Posted By richards on November 5, 2014
Rav A. Somekh - Talmud Kiddushin 03
Corso di Talmud 5775 - Trattato di Kiddushn, Primo Capitolo - Seconda lezione. Pag. 29a Lettura e commento della Mishn. I doveri e le esenzioni delle donne...
By: Rabbinato Milano
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Posted By richards on November 5, 2014
At a Glance
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The Babylonian Talmud is huge and occupies thirty volumes in the Soncino translation. The Mishnah is the earliest material and constitutes about 20% of the whole Babylonian Talmud. Amazingly, this great mass of material was passed on in oral form for generations of rabbis. The Mishnah was codified by Rabbi Judah before his death in 217 CE, but this may not have involved writing the material down on paper.
Only the tiniest portion of the Talmud may refer to Christianity in any definite way. The three most noteworthy references are given in links above: the hanging of Yeshu on the eve of Passover, the bastard son found in a book of genealogies, and the account of a certain Yeshu of around 100 BCE. Only the first of these can be related to Christianity with reliabilty.
Here is what is written in Baraitha Bab. Sanhedrin 43a, probably second century:
On the eve of Passover Yeshu was hanged. For forty days before the execution took place, a herald went forth and cried, "He is going forth to be stoned because he has practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy. Any one who can say anything in his favour, let him come forward and plead on his behalf." But since nothing was brought forward in his favour he was hanged on the eve of the Passover! - Ulla retorted: Do you suppose that he was one for whom a defence could be made? Was he not a _Mesith_ [enticer], concerning him Scripture says, _Neither shalt though spare, neither shalt thou conceal him?_ With Yeshu however it was different, for he was connected with the government for royalty [i.e., influential]. Our Rabbis taught: Yeshu had five disciples, Matthai, Nakai, Nezer, Buni, and Todah.
Robert Stein writes (Jesus the Messiah, pp. 33-34):
Several passages dealing with the treatment of heresy have also been suggested as possible allusions to Jesus even though his name is not present.
b. Berakot: "May our company not be like that of Elisha, from which issued Gehazi. _In our bread places_: may we produce no son or pupil who disgraces himself in public." One manuscript (M) adds to the end of this saying, "like the Nazarene."
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Posted By richards on November 5, 2014
By Rabbi Gary Atkins
I have always been intrigued and fascinated with the history of the small Jewish community of Italy.
Early on in my rabbinical studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I learned that the first editions of the Talmud were printed in Italy in the early 1500s, and the first ghetto was in Venice, from where ghettoes spread throughout Europe. One of the first books of Jewish art I remember reading showed examples of ornate Italian Renaissance ketubot, with an enviable and even voluptuous artistic flow and freedom. Similar, but less ornate, works of art were done in connection with brit milah certificates and poems.
I often look at my miniature statue of Moses that sits on my desk, with the enigmatic horns (if that is what they are meant to be) on his head. In ancient history, Rome was so often the enemy of Judaism, the destroyer of the Second Temple, the perpetrator of massacres that equaled, if not surpassed, those of the Holocaust. The triumphal bringing of the Temple menorah as booty to Rome is still etched into the arch of Titus. In more recent history, I have read of the difficult experiences of Italian Jewry in the Holocaust, and of the attempts to renew it today.
When I was a chaplain in the U.S. Air Force back in the 1970s, each year I would participate in the annual Memorial Day service at the Military Cemetery in Manila. I was surprised and humbled that there were more than 250 Jewish war dead interred there. I remember checking on other military cemeteries and learning that there was one in Florence, Italy.
That lead me to reading about Florence and Michelangelo which, in turn, lead me to a most fascinating book co-authored by Rabbi Benjamin Blech and Ray Dolliver, The Sistine Secrets.According to the authors, approximately 500 years ago, when Michelangelo began work on a painting that became one of the most famous pieces of art in the world the Sistine Chapel ceiling he had a secret agenda. Every year, millions of people come to see Michelangelos Sistine ceiling, which is the largest fresco painting on earth. In the holiest of Christianitys chapels there is not one single Christian image in this vast, magnificent artwork. The Sistine Secrets tells the fascinating story of how Michelangelo embedded messages of brotherhood, tolerance and freethinking in his painting to encourage fellow travelers to challenge the Roman Catholic Church of his time. I found the book and its message fascinating.
