardillo 14 and Caroline CataldoAug. 10, 2017

Deciding which of these two Jewish culinary staples is the most quintessentially Jewish would be much easier if there was a cook-off, tasting and debate pitting one against the other.

But look no further: Brandeis hosts such an event every year.

Students in the precollege programs class Culinary Art and Anthropology at Brandeis engaged in the third annual latke-hamentash debate on July 27 as part of the course, which seeks to deepen ones understanding and appreciation for Jewish cuisine and the role it plays in Jewish culture.

During the latke-hamentash debate, students turned into young chefs and worked with instructors Elizabeth Alpern and Jeffrey Yoskowitz, the authors of The Gefilte Manifesto, a cookbook featuring 98 modernized recipes of typical Ashkenazi Jewish dishes.

For Alpern and Yoskowitz, who have years of experience in the restaurant industry, teaching students about Jewish cuisine is a passion.

We found no one was exploring Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine, which was our culinary heritage, said Alpern. Theres this rich, beautiful tradition of Ashkenazi cuisine that has a really bad reputation in U.S. and has been slipping into irrelevance for our generation. But Jeff and I had enough exposure to this cuisine to say, Wow, this food is colorful, vibrant, multi layered and absolutely deserves to stay relevant for our generation.

For me its important to keep these recipes evolving, added Alpern. Food connects us to our place in the world, which gives value and meaning to our lives and contributes to the conversation about the multicultural world we live in."

For the debate, the audience, along with a panel of four judgesAlpern, Yoskowitz, Rabbi Charlie Schwartz and precollege programs director Marci Borensteincritiqued the freshly-made latkes and hamenstashn using strict criteria: presentation of food, taste and creativity. Judges also voted on which of two culinary staples they felt was the most quintessentially Jewish based on how the students explained the foods historic roots.

This year, victory went to Team Hamentashn.

This has been a great course and its open to everyone, whether you know a lot about Judaism and Jewish culture, or you dont, said Sabrina Axelrod of Minnesota, who was on Team Latke. Theres not just one type of cooking, I learned so many different things that I hadnt known before about Jewish culture. It really makes me appreciate the culture I grew up with.

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Brandeis course fields competition between Team Latke and Team Hamentashn - Brandeis University

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Posted By richards on August 11, 2017

PokerStars has a stern, and unusual, message for some of its most passionate clients: Quit winning so much.

PokerStars says these gamblers -- semi-professional types who play hand after hand day and night -- became a problem after they grew too numerous and have taken advantage of the thousands of novice bettors who account for the lions share of all wagers made on the worlds largest poker website.

Sick of being dominated, the amateurs cut back on the hands they play. So for the owners of PokerStars -- Canadian company The Stars Group Inc., which ponied up $4.9 billion for the site in 2014 -- driving out the sharks is a crucial step in their effort to jumpstart growth in a business that has been sputtering.

Regular players just want to enjoy the game as a fun entertainment experience that offers many winning moments and the dream of the big payout, saidRafi Ashkenazi, Stars Group chief executive officer.

To encourage Joe Poker to keep ponying up, the gaming site has started to cut perks and incentives for high-volume players who typically prey on beginners. In July, the company ended a loyalty program that rewarded a select group that had as many as 24 poker matches going on at once. They would receive credits on the house take, or rake, which they could redeem for cash and merchandise or use for tournament entry fees.

Photographer: Wayne Parry/AP Photo

Stars Group first began rolling out the changes about 18 months after buying PokerStars. Only a small number of players enjoyed the VIP status that returned them a high percentage of the rake. Still, they were winning at such a prolific rate, they were driving off the amateurs.

We were starting to have too many professional players for what we could maintain for a good, healthy eco system, said Severin Rasset, Stars Groups director of operations and innovation.

Now the race is on to get online visitors excited again about poker. The card game accounts for about two-thirds of the companys $1.2 billion in annual sales. Poker revenue, though, has flattened, while new growth has come from Stars Groups casino and sports sites. So the company has signed up celebrities such as comedian Kevin Hart and Olympic gold medal winner Usain Bolt to promote the game. Its reallocated tournament money so more players win prizes, albeit smaller ones, and realigned perks to give more wins to less-frequent players.

In comments to analysts on Aug. 9, Ashkenazi said the site is getting a good response from players to the new loyalty program and expects it to boost poker revenue in coming months after a drop in the first half of the year.

