Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on May 10, 2022

SILVER SPRING, Md. --News Direct-- Discovery Education

SILVER SPRING, Md., May 3, 2022 /3BL Media/ In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month 2022, observed annually in May, Discovery Education and partners are proud to present educators, students, and families a diverse array of dynamic digital resources supporting the mental health of students everywhere.

Centered this year on the theme Together for Mental Health, Mental Health Awareness Month supports all forms of mental wellness. The following resources created in collaboration with social impact partners support students wellness through family and educator empowerment:

Professional Development ContentDeepen educator capacity around social-emotional learning (SEL) and its various applications in a variety of learning environments with professional learning resources from the Social-Emotional Learning Coalition, a network of partners committed to bringing critical, culturally relevant social-emotional learning resources into core instruction to support educators and students nationwide.

Foster a SEL-focused teaching strategy with on-demand e-learning modules designed to strengthen understanding of trauma-informed educational practices and policies that foster a student-centered learning environment from Ready, Set, RISE! a unique educational initiative that enhances teacher performance and student outcomes through improved stress-management skills and greater overall social-emotional learning from Kaiser Permanente, Alliance for a Healthier Generation (Healthier Generation), and Discovery Education.

Family ResourcesFamilies play a critical role in childrens wellness. With resources from Amazing Me an initiative from Dove Self-Esteem Project and Discovery Education parents and caretakers can play an active role in social-emotional learning, health, and confidence-building for students at critical developmental ages.

Classroom ActivitiesEmpower students to raise their voice for social change through the fourth annual Stronger Than Hate Challenge. Students aged 13-18 can win $6,000 for submitting a project demonstrating how testimony can create a community that is stronger than hate. Submissions are due May 26th. The Stronger Than Hate Challenge demonstrates the power of learning from the past and raising ones voice to counter hate. The Challenge is presented by USC Shoah Foundation (USC Shoah Foundation) and Discovery Education, the worldwide edtech leader whose state-of-the-art digital platform supports learning wherever it takes place.

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Users of Discovery Educations K-12 platform can discover all this content and more in the SEL Center located within the Discovery Education K-12 learning platform. Created by the SEL Coalition, the Social-Emotional Learning Center presents a curated collection of hundreds of resources designed to support educators as they integrate SEL into core instruction and help students develop social and emotional competencies. The SEL Center includes resources focused on educator professional development and school culture including microlearnings, instructional strategies and ready-to-use slide shows. Designed for all K-12 students and educators, the Center features multi-modal, student-facing digital content aligned to the five SEL competencies from Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) and includes Virtual Field Trips, videos, podcasts, mindfulness exercises, songs, and reading passages.

The SEL Center is made possible in part through partnerships with The Allstate Foundation, the National AfterSchool Association, and Ask, Listen, Learn. The SEL Center resources feature Discovery Education original resources, content from trusted partners like CASEL, Inner Explorer, and Everyday Speech, as well as content created in partnership with The Allstate Foundation, and Ask, Listen, Learn.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 37% of youth have had poor mental health since 2020, said Beth Meyer, Vice President of Social Impact at Discovery Education. This data points to the fact that we are at a critical point in K-12 education right now regarding the challenge of student mental wellness. Partnerships for creating resources supporting student mental wellness like those featured here are more important than ever, and we all have a role in supporting this important work.

For more information about Discovery Educations digital resources and professional learning services, visit http://www.discoveryeducation.com and stay connected with Discovery Education on social media through Twitter and LinkedIn.

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About Discovery EducationDiscovery Education is the global leader in standards-aligned digital curriculum resources, engaging content, and professional learning for K-12 classrooms. Through its award-winning digital textbooks, multimedia resources, and the largest professional learning network of its kind, Discovery Education is transforming teaching and learning, creating immersive STEM experiences, and improving academic achievement around the globe. Discovery Education currently serves approximately 4.5 million educators and 45 million students worldwide, and its resources are accessed in over 100 countries and territories. Inspired by the global media company Discovery, Inc., Discovery Education partners with districts, states, and like-minded organizations to empower teachers with customized solutions that support the success of all learners. Explore the future of education at DiscoveryEducation.com.

ContactsGrace MaliskaDiscovery EducationEmail: gmaliska@dicoveryed.com

View additional multimedia and more ESG storytelling from Discovery Education on 3blmedia.com

View source version on newsdirect.com: https://newsdirect.com/news/educator-and-family-resources-for-mental-health-awareness-month-from-discovery-education-and-social-impact-partners-412233969

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Educator and Family Resources for Mental Health Awareness Month from Discovery Education and Social Impact Partners - Yahoo Finance

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Posted By admin on May 10, 2022

Anna Eisen, author of Pillar of Salt, will be the guest speaker of Friends of the Boniuk Library at Holocaust Museum Houston on Wednesday, May 11, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Daughter of a Holocaust survivor, Eisen recently published her fathers and familys story.

In 1992, Eisen and I were selected by the Steven Spielberg Shoah Foundation to go to Chicago and assist in learning and launching the interview process for Holocaust survivors.