To be sure, there are so many worthwhile places to learn about and experience but learning about Italian Jewry has always been near the top of the list, and this year I decided to do something to turn my thoughts into reality. So, with the help of Ayelet Tours, I decided to try to organize a Jewish heritage tour of Italy for the spring of 2015. Open to the larger community, many of the sites on the tour have transcendent beauty that can be appreciated by everyone. In addition, the tour will have built into it ample free time for private explorations.
On Thursday, Nov. 13, at 8 p.m., I will host an information evening designed to answer all your questions about the tour, at Beth Hillel Synagogue, 160 Wintonbury Avenue in Bloomfield. An advance itinerary of the tour is available online at http://www.ayelet.com (click on Jewish heritage at the top of the page, then Upcoming Tours), or call me at (860) 242-5561.
Those interested in learning more about Italian Jewry are invited to attend two Monday evening classes I am offering at Beth Hillel at 8 p.m., that will also cover some of the tours highlights: On Nov. 10, I will discuss Jewish Rome: From the Arch of Titus to the Holocaust Jewish Life in the Eternal City and on Nov. 24, I will discuss Florence and Venice: The Start of the Ghetto and the Center of Italian Renaissance Jewry.
Rabbi Gary Atkins is spiritual leader of Beth Hillel Synagogue in Bloomfield.
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Posted By richards on November 5, 2014
Sofia Synagogue - 04.11.2014 song 2
By: Estee Cole D
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Posted By richards on November 5, 2014
Congregation Beth Shalom of Napa Valley is celebrating its 60th anniversary, with the public invited to the party to revel in six decades of community service while honoring the dedication of the congregations new synagogue.
Congregation Beth Shalom has been a fixture on Elm Street in Napa since 1955. The first synagogue was the original Napa Chamber of Commerce building, which the congregation had trucked to the Elm Street location and repurposed into a house of worship. The structure was upgraded in the 1960s, but over the years, the building began to show its age, and the need for a new building became a necessity rather than a wish.
Plans for a new synagogue really began to take shape in 2007, said Congregation Beth Shalom Board President Barbara Lustig. Thats when we decided to stop talking about a new building and start planning a new building. We talked about starting from scratch and moving somewhere else, but this is our home. We want to remain in the heart of the community.
In 2012, the congregation began drafting plans and fundraising, and construction of the new 8,000 square foot synagogue began that May just in time, according to Lustig.
That old building it was falling apart, she explained. Every month something different would break. It was just time, and Im glad we were able to move forward when we did. I dont think that building would have survived the earthquake. When we got the building from the Chamber in the 50s, it was already some 50 years old. There is no way that 100-year-old building would have made it. Not in the condition it was in.
Congregation Beth Shalom was lucky as far as the August earthquake is concerned. Project manager and contractor Paul Rodman said the new synagogue only suffered minor cosmetic damage in the quake and construction wasnt delay by the shakeup.
When constructing the new synagogue, Rodman was careful to include what he could from the old building, including 62-foot wooden beams that were camouflaged for years by a second ceiling.
That was a fun find, Rodman said. When youre taking apart older buildings, you never know what youre going to find, but finding these beams was like finding a hidden gem. And they were in such amazing shape.
"We were able to keep three of them to use for the trellis above the main entrance. I know thats been very important to the congregation: to incorporate the old building their history into this new building. They are looking to the future while paying tribute to their past.
The synagogues design incorporates a lot of natural light as light holds an important place in Jewish tradition. The 12 colored glass art elements in the sanctuary, designed by famed Napa artist Gordon Huether, are homage to the 12 core values of Judaism.
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Posted By richards on November 5, 2014
The coroner, Magistrate O. A. Komolafe, probing the cause of the September 12 Synagogue building collapse has said the appearance of the churchs founder, Prophet T.B. Joshua, will be re-scheduled when the court reconvenes on Thursday.
Komolafe stated this at the Wednesday proceeding of the court following the announcement by the churchs lawyer, Mr. Olalekan Ojo, that Joshua had yet to receive any summons to appear before the coroner.
Joshua, who had been slated to appear before the coroner on Wednesday along with the contractor who built the collapsed six-storey building, did not make an appearance.