We see exactly what we wanted to see: a higher degree of engagement of our players," he said.

Shares are up 41 percent since Ashkenazi took over last year. Top shareholders include Wall Street asset managers Blackstone Group LP and BlackRock Inc., while Sydney-based Caledonia Private Investments built up a 19 percent stake, according to Bloomberg data.

Skeptics, however, arent convinced. People still like poker, but its no longer trendy, said Dimitry Khmelnitsky, an analyst at Veritas Investment Research Corp. in Toronto. The volumes of play on PokerStars are declining, less players enter the tournaments. That should not bode well for revenue.

No doubt online poker is at a crossroads. The business started booming in 2003, when an accountant from Tennessee named Chris Moneymaker became a millionaire overnight after winning the World Series of Poker Main Event, which he had entered through a satellite tournament on PokerStars for $39. Eight years later, the U.S. government poured cold water on the craze with a surprise decision to outlaw online-gaming companies.

The market never fully recovered. According to consultant H2 Gambling Capital, online poker will generate $2.5 billion this year, or 5.5 percent of global interactive gambling, down from a peak of $3.3 billion in 2010. Three U.S. states have since made the wagering legal and more are discussing it, leaving the door open for a future uptick.

With 113 million registered players, including 2 million who played poker last quarter, Stars Group estimates it has 70 percent of the global market. 888poker and Party Poker rank as distant competitors.

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With a new loyalty program in effect this month, the company says it is fully focused on its amateur players. Customers clinch points on any of their three sites, said Rasset, who notes the recent changes also are intended to accommodate the gaming habits of a new generation of younger players who compete entirely on smart phones. That includes adding video-game-like features to poker, such as magic cards that enable a player to see cards before theyre dealt.

I love video games, Rasset said. I want to infuse some of this into the poker world.

With assistance by Scott Soshnick

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Poker Site Wants Card Sharks to Fold So the Rest of Us Can Win - Bloomberg

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Posted By richards on August 11, 2017

Touro Synagogue, nestled in historic Newport, Rhode Island. (John Nordell/ Christian Science Monitor/Getty)

NEW YORK The story of Americas oldest synagogue, as told by retired Supreme Court Justice David Souter, is the story of American Jewish history.

Touro Synagogue in Newport, RI, Souter wrote, was built in the 1700s by Sephardic merchants whose community then declined. In the late 1800s, Eastern European Jews arrived in the area, occupied the building and have used it to this day. Since then, heirs of the older Sephardic community have tried to maintain a foothold in the historic synagogue that they consider theirs.

On Aug. 2, Souter awarded a victory to the Sephardim.

Writing an appeals court ruling on a lawsuit over who owns Touro Synagogue, Souter who has regularly sat on the court following his 2009 retirement wrote that the building and its centuries-old ritual objects all belong to Congregation Shearith Israel, a historic Sephardic synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

The decision reversed an earlier district court decision that gave ownership of the building and the multimillion-dollar artifacts to the group that worships there: the Ashkenazi Congregation Jeshuat Israel.

Its an odd and oddly enduring dispute being played out in an American courtroom.

Souters ruling is a primer on nearly 400 years of American Jewish history, and a dispute that touches on historical tensions between Sephardic Jews with roots in Spain, Portugal, North Africa and the Middle East, and Ashkenazi Jews with roots in Eastern Europe.

Touro, built in 1763, has loomed large in American Jewish history. Along with its claim to being the first Jewish building in the country, it also received George Washingtons 1790 letter guaranteeing that the US gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.

Shearith Israel, hundreds of miles away, has held title to Touro since the early 1800s, when the shrinking Newport community asked the New York City shul to steward the building and its ritual objects.

Its a fitting relationship: Shearith Israel also known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue has a sense of its history as well. Founded in 1654, it bills itself as Americas First Jewish Congregation. (Its current building is its fifth home.)

Old-time members still wear top hats, and it still worships in the distinctive Sephardic style passed down from its founders, complete with a cantor in robes and choir. Some Shearith Israel members are descended from the original families that started the congregation four centuries ago.

Jeshuat Israel, founded in 1881 as Ashkenazi immigrants began flooding America from Eastern Europe, has worshipped at Touro for more than a century. For a time, according to Souters ruling, its members occupied the synagogue illegally, praying there even as Shearith Israel sought to keep it closed.

