Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on September 2, 2020

Philadelphia Eagles veteran wide receiver DeSean Jackson is back in the news. Jackson, who was highly criticized in July for sharing anti-Semitic posts on social media, made a recent comment blasting the NFL players and their lack of unity. Although his latest comment wasnt nearly as controversial as those from July, it might strike a nerve with some of the players in the league.

RELATED: If NFL Teams Allow Fans in Limited Capacity, Who Gets to Go?

In July, DeSean Jackson posted two images on his Instagram story with quotes that were supposedly from Adolph Hitler. The anti-Semitic quotes werent just foolish to post, but they were posted a little more than a month after George Floyd died. Racial tension across the country was heating up.

Jacksons posts said white Jews will blackmail America. (They) will extort America, their plan for world domination wont work if the Negroes know who they are. The white citizens of America will be terrified to know that all this time theyve been mistreating and discriminating and lynching the Children of Israel, according to ESPN.

Jackson later apologized for the posts via Instagram and said, I post a lot of things that are sent to me. I do not have hatred towards anyone. I really didnt realize what this passage was saying. Jackson said he would go on and educate himself on the matter as his apology would be more than just words.

Just days after posting his anti-Semitic comments on social media, DeSean Jackson was on a Zoom call with a Holocaust survivor. Jackson was speaking with Edward Mosberg, a 94-year-old survivor of a Nazi concentration camp. Mosberg invited Jackson to visit Auschwitz, and the Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver accepted.

According to The Jerusalem Post, Jackson said, I want to take the proper steps to let people know that I never intentionally had any hatred in my heart. I never wanted to put the Jewish community down and I want to educate myself more and help bridge the gaps between all different cultures.

Jackson said this would be a perfect time for him to educate himself. I grew up in Los Angeles, and never really spent time with anyone from the Jewish community. I didnt know much about their history. This has been such a powerful experience for me to learn and educate myself, Jackson said, according to The Jerusalem Post.

The NBA stopped playing its playoff games for three nights in protest of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin. DeSean Jackson praised the NBA for its stance but shot down his own league. It was high praise for basketball players, but insulting to those in the NFL.

In a video on Twitter, Jackson was speaking with former NBA player Stephen Jackson. DeSean Jackson mentioned the brotherhood the NBA has and said there is none of that in the NFL. Me, being in the NFL, I feel like the NBA, man, yall like brotherhood. Yall so tight together, bro, as far as the NBA association as far as the players side, he said.

I feel like in the NFL, we dont have that brotherhood that yall got, DeSean Jackson continued. If LeBrons doing something, the whole NBAs doing it. The main top-10 dudes, if its James Harden, whoever the main dudes, if theyre doing something, everybodys doing it. In the NFL, I feel like its a miss-connection.

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DeSean Jackson Blasts Lack of Player Unity in the NFL - Sportscasting

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Posted By admin on August 31, 2020

Heres what you need to know:

Republicans have intensified their unrest-focused message, with Kenosha as a backdrop.

Richard Grenell, a former diplomat and intelligence official, revives an unsubstantiated wiretap claim.

We fact-checked the Republican National Convention.

Clarence Henderson, a civil rights pioneer, makes a case for peaceful protests.

Lara Trump says her preconceived notion about the Trumps disappeared when she became one.

Joni Ernst praises Trump for paying attention to Iowas farmers and coming to visit after a storm.

Lee Zeldin rewrites Trumps aid to New York during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic.

Chen Guangcheng, a Chinese dissident, praises Trumps approach to Beijing.

Elise Stefanik pushes Trumps reopening approach and hits Biden on the economy.

Kellyanne Conway is leaving the White House, but not the spotlight.

Dan Crenshaw, a Texas congressman, draws on his military experience to talk about heroism.

Marsha Blackburn, a Tennessee senator, gives a dark and misleading speech focusing on law enforcement.

Kristi Noem, once rumored to be a Pence replacement, attacks Democrats on law and order.

Republicans used the third night of their convention on Wednesday to amplify warnings of violence and lawlessness under Democratic leadership, trying to capitalize on the worsening unrest in Wisconsin to reclaim moderate voters who might be reluctant to hand President Trump a second term.

The party also made appeals to social conservatives with attacks on abortion and accusations that the Democrats and their nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr., were Catholics in name only. And they intensified their effort to lift Mr. Trumps standing among women with testimonials vouching for him as empathetic and as a champion of women in the workplace from women who work for him, a number of female lawmakers and his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.

Speaking hours after Gov. Tony Evers of Wisconsin called in the National Guard to restore order to Kenosha, Wis., where a police officer shot a Black man this week, numerous Republicans led by Vice President Mike Pence assailed Mr. Biden for what they claimed was his tolerance of the vandalism that had grown out of racial justice protests, asserting that the country would not be safe with him as president.