And speaking for them, the churchs lawyer, Ojo, told the court that neither the prophet nor the contractor had received any invitation from the court.
He said he saw the need to set the record straight in order not to cause confusion and following a warning by the magistrate that the instrumentality of the law would be invoked against any invited witness who fails to appear.
Ojo said, May I with respect inform this court that as at today no summons to appear before this honourable court has been personally served on Prophet T.B. Joshua.
I do not want a situation where this court might be misled to believe that a witness summons has been served on the prophet.
Monday was the first time that the bailiff of the court attempted to effect service on Prophet T.B. Joshua but unfortunately the prophet was not around.
Being the chief mourner he has been getting in touch with families of those who lost their loved ones.
According to Ojo, all that the bailiff was able to achieve was to give the summons to one of the churchs evangelists, which he said was not the same thing as serving Joshua in his personal capacity.
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Posted By richards on November 5, 2014
The "castle church" in Cottbus, Brandenburg, Germany. Image via the church.
A former church will become Germanys newest synagogue and the first in thestate of Brandenburg since 1938.
In ceremonies on Sunday, Ulrike Menzel, who has led the Evangelicalparish in Cottbus since 2009, handed a key for the Schlolsskirche, orcastle church, to the Jewish Association of the State ofBrandenburg.
The actual dedication of the synagogue is planned for HolocaustRemembrance Day, Jan. 27.
Its wonderful to see this house of worship returned to its intendeduse, Menzel said at the ceremony, according to the Nordkurieronline newspaper. For decades, the building has been used for socialand communal events.
Sundays ceremony comes almost 76 years after Kristallnacht, or the Night ofBroken Glass, a Germany-wide pogrom in which Jewish property andsynagogues including the one in Cottbus were destroyed. A department storestands on the site today.
The state ofBrandenburg contributed the full purchase cost for the decommissionedchurch, $730,700, and will contribute about $62,400 per year for maintenance, according to a statement on the communitys website. The city of Cottbus oversaw theremoval of the cross and church bell from the steeple. All other costsof renovation were to be borne by the state Jewish association.
The Cottbus Jewish community has pledged to use the structure as asynagogue for at least 25 years.
Cottbus traces the first mention of Jewish residents to 1448. Itsfirst Jewish house of prayer was established in 1811 in the innercourtyard of a cloth maker. At the time, there were 17 Jews in Cottbus.In 1902, a larger synagogue was dedicated. Nazi hooligans set it afire on the night of Nov. 9-10, 1938.
The Jewish community was not formally reestablished in Cottbus until 1998. Today it has some 350 members, all from the former SovietUnion.
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Church to become first synagogue in German state since Kristallnacht
Posted By richards on November 5, 2014
New to the community, converts often have no place to go for Shabbat or holidays. Image via Shutterstock.com
There was the convert who was barred from a synagogue on Yom Kippur, the Jamaican convert whose boyfriends rabbi offered him a coveted synagogue honor if only hed dump her, the grandmother who told her granddaughter shed be going to hell because she became a Jew.
The road to conversion can be long and difficult for many prospective converts to Orthodox Judaism, filled withuncertainties and fearabout gaining final rabbinic approval. Yet even once they emerge from the mikvah as newly minted American Jews, many find the challenges hardly end.
Most of my negative experiences were after the conversion, said Aliza Hausman, a 34-year-old writer and former public school teacher in Los Angeles.
I was really excited about [attending] my first bar mitzvah. But when I got there the rabbis shtick was that he would tell the most derogatory jokes about goyim he could think of, Hausman recalled. My first Pesach was listening to someone whose daughter was in a matchmaking situation, and out of nowhere she starts talking about shiksas, a derogatory word for non-Jewishwomen.
One Yom Kippur, Hausman, who is of mixed-race parentage, said she was stopped at the door of her in-laws synagogue by people who assumed she couldnt possibly be Jewish. She ran back to her in-laws home in tears.
Many Orthodox converts contend thattheOrthodox community is less accepting ofJews by choice than the more liberal Jewish denominations, where convertsare far more numerous.