Only in 1903, following a court battle, did the two groups sign a contract establishing Shearith Israel as the owner and giving Jeshuat Israel a lease on the building.

According to the terms of the contract, Jeshuat Israel must pray in the Sephardic style its own identity be damned.

Seeking to form an endowment, Jeshuat Israel arranged in 2011 to sell a pair of handcrafted, 18th-century silver bulbs, used to adorn Torah scrolls, to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, where they were on loan.

But Shearith Israel objected to the $7 million sale and sued Jeshuat Israel both because Shearith Israel said it owned the ornaments and claimed the sale violated Jewish law.

Because the bulbs are meant to rest upon a Torah scroll, Shearith Israel asserted, selling them to a secular institution constitutes an unacceptable decline in holiness.

The district court had ruled in Jeshuat Israels favor on the grounds that it occupies the building and that Shearith Israel had failed in its trustee obligations.

But Souter reversed the ruling, partially based on the 1903 contract, writing that Shearith Israel is fee owner of the Touro Synagogue building, appurtenances, fixtures, and associated land.

Now, says Gary Naftalis, Jeshuat Israels lawyer, the congregation is reviewing our legal options going forward. Jeshuat Israel could ask the appeals courts full panel of judges to review the ruling, and may petition to have the case heard by the US Supreme Court.

Shearith Israel did not respond to JTA calls and emails for comment.

But even as Shearith Israel has retained ownership of Americas oldest synagogue, it no longer reflects the community that American Jews have become. The families who founded Americas first Jewish congregations exiles from Spain and Portugal via Amsterdam, London, Brazil and the Caribbean likely would not identify with the largely Ashkenazi, American Jewish community of 350 years later.

Even Shearith Israel has gone with the flow, hiring a rabbi from a renowned Ashkenazi rabbinical dynasty, Meir Soloveichik, in 2013.

Still, part of the New York congregations appeal is its anachronism led by a cantor and choir in an era of lay leadership, formal in an era of casual dress, Sephardic in an Ashkenazi-led community.

Now, even if it no longer owns the American Jewish present, it can say that it still holds title to the American Jewish past.

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Who is the fairest owner of them all? - Intermountain Jewish News

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Posted By admin on August 11, 2017

NEW YORK (NEWSPLEX) -- A national organization says it has been monitoring the rhetoric ahead of Saturday's Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

According to a release from the Anti-Defamation League, there are heightened concerns about the potential for physical confrontation and violence at the event.

The ADL says the rally could be the largest white supremacy gathering in a decade.

The organization urges protesters to avoid physical contact with other groups and to maintain a safe distance.

The release says people should not engage with or debate protesters, and should not speak to or respond to them in any way.

Protesters are often allowed to speak and distribute materials or hold signs because it may be legally protected speech.

However, if anyone receives threatening messages or if a protester acts in a threatening manner, local law enforcement should be notified.

The ADL says any confrontation that gains media attention will play into the hands of extremist groups.

The Unite the Right rally is set to take place Saturday. City officials approved a permit for it to occur in McIntire Park, but the organizer says he intends to hold the rally at the location he originally requested, Emancipation Park.

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ADL urges protesters to avoid confrontation at Unite the Right rally - The Charlottesville Newsplex

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Posted By admin on August 11, 2017

Ali Abunimah Activism and BDS Beat 11 August 2017

The Anti-Defamation League, a major Israel lobby group, has given its backing to the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, a bill that could impose large fines and long prison sentences on those who boycott Israel.

The legislation, already a key priority for the Israel lobby group AIPAC, has faced stiffer than usual resistance in Congress after the American Civil Liberties Union denounced it as an unconstitutional attack on free speech rights.

Justifying the legislation, the Anti-Defamation League is claiming that the Israel Anti-Boycott Act is not intended to limit the First Amendment rights of US individuals and companies who want to criticize Israel or penalize those who want to refuse to do business with Israel based on their own personal convictions.

But the ACLU was quick to reject this assertion, tweeting, Not intended to violate the First Amendment is not good enough. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act does just that.

In the face of growing opposition, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York has withdrawn her sponsorship of the bill, while her Massachusetts colleague, the prominent progressive Elizabeth Warren, has said she wont back it either.

But despite the pushback, the unconstitutional measure is still garnering support. Jewish Voice for Peace, which has been campaigning against the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, sent out an action alert this week noting that Illinois congressman Bobby Rush has signed on as a cosponsor of the bill.