Anna revealed to me that her parents were Holocaust survivors and had never spoken about their early life in Europe and being sent to concentration camps. Their history was always cloaked in secrecy in her family. It took Eisen many years to understand her fathers deeply hidden and personal story of survival, grit and resilience.

With my friends strength, faith, devotion and drive, together, we helped to build a thriving Jewish community in Arlington, Texas. Eisen also became a founding member of Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville Texas.

To RSVP for the event, go to hmh.org.

Carol Pock is a second-generation Holocaust survivor and resides in Houston.

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Author of 'Pillar of Salt' to speak at HMH - Jewish Herald-Voice

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Posted By admin on May 10, 2022

STUTTGART, Germany Perhaps no theater director working today is more haunted by memory than Krzysztof Warlikowski.

To portray its tortuous mechanisms, the Polish Warlikowski favors enigmas and fragmented narratives over straightforward answers. During the past 20 years, this has helped make him one of Europes most acclaimed and distinctive directors. In addition to his productions for the Nowy Teatr in Warsaw, which he founded in 2008, Warlikowski also stages works for many of Europes leading drama and opera festivals.

In his latest production, Odyssey. A Story for Hollywood, he takes the viewer on a kaleidoscopic journey from Homer to the Holocaust to Tinseltown, telling the story of a Jewish woman who risks her life during World War II to search for her deported husband. She is portrayed both as a latter-day Odysseus and as Penelope: the wily and weary adventurer in search of his elusive homeland, and the faithful, patient wife tending the hearth.

Loosely inspired by Chasing the King of Hearts, a 2006 novel by the Polish author Hanna Krall, the production is an epic web of associations brought to life on Malgorzata Szczesniaks handsome and versatile set, whose darkly industrial components stand in for interrogation chambers and waiting rooms.

History, mythology and philosophy, and pop and high culture, rub shoulders in a four-hour production that is consistently absorbing even if youre not always sure what it means. (An international coproduction with Nowy Teatr, Odyssey was recently performed at the Schauspiel Stuttgart theater here and will tour to Paris later this month.)

Izolda Regensberg, the protagonist of Kralls short novel, is convinced that her life as a survival artist would make a great Hollywood film. The plays opening scenes, set in war-torn Europe and shortly afterward, show Regensberg navigating a film-noir landscape of violence and menace. A giant cage wheeled repeatedly across the stage heightens the sense of claustrophobia.

From there, were whisked to Los Angeles, where a much older Regensberg is meeting with the director Roman Polanski, the film producer Robert Evans and Elizabeth Taylor, who is set to play Regensberg in a film. The Polish actors perform the scene in English with exaggerated American accents that heighten the vulgarity and ignorance of their backroom talk.

That sendup of Hollywood cluelessness is rebutted by the French filmmaker Claude Lanzmanns 1985 documentary, Shoah, a nine-hour oral history of the Holocaust that is a milestone in the history of cinema, to which Warlikowski turns later in the evening. A screen lowers and we watch a famous excerpt from the movie in which Lanzmann interviews Abraham Bomba, a barber living in Israel who once cut the hair of Jewish women destined for the gas chambers at Treblinka. Bombas wrenching testimony contrasts sharply with a showy test reel we see during Regensbergs meeting with Polanski a spot-on parody of Hollywood Holocaust schlock in which a handsome Gestapo officer tortures and arouses his interrogation victim by playing Wagner on the piano.

In Odyssey, Warlikowski sifts through many of the same tropes as Lanzmanns film, rummaging around in trauma and memory while sifting through the ethical and aesthetic implications of representing the Holocaust. At times, Warlikowskis associative and open-ended approach leads the production in unusual directions and to unexpected places.

At one point, the scene abruptly shifts to the Black Forest in 1950, where Hannah Arendt is picnicking with Martin Heidegger. As the German philosophers (and former lovers) struggle to reconcile Heidegger remains defiant about his support of the Nazi regime a pushy, camera-toting tourist (possibly a visitor from the future) pesters them with questions. The grim trajectory of the play is often speckled with such surreal and humorous details.

For the productions finale, Warlikowski turns to the Coen brothers by faithfully re-creating the prologue to their 2009 film, A Serious Man. In that atmospheric short, a Yiddish horror-comedy sketch seemingly disconnected from the rest of the film, a pious couple in a 19th-century shtetl are visited by a dybbuk (an evil spirit in Jewish folklore) who possesses the body of dead rabbi.

This final scene is a jarring contrast to the Shoah material that directly precedes it and concludes this sprawling production on a curiously muted note. Yet the subject of existential homelessness is the connective tissue that unites Odysseys various strands.

The intersection of personal and communal trauma told through one womans eyes is also the theme of Irina Kastrinidiss dramatic monologue, Schwarzes Meer (Black Sea), whose world premiere at the Landestheater Niedersterreich, in St. Plten, Austria, was directed by the German theater legend Frank Castorf. Its a surprising production, not least because Castorf, whose fame rests on his deconstructive approach to literary classics, is not exactly known for his sensitive portrayals of female protagonists.