Last week, Joe Biden didnt say one word about the violence and chaos engulfing cities across this country, said Mr. Pence, standing before an array of American flags at Fort McHenry in Baltimore and vowing: We will have law and order on the streets of this country for every American of every race and creed and color.

Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a strong supporter of the president, said that places like Seattle, Portland, Ore., and other cities run by Democrats were being overrun by violent mobs. She likened the violence to the lead-up of the Civil War and asserted that people are left to fend for themselves.

Ms. Noem invoked a young Abraham Lincoln, claiming he had been alarmed by the disregard for the rule of law throughout the country.

He was concerned for the people that had seen their property destroyed, their families attacked and their lives threatened or even taken away, she said, adding Sound familiar?

The intense focus on the rioting amounted to an acknowledgment by Republicans that they must reframe the election to make urban unrest the central theme and shift attention away from the deaths and illnesses of millions of people from the coronavirus.

transcript

transcript

So with gratitude for the confidence President Donald Trump has placed in me, the support of our Republican Party and the grace of God, I humbly accept your nomination to run and serve as vice president of the United States. Over the past four years, Ive had the privilege to work closely with our president. Ive seen him when the cameras are off. Americans see President Trump in lots of different ways. But theres no doubt how President Trump sees America. He sees America for what it is: a nation that has done more good in this world than any other, a nation that deserves far more gratitude than grievance. And if you want a president who falls silent when our heritage is demeaned or insulted, hes not your man. Last week, Joe Biden didnt say one word about the violence and chaos engulfing cities across this country. So let me be clear: The violence must stop whether in Minneapolis, Portland or Kenosha. Too many heroes have died defending our freedom to see Americans strike each other down.

For four years, Vice President Mike Pence has stood as an unfailingly loyal deputy to President Trump even and especially when he gets overruled.

In public and private, Mr. Pence lauds Mr. Trump. And on Wednesday night, he used his convention speech to paint the president as a great builder of the American economy and defender of American law enforcement.

The vice president said that Mr. Trump was upholding the very nature of the country, and if Joseph R. Biden Jr. was elected president, the United States would lose its essential character and become unrecognizable at least to a Trump-friendly social conservative like Mr. Pence.

Last week, Joe Biden said democracy is on the ballot, but the truth is, our economic recovery is on the ballot, law and order are on the ballot. But so are things far more fundamental and foundational to our country, Mr. Pence said. Its not so much whether America will be more conservative or more liberal, more Republican or more Democrat. The choice in this election is whether America remains America.

So with gratitude for the confidence President Donald Trump has placed in me, the support of our Republican Party, and the grace of God, I humbly accept your nomination to run and serve as vice president of the United States, Mr. Pence said.

Speaking to a crowd at Fort McHenry in Baltimore that did not appear to be socially distanced or wearing masks, Mr. Pence described a president who acts differently in private than he does in public a picture sharply at odds with nearly all of the reporting that depicts Mr. Trump in private as even more prone to pique and outbursts than he is before television cameras.

Ive seen him when the cameras are off, Mr. Pence said. Americans see President Trump in lots of different ways, but theres no doubt how President Trump sees America. He sees America for what it is, a nation that has done more good in this world than any other, a nation that deserves far more gratitude than grievance.

Mr. Pence made the nights first significant reference to Hurricane Laura, a major storm bearing down on Texas and Louisiana, a notion that would have not raised eyebrows during any other political convention but seemed off-key during a week devoted to singing the praises of Mr. Trump.

This is a serious storm, and we urge all of those in the affected areas to heed state and local authorities, Mr. Pence said. Stay safe, and know that we will be with you every step of the way to support, rescue, respond, and recover in the days and weeks ahead.

In a seeming reference to Mr. Trumps defense of Confederate monuments and the Confederate flag, Mr. Pence, who is from Indiana, added: If you want a president who falls silent when our heritage is demeaned or insulted, then hes not your man.

Mr. Pence was the only Republican convention speaker to mention Kenosha, Wis., where the Sunday police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, has inflamed racial tensions. He condemned people there who caused property damage though he made no mention of the shooting that prompted the unrest.

President Trump and I will always support the right of Americans to peacefully protest, said Mr. Pence, who in 2017 flew to Indianapolis for an N.F.L. game and then walked out after several players knelt during the national anthem. But rioting and looting is not peaceful protest. Tearing down statues is not free speech, and those who do so will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Mr. Pence, like many speakers during the Republican convention, also sought to rewrite the recent history of how Mr. Trump has handled the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed nearly 180,000 Americans and counting.