Rush, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panther Party during the civil rights movement, has supported Palestinian human rights in the past, most recently signing on to a congressional letter in support of Palestinian human rights defender Issa Amro, the JVP alert states. Hes better than this.

The bill currently has 252 House sponsors and 48 in the Senate.

The Anti-Defamation League was, notably, the co-author of a secret report leaked to The Electronic Intifada earlier this year that concedes the failure of Israel lobby groups to counter the Palestine solidarity movement, despite vastly increasing their spending.

The report outlines Israels inability to stem the impressive growth and significant successes of the BDS movement.

It even cautions that legislation violating the free speech of BDS activists would cost Israel further support. By endorsing the bill, the Anti-Defamation League is ignoring its own warning.

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ACLU slams Israel lobby group's backing for anti-BDS bill - The Electronic Intifada (blog)

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Posted By richards on August 10, 2017

Gambler Billy Walters was sentenced to five years in jail last month for an insider trading scam that involved Dean Foods.

He will go to jail for five years. But before his sentence, more than a hundredof Las Vegas' most powerful people wrote letters urging the judge to give him a lenient sentence. The list includes former Senator HarryReid and almost every living former mayor of Las Vegas.

Why? Because he gives a lot of his money away. To politicians, to be sure. And to charities, who are afraidfortheir bottom lines.

But what are the ethics of charities accepting money from people whose methods for attaining money are shady? AsJohn L. Smithpointed out, Walters had been indicted three times before - though never convicted until this time. Still, he was a widely sought afterdonor.

"What you're talking about is a guy who... has a lot of connections to powerful people. This is a guy who has gotten the best deals from city and county government for his golf course projects. Some of those are controversial," Smith said.

But Walters also has raised a disabled son. And thenon-profitshe helped included one to get child prostitutes off the street.

"This is really reflective of a kind of Las Vegas that has existed forever," says John L. "Moe Dalitzwas considered a one to one contemporary and colleague ofMyer LanskyandMurder Inc., but he comes to Las Vegas and gets cleansed and becomes B'nai B'rith man of the year and is known for his philanthropy."

There's also the case ofU.S. District Judge Harry Claiborne, who went to prison for tax evasion in a case involving a brothel owner.

"But what happens. He does his time. He comes back. He has all the friends in the legal community, and he gets his law license back.

"So that's Nevada. That's really the Nevada story."

Still, when the prisons are filled with people of color who did nothing more thanhavingtwo ounces of marijuana in their backpacks, it seems jarring that every rich, white person in town is coming to the defense of a guy who was convicted on a $43 million scam, from which he profited $32 million.

"Oh, if the powerful were as half as kind to a common criminal," says John L. "Think small, and you'll spend a lot of time in prison."

Walters, John L. says, thought big. And it may havepaid off. According toCNBC, along with his 5-year sentence, Walters was ordered to pay a $10 million fine. That leaves him with a $22 million profit from the very scam he was convicted of.

That may be good news for the people and organizations that benefitted from his largesse.

"I can't believe that Walters will stop giving to his favorite charities," said John L.

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John L. Smith, Tainted Money, And The Ethics Of Charitable Giving - KNPR

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Posted By simmons on August 10, 2017

It is the well-known Indiana Jones story of Jewish scholarship: Solomon Schechter, raider of the lost geniza. Schechter, then a professor at Cambridge, learned that fascinating manuscripts were being brought back from Cairos Ben Ezra synagogue, where they had been stashed in the geniza, or storeroom, for centuries. He put together an expedition and returned with hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper. The stash included letters from Moses Maimonides, manuscripts of the Talmud and other well-known Jewish texts, previously unknown lists of angels, and, to the excitement of generations of social historians, many wedding contracts and other such documents.Yet while the finds from the geniza have revolutionized many fields of Jewish studies, not all of its secrets have come to light. Paper, after all, crumbles, and there remain more than a hundred thousand fragments that have yet to be sorted, cataloged, transcribed, or translated.

Thats where you come in.

The University of Pennsylvania Libraries, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and the Princeton Geniza Project have teamed up with Zooniverse to enable ordinary people to help sort the fragments.

Zooniverse was launched in 2007 to sort a million photographs of distant galaxies. This crowdsourcing brought thousands of pairs of eyes to bear on problems that would be insurmountable for any team of astronomers.