In Schwarzes Meer, Kastrinidis, a former actress in Castorfs troupe when he led the Berlin Volksbhne (she is also the directors ex-girlfriend), has fused Greek myths with the history of her more recent ancestors: Pontic Greeks, living in what is now Turkey, who were forcibly expelled in the 1920s. Her monologue a stilted and nonlinear oration in heightened and, at times, archaic language is delivered by the German actress Julia Kreusch, whose physically impassioned immersion in the text seems to elevate it. Kastrinidiss text mixes quotidian, even banal, observations with paeans to the Argonauts and passages in which Penelope seems to fuse with pop icons like Jane Birkin. The expulsion and murder of Kastrinidiss forebears hovers in the background. And as the first-person narration shuttles among Paris, Athens, Berlin and Zurich, Kastrinidis suggests a continuity of exile and inherited trauma and memory that explains her own hallucinogenic sense of homesickness.

Perhaps to safeguard against monotony, Castorf adds two characters who dont appear in Kastrinidiss text, including one played by his 12-year-old son, Mikis Kastrinidis, whose spirited performance alternates between adorable and irritating. Sharing the stage with Kreusch (and occasionally a real goat), he repeatedly reminds the audience that hes acting in his parents play by talking to his mom on the telephone and cracking jokes about how old his dad is.

This chamber staging of a brand-new work is a change of pace for Castorf, who is now 70. His classic productions, tour de force theatrical marathons, took extreme liberties with their source materials and were frequently exhausting for actors and audiences. Kreusch certainly gets a workout in Schwarzes Meer, but, aside from that, there are surprisingly few hallmarks of Castorfs style.

Most surprising, it is, by and large, faithful to Kastrinidiss text, as if the onetime enfant terrible decided it would be inappropriate to impose his ego onto his former lovers personal and poetic cri de coeur.

Like Odyssey, Schwarzes Meer is ultimately an artistic excavation of the theater of memory. In the associative games they play with Greek mythology and modern European history, both of these striking new productions suggest that dislocation and exile are fundamental to the modern human condition.

Odyssey. A Story for Hollywood. Directed by Krzysztof Warlikowski. On tour at the Thtre National La Colline, in Paris, May 12-21; Nowy Tear, in Warsaw, June 2-5.Schwarzes Meer. Directed by Frank Castorf. Landestheater Niedersterreich. May 5 and Sept. 24.

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On European Stages, Myths and Memories Merge - The New York Times

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Posted By admin on May 10, 2022

Participants in the Challenges of Armenian Genocide Education in the 21st Century International Conference

Late last month, the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute organized a three-day international conference titled Challenges of Armenian Genocide Education in the 21st Century. More than 30 educators, scholars and genocide experts participated with speakers from Armenia, Lebanon, Israel, Rwanda and the US. The speakers discussed the ethical and moral issues surrounding genocide education, comparative study for elementary and secondary schools in different countries, the role of museums and genocide institutes, the impact of oral genocide education and the importance of genocide education for national identity building for future generations and its methodological challenges.

In his opening remarks, Dr. Harutyun Marutyan, director of the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute (AGMI), stressed the role of teachers and how researchers and experts at AGMI coordinate genocide education with Armenian schools.

In her comments on the importance of organizing this conference, Sara Cohan, education director at The Genocide Education Project, told the Armenian Weekly that AGMI created an invaluable opportunity for diasporan Armenians, international guests with a shared history marred by genocide and Armenian scholars and educators to share their perspectives on genocide education. This conference gave them a chance to share their achievements and struggles when teaching these hard histories with each other. We left with a greater understanding of the complex nature of teaching about genocide in countries with distinctive needs and experiences, said Cohan.

For Dr. Jean-Damascne Gasanabo, a researcher from Rwanda, teaching about genocide is associated with a desire to impress upon current and future generations the necessity to prevent mass atrocities. Commenting on the instruction of genocide education in Rwanda, Dr. Gasanabo said that in addition to explanations from the teacher and learning materials, students visit genocide memorial sites and museums. In collaboration with school administrators and an association of genocide survivors, selected individuals are invited to give testimonies to students. Genocide education, however, also has some challenges; some teachers, especially those who have family members in prison because of the crime of genocide, are afraid of teaching about genocide. They still refuse to recognize that their family members committed such crimes.

Meanwhile, Sedda Antekelian, a learning and development specialist at USC Shoah Foundation, told the Weekly that through the study of genocide education, the next generation will be able to recognize the worst and best of humanity by discovering the power of human choices and behaviors. Students must become aware of the consequences that can arise when hate, discrimination and prejudice go unchallenged. They also must be made aware of the courage demonstrated by individuals who risked their lives to save others against the odds. For this reason, the USC Shoah Foundation (IWitness) uses these testimonies to teach middle and high school students worldwide the importance of compassion, tolerance and critical thinking.