Before the first case of the coronavirus spread within the United States, the president took unprecedented action and suspended all travel from China, the second largest economy in the world, Mr. Pence said.

Yet by April 40,000 people had traveled to the United States from China since Mr. Trump imposed his travel ban on Jan. 31, and more than 430,000 since the coronavirus was first disclosed in China a month earlier.

Mr. Pence also said Mr. Trump had marshaled the full resources of our federal government from the outset, adding, He directed us to forge a seamless partnership with governors across America in both political parties.

This would come as a surprise to Democratic governors in Illinois, New York and Washington State, among others, who found themselves on the receiving end of Mr. Trumps attacks for publicly criticizing the federal governments inability to produce personal protective equipment or sufficient testing to determine how far the virus had spread in their states.

transcript

transcript

Donald Trump he called Americas endless wars what they were: a disaster. The media was shocked, because Donald Trump was running as a Republican. And yet he said out loud what we all knew: that American foreign policy was failing to make Americans safer. Our great cities and industries were hollowed out. Entire communities were devastated, and our manufacturing plants were shipped off to China. Thats what happened when Washington stopped being the capital of the United States and started being the capital of the world. Today the Democrats blame a global pandemic that started in China on President Trump. And they still blame Russia for Hillary Clintons loss in 2016. As acting director of national intelligence, I saw the Democrats entire case for Russian collusion, and what I saw made me sick to my stomach. The Obama-Biden administration secretly launched a surveillance operation on the Trump campaign, and silenced the many brave intelligence officials who spoke up against it.

The undiplomatic diplomat Richard A. Grenell, who briefly held a top intelligence post in the Trump administration, revived the baseless theory that President Barack Obama personally ordered federal law enforcement officials to spy on Donald J. Trumps 2016 campaign.

The Obama-Biden administration secretly launched a surveillance operation on the Trump campaign, and silenced the many brave intelligence officials who spoke up against it, said Mr. Grenell, who served as United States ambassador to Germany from 2018 to 2020, and alienated many German officials by weighing in on the countrys internal politics.

Mr. Grenell launched a far-ranging attack on Democratic foreign policy initiatives, slamming the Iran nuclear deal and globalist goals he said Mr. Biden would pursue.

Washington stopped being the capital of the United States, and started being the capital of the world, he said of the Obama administrations approach.

In his remarks at the Republican convention on Wednesday, Mr. Grenell, one of the few gay people to hold a high administration post under Mr. Trump, claimed to have watched President Trump charm the chancellor of Germany, while insisting that Germany pay its NATO obligations.

No one appears to have told that to the chancellor, Angela Merkel, who has privately expressed doubts about Mr. Trumps leadership and publicly criticized his response to the coronavirus, albeit indirectly. As we are experiencing firsthand, you cannot fight the pandemic with lies and disinformation, Ms. Merkel said in June. The limits of populism and denial of basic truths are being laid bare.

This year, Mr. Grenell served briefly as acting director of national intelligence. In that capacity, he was the first openly gay cabinet-level official in United States history.

He claimed on Wednesday that this post gave him access to information about Democratic investigations into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia four years ago that made me sick to my stomach.

Mr. Grenell, known for dunking on reporters and critics on Twitter, had no chance of being permanently confirmed for that position after Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said he was unqualified.

Since then, he has served as the Republican National Committees liaison on L.G.B.T. outreach, a tall order at a time when Mr. Trump has made a point of rolling back protections for transgender people enacted during the Obama administration.

Our team of reporters who cover the Pentagon, Congress, health care and more fact-checked tonights speeches. See the claims and how they stack up against the truth.

Clarence Henderson, who helped desegregate the Woolworths lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., in 1960, joined a chorus of Black Trump supporters making the case that Mr. Trump is not racist even though as many as eight in 10 Black people think he is.

Mr. Henderson did not directly refer to the chaotic protests in Portland, Ore., and Kenosha, Wis. But he contrasted his actions 60 years ago joining his friends at the counter on the second day of the protests with the current demonstrations.

Our actions inspired similar protests throughout the South against racial injustice. And in the end, segregation was abolished and our country moved a step closer to true equality for all, he said. Thats what actual peaceful protest can accomplish.