The geniza project is the 75th under the Zooniverse umbrella. Other options for citizen science at the site include categorizing geographical formations on Mars, transcribing Civil War records, and looking for endangered sea lions in the Aleutian Islands.

As the first stage of its geniza project, Zooniverse aims to sort the fragments. (This is in preparation of a future plan to transcribe them.) You will be asked to identify whether the fragment is written in Hebrew or Arabic script, whether the writing is formal or informal, and whether certain specific typographic features appear. You dont need to actually know Hebrew or Arabic to do this. (If you do know Hebrew, dont be surprised if you dont understand the fragments you read: The Jews of Cairo wrote their dialect of Arabic with Hebrew characters.)

Its a fascinating experience. Zoom in to read the writing. Rotate the picture so its right-side-up. Hebrew or Arabic? Formal or informal? And if its Hebrew, and if you can read Hebrew is that the name Maimonides? Is that a page of Talmud? Is that a shopping list?

You can bookmark your favorite fragments for sharing with friends, or looking up later. Each fragment has its catalog number, which lists the collection its from. And each fragment is a new window into a distant realm of Jewish history.

Try it out atzooniverse.org/projects.

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Raiders of the lost geniza want you! - The Jewish Standard

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Posted By admin on August 10, 2017

An architects rendering shows the synagogue building that a Chabad affiliate, Friends of Refugees of Eastern Europe, hopes to build near a popular beach in Sydney, Australia. (Friends of Refugees of Eastern Europe)

SYDNEY (JTA) A Chabad congregation whose bid for a new synagogue building was blocked out of fears that it would become a target for terrorism will resubmit plans to the local municipality.

Leaders of the congregation, known as Friends of Refugees of Eastern Europe, or FREE, met Wednesday with Sydneys Waverley Council to discuss the proposed synagogue and apartments to be built near the popular Bondi Beach.

The congregation made international headlines last week whena zoning courtupheld the councils decision to ban construction of the synagogue in the Sydney suburb of Waverly because it could become the target of a terrorist attack.

Jewish leaders said the decision was anti-Semitic and a sop to terrorists, while the Waverley Council claimed FREE had not adequately addressed security concerns the congregation had raised in its own application.

After Wednesdays meeting, FREE announced they will submit plans for a new development application to build the synagogue in Bondi. The congregation and the council suggested jointly that a proposed weekend protest would be unproductive.

The new development application could be in place as early as December.

Attending Wednesdays meeting were the mayor, the councils acting general manager and senior planning. Representing FREE were Rabbis Yehoram Ulman, Eli Feldman and Eli Schlanger, along with their town planning adviser and architect.

The meeting opened with a prayer led by Feldman, who acknowledged Waverley Councils commitment to and support of the Jewish community.

Waverley Council reaffirmed that a synagogue would normally be permitted at the site under Waverley planning controls and that security issues around other synagogues and Jewish schools had been dealt with quickly and without controversy in the past.

Both parties agreed that courts decision was not prejudicial or terror-related, and that the objections raised in the judgment could be overcome.

FREE officials said they would submit a revised security assessment as part of its new development application.

An independent Waverley Development Assessment Panel will assess the new application.

Ulman welcomed the councils offer to meet again to discuss a new application, and was heartened to hear that a synagogue is an acceptable use for a building on the land.

The meeting today was positive and we look forward to working with Waverley Council to address issues raised in the Land and Environment Court judgement. All going well, we may have development approval in place as soon as December, Ulman said.

Cathy Henderson, Waverley Councils acting general manager, told reporters: We are very pleased that Waverley and FREE have committed to working together constructively. Both parties will follow the legal process for submission and assessment of the new development application and I feel confident that outstanding matters, including security, can be resolved.

Avi Yemini, who was organizing what would have been a protest rally on Aug. 13, accepted the recommendation of both sides to cancel it. I cancelled the rally last name night when I was informed by FREE that an agreement had been reached, Yemini told JTA. Our objective was to ensure the shul was going to be built. It will be.

Vic Alhadeff, CEO of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, told JTA: It is a positive development that the parties are working together to find a solution, and hopefully they will achieve a mutually satisfactory outcome.