As one of the speakers, I was honored to present my paper Sectarianism and the Armenian Genocide: The Politics of the Absence of the Genocide Education in Lebanon. I argued that sectarianism in Lebanon is embedded in everyday life, particularly in the education system, which structures the ways in which students and later citizens attempt to address their political opinions and beliefs. Sectarian identity plays a key role in political mobilization in Lebanon. This factor pushes the people of Lebanon to naturally divide the world into categories of us and them, or in-groups and out-groups, which can boost ones self-image and may entail prejudiced views against members of particular groups, in this case Armenians.

Within this context, the lack of unified history textbooks complicates the situation as history teaching in Lebanon is highly politicized. Moreover, one of the factors that hinders genocide education in Lebanon is the Arab-Israeli conflict; any academic or educational discussion about the Holocaust is directly related to Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians. Thats why many Arab nationalist scholars tend to ignore the Holocaust and compare the Armenian Genocide to the Palestinian Nakba (1948). Meanwhile, Christian private schools, mainly Catholic schools, tend to view the Armenian Genocide as part of a Christian Genocide perpetrated by the Muslim Ottoman Empire that includes the Assyrian (Seyfo) and Greek Genocides, the starvation of Mount Lebanon and the execution of the Lebanese and Syrian intellectuals on May 5-6, 1916. Unlike in other Arab countries, the Christian presence in Lebanon has helped Armenians coordinate their efforts with other Christian organizations and communities. However, this gave the genocide commemoration a religious cover. Despite the fact that Armenian schools and their education system stress the ethnic dimension of the genocide (pan-Turkism), Christians concentrated on the religious (pan-Islamist) dimension of genocide. This phenomenon has made it difficult for Muslim Sunnis to support Armenian Genocide commemoration events.

Schools located in Muslim Sunni majority areas either ignore these events or portray the Armenian Genocide and the starvation in Mount Lebanon as exaggerations and their victims as tools of Western imperialism to intervene in the domestic affairs of the Ottoman Empire. This narrative became a dominant factor among some Sunni political circles especially after the centennial of the Armenian Genocide and with the growth of Turkish soft power in Lebanon and the rise of political Islam in the Middle East.

Over the years, events dedicated to Armenian Genocide commemorations in Lebanon have become highly politicized and turned into tools of the domestic political bazaar. Moreover, the Turkish Embassy and its cultural and social centers started sending political messages against the Armenian community through their proxies on the ground. These developments started challenging the discourse of the Armenian Genocide in Lebanese politics. Moreover, the Turkmens and the Turkish communities of Lebanon started to be viewed as Ankaras voice and an essential means to serve its policy and ambitions, thus consolidating Turkeys influence abroad. However, they have failed to counterbalance the efforts of the Armenians or increase pressure on private education institutions addressing the genocide issue.

On the last day, the conference addressed:

The panelists also emphasized the need for organizing a course on Armenian Genocide issues for secondary and higher education institutions, emphasizing:

Yeghia Tashjian is a regional analyst and researcher. He has graduated from the American University of Beirut in Public Policy and International Affairs. He pursued his BA at Haigazian University in political science in 2013. In 2010, he founded the New Eastern Politics forum/blog. He was a research assistant at the Armenian Diaspora Research Center at Haigazian University. Currently, he is the regional officer of Women in War, a gender-based think tank. He has participated in international conferences in Frankfurt, Vienna, Uppsala, New Delhi and Yerevan. He has presented various topics from minority rights to regional security issues. His thesis topic was on Chinas geopolitical and energy security interests in Iran and the Persian Gulf. He is a contributor to various local and regional newspapers and a presenter of the Turkey Today program for Radio Voice of Van. Recently he has been appointed as associate fellow at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut and Middle East-South Caucasus expert in the European Geopolitical Forum.

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Reflection on the Challenges of Armenian Genocide Education in the 21st Century International Conference - Armenian Weekly

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Posted By admin on May 10, 2022

The Cosmic Library explores massive books in order to explore everything else. Here, books that can seem overwhelmingbooks of dreams, infinity, mysteriesturn out to be intensely accessible, offering so many different ways to read them and think with them. Season one considered Finnegans Wake; in season two, it was 1,001 Nights. Season three, titled Mosaic Mosaic and premiering on April 11, journeys through and beyond the Hebrew Bible.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

Its not just the contradictions in the Hebrew Bible that puzzle and provoke readersthere are, throughout, passages of intense emotional or moral provocation. See, for instance, Ecclesiastes, which in the King James translation begins:

Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

Ecclesiastes challenges familiar notions of what life is about, notions of meaning or usefulness. You have to respond to something like that. You almost cant help yourself: you have to think of your own answer to the book that declares: There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

Poetry in general often poses such challenges that cant beeasily explained or resolved, but in return, these challenges activate the mind. The poet and critic Elisa Gabbert says, When Im reading or when Im writing, Im just thinking better than I am at any other time.

The Hebrew Bible prompts you to figure things out on your own, with particular attention to language. As Peter Cole says: At the very heart of this text, what do you have? Youve got this ultimate transparency and ultimate opacity, which is the name of God, the four-lettername of God, which is unpronounceable, and no one really knows what it means.