The Greensboro demonstrations, while not the first sit-ins, were a watershed moment in the civil rights movement especially after the media broadcast images of an unruly white mob dumping food and drinks on the polite, neatly dressed and nonviolent protesters.

transcript

transcript

My seventh-grade English teacher, Mrs. B., used to tell us, Believe none of what you hear, half of what you read and only what youre there to witness firsthand. The meaning of those words never fully weighed on me until I met my husband and the Trump family. Any preconceived notion I had of this family disappeared immediately. They were warm and caring. They were hard workers, and they were down to earth. They reminded me of my own family. They made me feel like I was home. Walking the halls of the Trump Organization, I saw the same family environment. I also saw the countless women executives who thrived there year after year. Gender didnt matter. What mattered was the ability to get the job done. I learned this directly when, in 2016, my father-in-law asked me to help him win my cherished home state and my daughters namesake, North Carolina. Though I had no political experience, he believed in me. He knew I was capable even if I didnt. I wasnt born a Trump. Im from the South. I was raised a Carolina girl. I went to public schools and worked my way through a state university. Mrs. B. from my seventh-grade English class was right. What I learned about our president is different than what you might have heard. I learned that hes a good man.

Lara Trump, President Trumps daughter-in-law and a senior adviser to his re-election campaign, offered a glowing portrait of the family she had married into on Wednesday night, painting the Trumps as warm and caring.

Speaking at the Republican National Convention, Ms. Trump, who is married to Eric Trump, conceded that she had certainly never thought that Id end up with the last name Trump. But as soon as she met her husband and joined his family, she said, Any preconceived notion I had of this family disappeared immediately.

I wasnt born a Trump. Im from the South, she said. I was raised a Carolina girl. I went to public schools and worked my way through a state university.

What I learned about our president is different than what you might have heard, she added. I learned that hes is a good man. That he loves his family. That he didnt need this job.

With her remarks, Lara Trump joined the growing list of Trump family members and close associates who have been tapped to praise the president based on their relationship with him. They have sought to soften the presidents image, suggesting that he treats the people he cares about exceedingly well.

Ms. Trump also tried to use her firsthand experience to try to improve her father-in-laws standing with women, remarking that she had seen women thrive in the Trump Organization, which granted them big responsibilities.

I know the promise of America because Ive lived it, not just as a member of the Trump family, but as a woman who knows what its like to work in blue-collar jobs, to serve customers for tips and to aspire to rise, she said.

No one on earth works harder for the American people, she added later, speaking about the president. Hes willing to fight for his beliefs, and for the people and the country that he loves.

Burgess Owens, the Republican nominee in a Utah congressional district that Democrats flipped in 2018, took the stage at the Republican convention on Wednesday and recalled his great-great-grandfather, Silas Burgess, who escaped slavery through the Underground Railroad and ultimately became a landowner.

He also recalled his own experience: After playing in the N.F.L., he started a business that failed, and ended up working as a chimney sweep before achieving a rewarding career in the corporate world.

Career politicians, elitists and even a former bartender want us to believe thats impossible, Mr. Owens said, referring to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by her former job. They want us to believe that what I did, what my great-great-grandfather did, is impossible for ordinary Americans. As patriots, we know better.

Mr. Owens, who is also a Fox News contributor, is running against Representative Ben McAdams in Utahs Fourth Congressional District. Mr. McAdams narrowly upset a Republican incumbent, Mia Love, in 2018.

On Tuesday, Mr. Owens was accused of plagiarizing parts of his book Why I Stand: From Freedom to the Killing Fields of Socialism, which he denied. Also this week, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that a former Utah legislator was urging the Republican National Committee to revoke his speaking slot because he appeared earlier this year on a YouTube program associated with the false QAnon conspiracy theory.

Mr. Owens has said that he didnt know about the link and that he does not support QAnon.

Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, the only endangered Senate Republican to speak at this weeks Republican National Convention, on Wednesday night highlighted President Trumps help for farmers and claimed that a Biden administration would harm them.

I cant recall an administration more hostile to farmers than Obama-Biden, unless you count the Biden-Harris ticket, Ms. Ernst said. The Democratic Party of Joe Biden is pushing this so-called Green New Deal. If given power, they would essentially ban animal agriculture and eliminate gas-powered cars. It would destroy the agriculture industry, not just here in Iowa, but throughout the country.

Mr. Biden has promised no such thing. He never endorsed the Green New Deal, much to the frustration of his partys more progressive elements. He has endorsed reinstating higher fuel efficiency standards put in place by President Barack Obama and rescinded by Mr. Trump.

Ms. Ernst, who won in the 2014 Republican wave and faces a tight challenge this year, is betting her best chance to secure re-election is by tethering herself tightly to President Trump. On Wednesday she kept her remarks narrowly focused on Iowa, praising Mr. Trump for visiting the state after a storm damaged much of the state this month.

Like many speakers during the convention, Ms. Ernst laced her remarks with heavy criticism of the national news media and praise for the president, who she said had bent media coverage to his will.