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Sydney synagogue blocked over terror fears will resubmit application - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Posted By richards on August 10, 2017

Thursday, August 10, 2017 1:09 p.m. EDT

By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Manhattan Jewish congregation known as the oldest in the United States must face a lawsuit claiming it illegally fired a employee after learning she was 19 weeks pregnant when she married, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived Alana Shultz's claim that leaders of Congregation Shearith Israel violated her civil rights by ending her 11-year stint as program director, despite trying to reinstate her before the firing took effect.

Shultz said she was fired on July 21, 2015, a day after returning from her honeymoon, during a meeting with synagogue officials who called the firing part of a "restructuring."

Her dismissal was effective on August 15, 2015, but Shultz said the synagogue tried to rescind it 10 days earlier after learning she had hired a lawyer.

A lower court judge said the rescinding meant Shultz had not suffered an "adverse employment action" to support her Title VII claim.

But the appeals court disagreed, saying the initial firing itself constituted the adverse employment action.

It distinguished the case from lesser actions such as placing a counseling letter in an employee's file, or impulsively saying "you're fired" only to backtrack quickly.

Shultz "had ample time to experience the dislocation of losing her employment at a particularly vulnerable time, undertake the effort of retaining counsel, and inform the congregation that she was going to file suit," Circuit Judge Gerard Lynch wrote.

Lawyers for the congregation had no immediate comment.

"No female employee should have to fear termination because she becomes pregnant," Jeanne Christensen, a lawyer for Shultz, said in an email. "We look forward to vindicating our client's rights."

Founded in 1654, Congregation Shearith Israel is also known as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, located on West 70th Street and Central Park West.

Shultz met her future husband in 2008 in an elevator after a charity event. They held a sabbath dinner at the synagogue two days before their wedding. ((https://www.theknot.com/us/alana-shultz-and-slava-rubin-jun-2015))

The plaintiff's law firm, Wigdor LLP, has filed unrelated gender bias, racial bias and retaliation lawsuits on behalf of more than 20 current and former Fox News employees.

The case is Shultz v Congregation Shearith Israel of the City of New York et al, 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 16-3140.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Dan Grebler)

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Woman fired after being pregnant at wedding may sue NYC synagogue - WHTC

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Posted By simmons on August 10, 2017

We are all used to reciting this prayer (Psalm 30) around the time of Baruch Sheamar. The recital of Baruch Sheamar in daily Shacharit is a long-established practice. But when did Psalm 30 enter the daily Shacharit?

If one looks at the classic Geonic sources: Siddur of R. Saadia Gaon and Seder R. Amram Gaon, Psalm 30 is not found in their daily Shacharit. Nor is it found in the daily Shacharit of the classic Ashkenazic and Sephardic sources thereafter: Machzor Vitry, Rambam, Tur and Abudarham.

Many years ago, I began to investigate this issue. It turns out that what is written in many of the standard siddur commentaries (e.g., A. Berliner, I. Jacobson, E. Munk, ArtScroll) is wildly speculative and not correct. I could go through all the wrong ideas but I will spare you.

Eventually, I found some sources that did seem to do proper research and address the issue adequately. The best discussion was in a 19th-century work, Tzelota De-Avraham. Based on this, I gave a lecture with the following explanation. The daily recital of Psalm 30 is mentioned by R. Chayim Vital (1542-1620), the principal disciple of the ARI (R. Isaac Luria.) The discussion is found in R. Vitals work Etz HaChayim. R. Vital explains how Psalm 30 (without the first line, but starting with aromimcha) fits into the Kabbalistic view of Pesukei DZimra in his time. For example, both the first and third sentences of the body of Psalm 30 (aromimcha, and Hashem heelita min sheol nafshi) deal with the theme of raising up. Without going into detail, the theme of raising up was an important one to the ARI and to R. Vital in general, and was appropriate to this part of the davening in particular.

So I thought I was done with the issue of how Psalm 30 entered the daily Shacharit. I believed it was first introduced into the daily Shacharit by the ARI. I also found many siddurim that included a brief note stating that the daily recital of Psalm 30 was first introduced by the ARI.

But it turns out I was wrong. The second part of my story begins with a Rabbi Ari Folger, now chief Rabbi of Vienna, who walked into a Shacharit minyan in Basel, Switzerland, and was surprised that Psalm 30 was not recited. This got him interested in the issue. He researched the issue very thoroughly and posted about it in 2009. He found the recital of Psalm 30 in daily Shacharit in a siddur printed at the end of the 15th century in Lisbon, Portugal. This predated the birth of the ARI. (I later discovered that the scholar Moshe Chalamish also found some early references to the daily recital of Psalm 30 in the Sephardic world. See his Chikrei Kabbalah UTefillah, p. 73. The earliest reference he found was from the 13th century.)