_____________________

Peter Cole is a poet and MacArthur genius whose new book,Draw Me After,will be out this fall.

Elisa Gabbertis a poet and poetry columnist with the New York Times. Her latest book, Normal Distance, will be out this fall.

Lisa Feldman Barrettis a psychologist, neuroscientist, and author of books including How Emotions Are Made.

Tom DeRoseis a curator at the Freud Museum in London.

Joshua Cohenis a novelist whose books include Book of Numbers.

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The Unpronounceable Name of God: Concluding a Journey Through the Hebrew Bible - Literary Hub

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Posted By admin on May 10, 2022

This weekend, art lovers are flocking to the Park Avenue Armory for TEFAF, the esteemed art fair that brings together art, jewels, and antiquities from across the ages.

The event also marks the 10th anniversary of the TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund, which was established in 2012 to support the restoration and conservation of culturally significant works in institutions worldwide.

This year the fair has named the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston as the recipient of the grant. Funds will be directed toward the conservation of the Montefiore Mainz Mahzor, a cultural, religious, and research manuscript that is more than 700 years old. The Montefiore Mainz Mahzor (circa 131020) is a festival prayer book and one of very few Hebrew illuminated manuscripts still in existence.

Montefiore Mainz Mahzor from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

This represents the first time the fund has received an application for a work of Judaica and a manuscript, both categories represented at TEFAF, here married into one object. We are delighted to broaden the scope of our conservation projects in keeping with the diverse interests of the fairs international audience and exhibiting dealers, said Rachel Kaminsky, an expert on the TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund committee.

The conservation will employ culturally appropriate methods for the religious object. The work was acquired by the MFA Houston in 2018 and was the first work of Judaica to enter the museums collection. The acquisition prompted the endowment of a new gallery for Judaica.

This extraordinary manuscript is one of a very few surviving examples from Medieval Germany, and is all the more remarkable because it was actively used by congregants for centuries, said Gary Tinterow, director of the MFA Houston.

The book will be on view at TEFAF New York from May 6-10, 2022. Conservation efforts will begin later this year.

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A 700-Year-Old Hebrew Prayer Book at the MFA Houston Is the Beneficiary of This Years TEFAF Museum Restoration Fund - artnet News

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Posted By admin on May 10, 2022

By Rabbi Jim Morgan

Parashat Emor(Leviticus 21:1-24:23)

When Im teaching, I often receive feedback from people that they are outraged by this or that passage in the Torah. Why do we keep this? people ask. Or: We should cancel this verse. I can, and sometimes do, respond that in our tradition as in Islam and Christianity we do not simply change the Bible. We can adjust a translation or shift an emphasis or pursue an apologia, but excising a verse? Not so much. A more satisfying response, however, is to acknowledge these difficult passages as evidence of dilemmas, not only in our Jewish tradition but in human societies more generally. Often they point to challenges that have existed for millenia and still bedevil us. As such, they can serve to open up conversations about contemporary injustices that resonate with ancient dilemmas and allow us to think about addressing them more equitably and compassionately.

One such ancient dilemma is that of exclusion based on identity. In one of its contemporary manifestations, the power of exclusion has taken the form of atidal wave of new laws and regulationsthat criminalize gender-affirming medical treatment for transgender children and, in Texas (although the regulation has been temporarily enjoined in court), to force the the states Department of Family and Protective Services to consider medically accepted treatments for transgender youth including hormones and puberty-suppressing drugs as abuse and to open investigations intofamilies with transgender children. In these cases, the state is openly excluding people from raising transgender children, presenting such parents the cruel choice of either not providing their children with medical care and thus putting their childrens lives at risk of suicide, or leaving the state, which is clearly not an option for most families.

How might the Torah open a discussion into such a contemporary dilemma? By raising up the story of a man whose identity excludes him from any of the arbitrary categories that the Israelite community recognized:

There came out among the Israelites a man whose mother was Israelite and whose father was Egyptian. And a fight broke out in the camp between that half-Israelite and a certain Israelite. The son of the Israelite woman pronounced the Name in blasphemy, and he was brought to Moses now his mothers name was Shelomith daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan. He was placed in custody, until the decision of YHWH should be made clear to them. And YHWH spoke to Moses, saying: Take the blasphemer outside the camp; and let all who were within hearing lay their hands upon his head, and let the community leadership stone him.(Lev. 24:10-14)

As the son of an Israelite woman and an Egyptian man, ben-Shelomith (as we might call him) cannot claim membership in any of the patriarchal tribes. As such, he is an examplar of the various strangers present in the Torah and by implication in the earliest stages of Israelite society. The Torah does not specify his motivation for cursing God, but the emphasis on his mixed parentage suggests that his identity played a role in his ultimate fate: being removed from the camp and stoned for blasphemy.