After the storm, Ms. Ernst said, most of the national media looked the other way. To them, Iowa is still just flyover country. She added, When President Trump came to Cedar Rapids, the national media finally did, too.

There is scarce public polling in Iowa, but a poll from The Des Moines Register in June showed Ms. Ernsts Democratic opponent, Theresa Greenfield, ahead by three percentage points. This month, a Monmouth poll showed Ms. Ernst ahead by one point; each candidates polling lead was within the margin of error.

The race has already set fund-raising records for an Iowa Senate contest, and is expected to result in more money spent on TV advertising than ever before in the state.

Ms. Ernsts convention appearance could only be better for her than her 2016 speech in Cleveland, which was largely overshadowed by the debut, directly before she took the stage, of the lock her up chant led by Michael T. Flynn, a Trump campaign adviser at the time. Mr. Flynn spoke for far longer than his allotted time, and Ms. Ernst was given less time to speak than she had planned for.

On Wednesday night, Ms. Ernsts remarks, which were recorded from Des Moines, followed a prerecorded veterans round-table discussion.

In her 2014 campaign, Ms. Ernst pledged to repeal the Affordable Care Act, balance the federal budget and cut spending. Lets make em squeal, she said in a viral ad, highlighting her history castrating hogs on her familys farm.

But after Mr. Trumps election in 2016 Ms. Ernst had an interview with him when he was in search of a running mate she backed away from her campaign promises to become one of the presidents stalwart defenders.

Her first 2020 TV ad echoes Mr. Trumps tone on China.

We rely on Communist China for far too much, from technology to medicine, she said. So Im fighting to bring it home.

For at least a decade, Representative Lee Zeldin of New York has been promoted as a Republican rising star.

Mr. Zeldin, 40, is a lawyer and Iraq war veteran from Long Island who first won election to the New York State Senate in 2010 by campaigning against a payroll tax that funded the New York subway and commuter railways.

Since he was elected to Congress in the 2014 Republican wave, Mr. Zeldin has become a staunch supporter of President Trump, who carried Mr. Zeldins eastern Long Island congressional district by 12 percentage points after Barack Obama had won it in the 2008 and 2012 elections.

Mr. Zeldins defense of Mr. Trump during the initial House impeachment proceedings was so thorough that no Republican spoke more than he did, according to a review of early deposition transcripts last year by NBC News.

On Wednesday night he used his four-minute Republican convention speaking slot to praise Mr. Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner for providing his district in Suffolk County and New York City with personal protective equipment for medical workers caring for coronavirus patients.

Jared Kushner and I were on the phone late one Saturday night, Mr. Zeldin said. The very next day, President Trump announced he was sending us 200,000 N95 masks. He actually delivered more than 400,000.

Mr. Zeldins praise for the Trump administration neglects to mention what was a nationwide shortage in medical-grade masks and other protective equipment for doctors and nurses. The Trump administrations response was a scattershot effort that led to various governors begging the White House for help and offering public praise of Mr. Trump, some of which has been used in footage that has been aired during this weeks Republican National Convention. And New Yorks hospitals were not able to handle all of the patients suffering from the pandemic.

Mr. Zeldin, one of just two Jewish Republicans in Congress, won re-election relatively easily in 2016 and 2018, but faces a significant challenge this year from Nancy Goroff, a chemistry professor at Stony Brook University. The Cook Political Report rates the contest as Lean Republican, and the House Democrats campaign arm on Wednesday added Ms. Goroff to its Red to Blue list of most competitive races.

The Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng on Wednesday praised President Trumps handling of relations with China and said he had shown the courage to stand up to Chinas Communist Party.

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Mike Pence Closes Out Night 3 of the G.O.P. Convention, Making the Case for Trump - The New York Times

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Posted By admin on August 31, 2020

Adin Steinsaltz was an Israeli rabbi who devoted nearly a half-century to translating the Talmud for modern readers, an epic undertaking that unlocked for millions of people a foundational but often impenetrable Jewish text.

He died on 7 August in Jerusalem. He was 83. His death was announced by the Steinsaltz Centre in Israel, which describes as its mission making a world of Jewish knowledge accessible to all, and was reported in publications including the Jerusalem Post, which said the rabbi had been hospitalised for a lung infection. In 2016 he had a stroke that left him unable to speak.

One of the most famous passages in the Old Testament arises in the book of Exodus, when Moses, leader of the enslaved Israelites and their defender before the pharaoh, demands that he let my people go. Rabbi Steinsaltz, as one of the most prominent intellectuals in modern Judaism, adopted a wry take on that ancient cri de coeur: Let my people know.