In the first couple of days after the arrest last month ofRabbi Barry Freundelon charges that he installed a secret camera in the mikvah at his Orthodox shul in Washington, Kesher Israel, many of Freundels converts expressed concern that the legitimacy of their conversions would be challenged. TheRabbinical Council of America, the nations main centrist Orthodox rabbinical group, quickly announced that it would stand by Freundels conversions, and Israels Chief Rabbinateeventually offeredsimilar indications.
Orthodox converts say its not unusual to be asked to produce their conversion papers either by Israels Chief Rabbinate, if they seek to marry in Israel, or by a Jewish institution, potential matchmaker or prospective in-law.
One woman who asked to be identified only as Sarah due to the personal nature of her experience said that when she became involved in a serious relationship with a man from a Chabad family, his fatherdemanded to see her conversion papers and decided her conversion wasnt kosher. Thus began along odyssey to convince her future in-laws that hers was a bona fide conversion. (Sarah did not convert through the RCA system, whose certified conversions are broadly accepted, because she said RCA rabbis refused to meet her or respond to her inquiries.) Eventually her future father-in-laws concerns were assuaged.
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For some Orthodox converts, biggest challenges come after mikvah
Posted By richards on November 5, 2014
The Mountain Jews of Quba at a Jewish school in the 1920s. Public Domain
Buried deep beneath Azerbaijans bucolic landscape lie secrets behind the ancient Muslim-Jewish friendship that prevails in this South Caucasus largely Shiite country. The 8th-century leaders of the Khazar Empire, famously, converted from their shamanistic religion and worship of a deity named Tengri to Judaism. A semi-nomadic Turkic tribe, the Khazars originated to the north of and between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. The Khazars ruled lands from the Volga-Don steppes to the eastern Crimea and the Northern Caucasus for some three centuries, often listed as between 650 to 969 AD.
The circumstances surrounding both the Khazars conversion to Judaism and their relationship to other Jews abound in mystery. Nonetheless the story of the Khazars and their neighbors is more than a missing piece of the Jewish story. Khazar history holds clues to the Azerbaijani tolerance model.
In the 1970s, readers of writer/journalist Arthur Koestlers book The Thirteenth Tribe pondered the intriguing hypothesis that European Ashkenazic Jews descended from Khazars who migrated into Eastern Europe as their empire was collapsing. Scholars since have discredited the book for a variety of reasons. Anti-Semites have used theories of the Turkic Khazars as ancestors of modern Jews to attack Zionist claims of Israel as an ancestral homeland.
The Khazars decision to become Jewish may in fact reflect a simple desire to remain independent of both the Muslim Arab caliphate and of Christian Byzantium. Their conversion nevertheless resonates with the existence of another major Jewish community in the regionthe so-called Mountain Jews of Quba, a town about 160 kilometers from Baku, todays capital of Azerbaijan. While large gaps exist in public knowledge of both the Khazar people and the Mountain Jews, oral tradition holds that the Khazars and Mountain Jews interacted and that the Mountain Jews played a significant role in the Khazar conversion.
The Mountain Jews are said to have settled in northern Azerbaijan after leaving the Persian Empire beginning in the 5th century. They developed their own language, Juhuri, or Judeo-Tat, which endures to this day. Over centuries they formed productive relationships with their Muslim neighbors across town.
In recent years the Mountain Jews of the Red Town (the all-Jewish section of Quba; considered to be the only all-Jewish town outside of Israel) have captured outsiders interest. They practice a blend of Ashkenazic and Sephardic religious traditions and maintain customs unique to their community.
Much of what is known about the Mountain Jews history is preserved in oral history, although archaeologists also have evidence in the form of artifacts such as sacred texts, architecture, and talismans.
The record supports the strong, positive impression the Mountain Jews left on their neighbors. Literate and religious, the Mountain Jews were also accomplished horse riders and warriors and skilled agriculturists. They displayed an enviable determination to adapt to their environment. And to the regions rich musical portfolio they added their own complementary repertoire.
Visitors to the Red Town today are struck by the clearly marked Jewish institutions and the ample use of the Star of David as home decoration. But those who spend time in Quba at large also marvel at the fluid relationship between the towns Jewish and Muslim communities.
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The Khazars and the Mountain Jews: Tales from Jewish Azerbaijan
Posted By richards on November 5, 2014
Amazing Hasidic dance 1
By: Comedy Change
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