Characteristically, the rabbis of our tradition try to put some meat on these narrative bones: Where did he come out from? What was the fight about? Why would he curse God? One midrash offers compelling answers to these questions:

The quarrel arose from his parentage. He went to pitch his tent with the tribe of Dan. They said to him: Why do you think you can pitch your tent with us? He responded: I emerged from the daughters of Dan. They said to him: It is written that The Israelites shall camp each man with his standard, under the banners of their fathers house(Numbers 2:2), and not their mothers house. He entered Mosess Beit Din (court) and he came out mchuyav (having lost his suit). Therefore he arose and cursed God(Leviticus Rabbah 32:3).

As the paraphrase offered in the Plaut Commentary puts it (2006 edition, p. 845), he found himself without any regular place in the camp. He was excluded, rejected, literally not accepted as a member of the tribe, even though in another place the midrash identifies him as a convert to Judaism who was present at Sinai (seeRashi onLev. 24:10-11).

The pathos of this story is overwhelming, and it resonates with so many stories of rejection and exclusion based on arbitrary and rigid categories, whether based on parentage, gender expression, or caste, that societies (including Jewish communities) construct to make sense of the world and to set boundaries for themselves. As a convert to Judaism myself, I am all too familiar with this feeling: although I no longer belong in the faith tradition of my youth and have been a rabbi for more than a decade, I still find myself excluded by certain Jews, religious and secular alike. My pain and frustration are real but usually fleeting, not least of all because many Jewish communities across the religious spectrum have adopted a more welcoming stance towards Jews by choice and, in many places, towards people who have a single Jewish parent (although thatremains controversial in some places, even for people with a Jewish mother).

The members of the tribe of Dan did not adopt a welcoming stance, which ultimately led to the death of ben-Shelomith. His reaction to the verdict of the Beit Din echoes the suggestion Jobs wife makes at the height of his suffering: Blaspheme God and die(Job 2:9).

Sadly, there is an analogous response in transgender youth, in the form of suicide or other self-harm, when these young people feel rejected by their families and by society at large. Too often, there is no place for them or their families in the camp and there are too few places where they feel welcome. We must push back against efforts to exclude them and instead find ways to welcome people into our communities, accommodating them by modifying boundaries in ways that allow everyone to feel safe. I like to think that the rabbis, in constructing a story for ben-Shlomith and making a point of his conversion and presence at Sinai, were welcoming him, albeit posthumously. May we work to find ways for transgender people to belong in the camp while they are still alive.

A graduate of the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College, Rabbi Jim Morgans primary role is Community Rabbi and Chaplain at Center Communities of Brookline, a Supportive Housing Community ofHebrew SeniorLife. In addition, he serves as the Russian-speaking chaplain at Hebrew Rehabilitation Center in Roslindale. Finally, he is Rabbinic Advisor for the Worship and Study Minyan at Harvard Hillel in Cambridge, a pluralistic, lay-led congregation that serves the university and the larger community.

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The Power of Exclusion | Hebrew College Wendy Linden - Patheos

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Posted By admin on May 10, 2022

Cornerstone University is pleased to announce the appointment of Daniel Watson, Ph.D., as professor of Old Testament for Grand Rapids Theological Seminary.

Dr. Watsons track record as a biblical scholar, teacher and ministry leader is impressive, said Dr. Gerson Moreno-Riao, Cornerstones president. He is a brilliant scholar, a man of great faith in the LORD and His Word and a follower of Jesus Christ who understands his calling as a gift from the LORD. We are so blessed that he will continue to foster his calling with our current and future students here at Cornerstone.

Watson comes to Cornerstone with over 32 years of experience as a teaching pastor and over a decade as a professor of Old Testament in seminary settings.

I am honored to become part of the tradition of fine biblical scholars who have taught and mentored ministry students at GRTS, Watson said. To serve here is not only a great opportunity but a solemn responsibility. I hope to do my part to fulfill the mission of Cornerstone University for Christ and the church to the glory of God.

Since 2012, he has served as teaching pastor for Greater Northwest Baptist Church in Indianapolis, Ind. Prior to that, he served as associate professor of Old Testament at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri. While there, he wrote and administered Doctor of Philosophy candidacy exams for the Old Testament department, served on the Doctoral Studies Committee and the Old Testament Ph.D. subcommittee.

He also served as assistant professor of Old Testament at Bethel Seminary in San Diego, Calif., where he helped implement new biblical exegesis courses for the Master of Divinity program.

Watson holds a Doctor of Philosophy in biblical and ancient near eastern studies from Hebrew Union College. His dissertation was titled The Writing on the Wall: A Study of the Belshazzar Narrative. He also holds a Master of Philosophy from Hebrew Union College in Hebraic and cognate studies. Other degrees include a Master of Theology in Old Testament language from Grace Theological Seminary and a Bachelor of Arts in Christian thought and biblical studies from Liberty University.

According to Watson, his spiritual birthday was in August 1973, when his Sunday school teacher taught in childrens church the story of the clean vessels and the dirty vessels and how dirty vessels can only be cleaned by the blood of Christ. He became passionate about teaching Scripture in high school and clarified his calling through Christian higher education.