He was a genius, Walter Reich, a professor at George Washington University and frequent commentator on Jewish thought and affairs, wrote in an email, describing the rabbi as one of the greatest and most consequential scholars of the past thousand years of the Jewish people.

Rabbi Steinsaltz wrote dozens of books, including a seminal volume on Jewish mysticism, The Thirteen Petalled Rose, and commentaries on subjects ranging from philosophy to biblical zoology. In addition to his centre in Jerusalem, he founded religious schools in Israel and the former Soviet Union. He dabbled in science fiction and detective stories, an indulgence allowed, perhaps, by his propensity for 16-hour workdays.

But he was best known for the project that he took on in 1965, when he was in his late twenties and brought his encyclopedic knowledge to bear on an encyclopedic text the Talmud. Its 2,700 folio pages record centuries of rabbinical discourse on a universe of topics relating to ancient Jewish life, from observance of the Sabbath and Kosher dietary laws to agriculture in the Holy Land, civil and criminal law, family relations and Jewish beliefs on the betterment of the world.

Along with the Torah, the Talmud is one of the seminal texts of Judaism. Written in rabbinical Hebrew and Aramaic, it is also deeply arcane, intimidating to nearly all but the most learned scholars, who may devote a lifetime to the study of the Talmud and still consider their understanding of it incomplete. Even translations Rabbi Steinsaltzs was not the first failed to render readily comprehensible the pages that brim to the margins with rabbinical commentaries upon commentaries.

One could not possibly open the Talmud 50 years ago and just start reading it, Lewis Glinert, a professor of Hebrew studies at Dartmouth College, said in an interview. It was in every respect a closed book.

The task that Rabbi Steinsaltz set out for himself was not only to translate the Talmud into modern Hebrew but also to make it user friendly, Glinert said. He added modern punctuation, paragraph divisions, illustrations and extensive background material engendering fury among purists but thrill among uninitiated readers.

This was a way of opening up the Talmud to I wont say the average person, but to Jews and Gentiles who were prepared to invest time and energy into it, Glinert said. For them, it was opening up this whole world ... opening up the ancient Jewish treasures to whoever wants to come and learn.

Rabbi Steinsaltz employed a team of translators who laboured over the task through interruptions including several Middle East wars; a modern Hebrew edition was completed in 2010. The Steinsaltz Talmud (or portions thereof) was translated into several other languages, including English. A volume in Russian was released in 1996.

The Talmud is the central pillar of Jewish knowledge, important for the overall understanding of what is Jewish, Rabbi Steinsaltz once told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. But it is a book that Jews cannot understand. This is a dangerous situation, like a collective amnesia. I tried to make pathways through which people will be able to enter the Talmud without encountering impassable barriers. Its something that will always be a challenge, but I tried to make it at least possible.

Detractors accused Rabbi Steinsaltz of simplifying a text whose wisdom was revealed through the laborious process of deciphering it. Reading the Steinsaltz Talmud in English is like trying to understand what a crossword puzzle is when the words have been filled in, Arthur Samuelson, a reviewer, wrote in The Nation. You get the idea but you miss the point: process is everything.

But even his fiercest critics, according to Reich, are said to hide their copies of the Steinsaltz volumes in brown paper wrappers.

Some American critics, themselves relatively innocent of serious and sustained Talmudic study but moved nonetheless to offer themselves as defenders of the Talmuds purity, have decried Steinsaltzs English edition as false, superficial and a mimicry of the real thing, Reich wrote in 1990.

To say that, however, is to misunderstand the value and purpose of his achievement, the review continued. Whatever simplifications he introduces are more than balanced by the advantages they confer to the student who would otherwise find himself unable to even begin Talmud study.

In 2010, when Rabbi Steinsaltz completed the last of the 45 volumes of his translation, The New York Times reported that 3 million copies had been sold around the world.

According to the Times, Rabbi Steinsaltz was born on 11 July 1937, in Jerusalem, in what was then the British mandate of Palestine. His father, a socialist, fought with the Republicans against Francisco Francos fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War. The intellectuals most venerated in their household were not rabbis but rather Marx, Lenin and Freud.

Nonetheless, Rabbi Steinsaltzs father engaged a Talmudic tutor for him when he was 10 years old. I dont mind about your behaviour or your beliefs, but nobody in our family will be an ignoramus, he recalled his father saying. That exposure to Judaism, along with what Rabbi Steinsaltz described as his innate scepticism towards atheism, led him to Orthodox Judaism.

I came to the point, he told the Times, where the world could not contain my desire for truth. He later became a follower of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Hasidism. Under the guidance of the movements longtime leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, he adopted the Hebraicised surname Even-Israel.