Rabbi Folger explained that when R. Vital was writing his comments on the daily recital of Psalm 30 in Shacharit, he was merely commenting on a siddur from 1524 that followed the Sephardic tradition. He was not necessarily recording a custom of the ARI of reciting it nor was he explicitly advocating that the followers of the ARI in Vitals times change their custom and add Psalm 30 to their daily liturgy. He was just explaining why Psalm 30, found in the daily Shacharit in some Sephardic traditions, would fit with the Kabbalistic ideas of the ARI.

Eventually, based on the comments of R. Vital, Psalm 30 did make it into the liturgy of nusach HaARI for daily Shacharit, but it seems to have been a slow process. Rabbi Folger notes that the Siddur HaShelah was published in 1717 and this mainstream Kabbalistic siddur did not yet include the recital of Psalm 30 in Shacharit. Of course, it is possible that some Kabbalists were reciting it orally from the time of R. Vital. Also, perhaps it did make it into some Kabbalistic siddurim in R. Vitals lifetime or shortly thereafter, but we do not have evidence for this yet. But its omission as late as 1717 in the Siddur HaShelah is significant.

Once it made it into the Kabbalistic liturgy of daily Shacharit, it later spread to the Ashkenazic liturgy of daily Shacharit. But at present, our first source for its appearance in daily Shacharit in an Ashkenazic siddur is only in the year 1788.

To sum up, Psalm 30 began to make its way into some Sephardic liturgies in the 13th through the 15th centuries for some unknown reason. (Perhaps the reason was based on Kabbalistic ideas but these would be pre-expulsion Kabbalistic ideas, ideas that preceded the ARI.) Based on R. Vitals comments, it eventually made its way into the liturgy of the Kabbalists who followed nusach HaARI. From there it made its way into some, but not all, Ashkenazic communities. For example, the German Jewish community never adopted it. (It is not found in I. Baer, Siddur Avodat Yisrael.) Also, the Vilna Gaon was against its inclusion.

It is significant that the earliest Sephardic and Kabbalistic sources that record the daily recital of Psalm 30 do not include the title line. Their recital started with aromimcha. Many of the conjectures offered to explain Psalm 30s inclusion into the daily Shacharit had focused on the title line: mizmor shir chanukat habayit and postulated some explanation related to the Beit Hamikdash. But the omission of the first line shows that the reason for its original inclusion in the daily liturgy, when we eventually determine it, will relate instead to the body of the Psalm.

Two remaining points: I have only been discussing the recital of Psalm 30 daily. Its recital on Chanukah has earlier sources. Finally, the recital of Psalm 30 in the daily Shacharit is also recorded in the Yemenite tradition. The sources I have seen have not discussed in detail how old this Yemenite tradition is. It may be as old as the Sephardic tradition or even older.

There is an interesting issue with regard to the text of this Psalm. In most editions of the Tanach today, verse 9 reads: eilecha YHVH ekra, ve-el ADNY etchanan. The rest of this chapter has YHVH nine times. But when we look at some editions of the siddur, particularly ones following nusach HaARI, they print YHVH in both parts of verse 9, making a total of 10 YHVH in the chapter. R. Vital had said that the chapter included YHVH 10 times. Presumably, in his time there was such a Tanach text, even though it apparently was not the majority one. One can even find some texts of Tanach today that have YKHK in both parts of verse 9. For example, this is what is printed in the standard one volume Mikraot Gedolot in which the Neviim and Ketuvim are printed together.

A separate issue involving this Psalm is the relation between the title line mizmor shir chanukat ha-bayit le-David and the body of the Psalm, which has nothing to do with any Temple or dedication. I will discuss this in a future column.

By Mitchell First

Mitchell First is a personal injury attorney and Jewish history scholar. His most recent book is Esther Unmasked: Solving Eleven Mysteries of the Jewish Holidays and Liturgy. He can be reached at [emailprotected] He makes sure to recite Psalm 30 daily, despite the mysterious origin of the practice (or perhaps because of it!).

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When Did 'Mizmor Shir Chanukat HaBayit' Enter Daily Shacharit? - Jewish Link of New Jersey

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