Theres no great secret to spiritual growth, Watson said of his faith journey. It is the pursuit of growing up to the full measure of the stature of Christ, and the most practical means of this is cultivating core spiritual disciplines.

Watsons main research and teaching focus is the Old Testament and its world: the Hebrew-Aramaic Bible, Semitic languages and ancient Near Eastern civilizations. But his scholarly pursuits also include the Intertestamental Period and other essential backgrounds to the New Testament as well as theology, apologetics and the history of Christian thought.

Watson was born and raised in Indianapolis, Ind., and currently resides there. He has contributed to The Baker Illustrated Bible Dictionary, The Midwestern Journal of Theology and the forthcoming book Biblical Justice: Theology for the Unity of the Church. In 2011, he presented at GRTS Talking Points series on the Bible and ancient culture.

Christian education is intentional and purposeful in aiming for transformation of character and in seeking to instill a missional purpose through a biblically based worldview, Watson said. I find great joy in teaching current and aspiring ministry practitioners and am grateful to Cornerstone for the opportunity to continue to do so.

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Daniel Watson Appointed Professor of Old Testament for Grand Rapids Theological Seminary - Cornerstone University

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Posted By admin on May 10, 2022

Often, medieval Jewry is conceived through the simple binary of Ashkenaz and Sefard. However, this binary view erases many distinct regional identities that existed at the time. One of these is the unique culture of medieval Provence, located in Southern France, which by and large combined commitment to Judaism with the belief that this was enhanced in conjunction with general wisdom.

Much of this article is based on Moshe Halbertals Bein Torah lChochmah and Howard Kreisels Judaism as Philosophy: Studies in Maimonides and the Medieval Jewish Philosophers of Provence.

Halbertal, in his introduction, chronicles the development of Provences philosophical culture through the arrival of many Spanish Jewish families fleeing Almohad persecution, as well as the ties forged between Ri MiLunel and Rambam, culminating in the translation of the Moreh Nevuchim (Guide of the Perplexed) into Hebrew.

A primary agent of this change was the ibn Tibbon family. Upon his arrival in Provence, Yehudah ibn Tibbon translated many works of Jewish philosophy from Arabic to Hebrew, including Chovot HaLevavot and the Kuzari. His son, Shmuel, best known for his translation of Rambams Moreh Nevuchim, was also an extremely influential philosopher, whose Maamar Yikavu Hamayim and commentary on Kohelet were widely read in Provence. In those works, he presents radical approaches to harmonize Aristotle and the Torah. For example, he develops a theory wherein the world is in a constant natural cycle between being submerged in water and drying up to reveal land, which he felt harmonized Aristotelian science with biblical creation. His writings founded an interpretive movement commonly called Maimonideanism which is notable for its broad use of allegory, esoteric reading, and radical Aristotelian beliefs. Shmuels son, Moshe, followed after his father, translating many works, including Rambams Sefer Hamitzvot, Euclids Elements and several works of Averroes. He also wrote various works, including allegorical-philosophical commentaries on Shir HaShirim, and on many aggadot. He is cited extensively in Rabbi Levi ben Avrahams Livyat Chen. Another important Tibbonide, Jacob Anatoli, wrote a collection of sermons on the weekly parsha titled Malmad Hatalmidim. This work frequently employs allegory and is devoted to Maimonidean thought. Although it was somewhat controversial in other locales, with Rashba strongly criticizing the work, it gained tremendous popularity, even being utilized in homilies written by Rashbas own students.

As these philosophical trends developed, the halakha-focused rabbis of Provence responded in various ways. Halbertal chronicles how talmudists from Provence accepted Rambams philosophical writings, though they generally seem to have followed a less radical path than Shmuel ibn Tibbon. An extreme example of this sort of conservative approach is that of Rabbi Meir ben Shimon Hameili. In an unpublished commentary on Rambams Yesodei HaTorah, he often defends Rambam by defanging his philosophical implications. Relatedly, he expresses discomfort with allegorical interpretation of certain aggadot in his talmudic commentaries. As may be expected, he was sharply critical of Shmuel ibn Tibbon, even accusing him of corrupting the translation of the Moreh. On the other extreme, we find Rabbi Reuven ben Chaim. A noted Talmudist with many important students, he was educated in philosophy. The surviving fragments of his Sefer haTamid, a commentary on the siddur, demonstrate a commitment to radical Maimonidean methodology, exemplified in his interpretation of Psalm 91. It is worth noting that there were significant rifts between the philosophers and the halakhists on many issues, beyond the scope of this article.

In the next generation, a rabbi named Abba Mari enlisted the Rashba to help quash the spread of heretical ideas. Although he was himself a moderate Maimonidean, he spells out the reasons for his opposition in the beginning of his Minchat Kenaot, a collection of letters related to the campaign, as denial of Gods knowledge of particulars, creation and providence. One of the main figures who was targeted in this campaign was Rabbi Levi ben Avraham, nephew and likely student of Rabbi Reuven ben Chaim, whose encyclopedic work Livyat Chen, a collection of both Jewish and general knowledge, garnered controversy for reports that he took extreme allegorical approaches and denied miracles.