Known throughout his life for his unbridled intellectual curiosity, Rabbi Steinsaltz studied mathematics and physics at university. He worked as a teacher and a principal before devoting himself to his translation of the Talmud.

Since I started the work at a relatively young age, obviously I didnt take into account the immense effort it requires, which includes not only the work of researching and writing, but also many logistical problems, Rabbi Steinsaltz told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in 2009.

But sometimes, when a person knows too much, it causes him to do nothing, he continued, observing that it seems its better, sometimes, for man, as for humanity, not to know too much about the difficulties and believe more in the possibilities.

Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, rabbi, born 11 July 1937, died 7 August 2020

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Adin Steinsaltz: Rabbi who brought the Talmud within reach of millions - The Independent

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Posted By admin on August 31, 2020

Among the 40 manuscripts in this display are works spanning the regions of Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and China, covering subjects as diverse as science, religion, law, magic and philosophy. They includeone of the first Jewish scientific works written in the Hebrew language,one of the few surviving copies of the Babylonian Talmud, and the First Gaster Bible, which dates to the 10th century.Together, these rarely seen and beautifully illustrated manuscripts shine a light on the exchange of knowledge between Jewish communities across the world, from the Middle Ages to modernity. Find out more from the British Librarys website.

Preview below |View Apollos Art Diary here

First Gaster Bible (10th century), Egypt. British Library, London

Marriage contract (1881), Calcutta. British Library, London

A work on the calculation of the calendar (1804), Tiemcen, Algeria. British Library, London

Maimonides Guide for the Perplexed (c. 132574), Spain. British Library, London

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Hebrew Manuscripts: Journeys of the Written Word - Apollo Magazine

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Posted By admin on August 31, 2020

The German socialist thinker Erich Fromm is an unjustly neglected figure, certainly when compared with his erstwhile Frankfurt School colleagues, such as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. Fromms analysis of authoritarian culture offers what is in many ways a more grounded alternative to the influential theories of Horkheimer and Adorno, and reveals a distinctly more optimistic and hopeful engagement with the question of radical social change.

Scholarship on the Frankfurt School and critical theory has minimized Fromms contribution, continuing a trend that Max Horkheimer himself inaugurated after Fromms departure from the Frankfurt Institute in 1939. This has left us with a picture of Frankfurt School critical theory that is rather one-sided, lacking a serious account of Fromms thought and his influential critique of authoritarianism.

Fromms story shows us that a critique of authoritarian culture that points out the strong tendencies toward passivity and reaction in the general populace can retain its central thrust while also maintaining some of the optimism of the original Marxian critique of capitalism, and its orientation towards political action in the here and now.

Fromm was born in 1900, into a middle-class, orthodox Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main. His initial plan on leaving school was to become a Talmud scholar; instead, his father persuaded him to study Law at Frankfurt University, where he lasted less than a year before transferring to Heidelbergs Ruprecht-Karls-University to study Nationalkonomie (National Economics).

In Heidelberg, under the tutelage of Alfred Weber (brother of Max), Karl Jaspers, Hans Driesch, and Heinz Rickert, Fromm attended classes on the history of philosophy and psychology, social and political movements, and the theory of Marxism. During this period, Fromm continued his Talmud studies side-by-side with his academic work. The Romantic socialism of his Talmud teacher, Salman Rabinkov, was particularly influential.

Like Max Horkheimer, Fromm refrained from direct involvement in socialist politics during these early years. He was a member of neither the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) nor the German Communist Party (KPD). Fromms strongest engagement at this time remained his Jewish studies. He helped set up an influential Jewish Teaching Institute (Freies Jdisches Lehrhaus), at which he lectured along with figures such as Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Leo Baeck, and Siegfried Kracauer. He also set up a sanatorium in Heidelberg with his future wife, Freida Fromm-Reichmann, for the specific psychoanalytic treatment of Jewish patients.

Fromms interest in Marxism grew from the mid-1920s in the period that Karl Korsch dubbed the crisis of Marxism during which he studied at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute. Fromm, who had by this point renounced Judaism, was part of a group of young dissident socialist thinkers, including Wilhelm Reich and Otto Fenichel, who were concerned with applying the ideas of psychoanalysis to social issues.

This group, like many others in Germany at the time, wanted to understand why socialism had thus far failed to materialize in Germany, despite the fact that it had a large working class and a highly organized labor movement. Influenced by the critique of mechanical Marxism that Georg Lukcs and Karl Korsch had inaugurated, they tried to identify what might be called the subjective barriers to socialism and believed that psychoanalysis could play a particularly important role in illuminating those barriers.