Many Provencal rabbis opposed this campaign, of whom two will be listed here. The first, Menachem Meiri, also a student of Rav Reuven ben Chaim, was a noted Talmudist. His main works most notably, his Beit Habechirah, a massive halakhic work arranged on the Talmud reflect some of the best of Provencal talmudic analysis. Nonetheless, in his comments on aggadot, as well as in his commentaries on Tehillim and Mishlei, Meiri often utilizes philosophical allegory. While his philosophical positions appear relatively moderate, Halbertal argues he also has some esoteric approaches close to the radical Maimonideans. Meiri is also noteworthy for his attitude toward gentiles and women that was unusually progressive for his time. The second figure, Yedaiah ben Avraham Bedersi, was a poet and ethicist. He also wrote commentaries in a philosophical-allegorical style on many midrashim, including the Midrash Rabbah, Midrash Tanchumah, Midrash Tehillim, and Pirkei dRabbi Eliezer. While not known for talmudic acumen, he studied under Rabbi Meshulam ben Moshe, an important halakhist who wrote the Sefer Hahashlamah, from a young age. In their letters responding to the ban, they stress the importance of philosophy to Judaism and Provencal culture, as well as the good halakhic standing of the community.

In later times, many more authors emerged from Provence. Among these were Nissim of Marseille, whose radical commentary on the Torah sought to naturalize miracles as much as possible. To give one example, he suggests, based on a Midrash, that the divine origin of the laws means that Moshe utilized God-given wisdom to legislate effectively. Another was Rabbi David haKochavi, a moderate Maimonidean who wrote two works, which he later grouped into one. His first presents philosophical justifications for Judaism and gives reasons for the mitzvot. The second, which has only partially survived, is an ambitious halakhic code modeled after Rambams Mishneh Torah, but with sources and other opinions included. Other figures include Aristotelian philosopher Yosef Ibn Caspi, noteworthy for elitist sentiment and negative views of women that were extreme even for his time, who wrote over twenty works spanning various disciplines including grammar, biblical interpretation and philosophy. In a work titled Tam HaKessef he has the prescient suggestion that it is plausible the Jews may one day be able to take back the land of Israel without miraculous means. Another important figure was Ralbag, one of the great Jewish polymaths, who excelled in fields as broad as mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and biblical interpretation.Ultimately, works from Provence in its philosophical epoch were rarely quoted by outside writers, and many of these works have only been published recently. If you ever find yourself lost in the library, looking for some new sefer to read, perhaps give a writer from this oft-overlooked locale a shot.

Photo Caption: The rich history of medieval Provence is often overlooked.

Photo Credit: Pixabay

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The Fight for Philosophy in Medieval Provence - The Commentator - The Commentator

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Posted By admin on May 10, 2022

The Glossa Ordinaria is, simply put, an extensive medieval collection of biblical commentaries. Literally speaking, a glossa is an annotation, originally found in the margins of the biblical text, that some copyist would add to clarify the meaning of a word in either Hebrew or Greek the word glossa being originally Greek itself, meaning tongue and, by extension, language. Most of these marginal commentaries helped standardize the biblical text and the ways in which biblical languages themselves were transmitted.

The collection is referred to as ordinaria (literally, ordinary) because it soon became the standard commented edition of the bible from the 13th century on. True, at first the annotations were just used to clarify the meaning of a word, but in the course of time they began to include scriptural, hermeneutical commentaries, mainly from the Church Fathers. In fact, early Christian authors like St. Jerome generously included and used glosses in their own translations and commentaries of the sacred text. As seen in the featured image, the biblical text would be in the center of the page, surrounded by commentaries from different authors explaining and discussing its contents, like in the Talmud.

Now, the idea of an extensively commented edition of the biblical text is not a Christian invention. Commented editions of any text were quite popular during the Middle Ages. The classic Mikraot Gedolot, also known as the Rabbinic Bible, is an edition of the Hebrew bible (in Hebrew) that includes commentaries from prominent Jewish bible scholars, and was compiled around the same time of the Christian Glossa Ordinaria.

The name, Glossa Ordinaria, was broadly used in the Middle Ages for any standard commentary on any important text most of them juridical. But since the most commented and more widely used text then was the bible, the term Glossa Ordinaria was understood to refer to the standard commented edition of the Bible, whenever used without any further specification

Originally, the compilation and arrangement of the Glossa was wrongly believed to be the work of the 9th-century German Benedictine monk Walafrid Strabo. Later research showed it was the 12th century French theologian and Christian biblical hermeneutics pioneer Anselm of Laon who gave the Glossa its initial impetus, until it was printed for the first time in 1481 in Strasbourg, with the title Biblia Latina Cum Glossa Orden Walafridi Strabonis Aliorumque et Interlineari Anselmi Laudunensis.

You can find an online version of a Venetian 1603 edition of the Glossa in this link.

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What is the Glossa Ordinaria? - Aleteia

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