During this period, Fromm made the acquaintance of Max Horkheimer, who was also interested in the potential for psychoanalysis to make sense of the failures of socialism. Horkheimer at this time was affiliated with the famous Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, set up in 1923 by Felix Weil, son of a wealthy businessman father and former student of Karl Korsch. Although the institute was initially modelled along the lines of an orthodox Marxist institute of labour studies, when Horkheimer became director in 1930 its focus shifted toward the interdisciplinary mixing of social philosophy with the empirical social sciences, and particularly the mixing of sociological and psychoanalytical concerns. At Horkheimers instigation, Fromm received an invitation to join the Institute, where he and Horkheimer were to be the central intellectual force in these early years, pioneering the fusion of psychoanalysis and Marxism long before Theodor Adorno entered the picture.

At the Institute, Fromm took charge of an innovative empirical study of manual and white-collar German workers. Making use of a detailed questionnaire distributed to some 3,300 workers, the study sought to analyse the relationship between the psychological make-up of the workers and their political opinions. The questionnaire revealed that the majority of respondents associated themselves with the left-wing slogans of their party, but that their radicalism was considerably weaker when it came to more subtle and seemingly unpolitical questions.

Fromm concluded that roughly 10 percent of the participants were authoritarian, roughly 15 percent were democratic/humanistic, and the remaining 75 percent were somewhere between the two. The authoritarians, he predicted, would support a future fascist political movement, while the democrats/humanists would stand up and oppose them. The problem was that the democratic/humanistic segment might not be strong enough to defeat the authoritarian 10 percent if those in the middle were psychologically unprepared to resist the authoritarians.

Although the study itself wasnt published until the 1980s, under the title The Working Class in Weimar Germany partly because of the subsequent breakdown in Fromms relationship with Horkheimer it clearly shone considerable light on what was to transpire under the Nazi regime. It was also a rare example of empirical research into the lives and attitudes of the working class from within the Frankfurt School tradition.

Fromm remained an important part of the Institutes work for much of the 1930s. He was largely responsible for the relocation of the Institute to the US in response to the Nazi takeover, making personal contact with scholars at Columbia University, where the Institute eventually settled. He was also pivotal to the Institutes continuing research on authoritarianism, and played a central role in the 1936 Studien ber Autoritt und Familie (Studies on Authority and the Family) a 1,000-page preliminary report which helped pave the way for the Institutes more famous work on The Authoritarian Personality.

However, Fromms revision of Freud during this period began to alienate him from Horkheimer. Fromm argued that the key problem of psychology was how individuals relate to one another and to the society around them and not a matter of predetermined libidinal stages (anal, oral, genital, etc.) as was the case in Freud. The burgeoning intellectual relationship between Horkheimer and Adorno contributed further to this sense of alienation. Fromm left the Institute towards the end of 1939.

Not long after his departure from the Institute, Fromm broke onto the US intellectual scene with his work Escape from Freedom (1941). The books central theme was that Europe had sacrificed its progress over the course of centuries towards ever greater forms of political freedom and even towards socialism through its capitulation to fascism. Fromm wanted to explain how Nazism had taken hold in Germany, and why so many individuals had come to support Hitler.

He put forward the notion of a sadomasochistic or authoritarian character, which combines strivings for submission and for domination to provide the human basis for authoritarian rule. Fromm wanted to transcend simplistic explanations of Nazism that depicted it as an exclusively political or economic phenomenon, without falling back on purely psychological theories (suggesting that Hitler was mad, and his followers equally so). He sought to understand Nazism as both a psychological and a socio-economic problem.

Like most Marxist analyses at the time, Fromm focused on the role of the lower middle classes. He argued that certainsocioeconomic and political changes had left a deep psychological mark, removing traditional supports and mechanisms of self-esteem. Those changes included the declining status of this class in the face of monopoly capitalism and hyperinflation, as well as the defeat Germany had suffered in the First World War.

Fromm identified deep feelings of anxiety and powerlessness upon which Hitler had been able to capitalize. His sadomasochistic message of love for the strong and hatred for the weak not to mention a racial program that raised true-born Germans to the pinnacle of the evolutionary ladder provided a means of escape from intolerable psychological burdens experienced on a mass basis.

Escape Fromm Freedom was not merely an analysis of Nazism. At the heart of its thesis was the notion that capitalism particularly in its monopolistic phase fostered the development of a personality which feels powerless and alone, anxious and insecure, and which is therefore tempted to surrender its freedom to strong-man leaders.

Fromms analysis explicitly spoke of the conditions for fascism which existed in the US: the effects of the Great Depression, the existence of increasingly mechanized forms of factory work, the prevalence of political propaganda and hypnoid forms of advertising, interacting with a purported psychological tendency toward automaton conformity on the part of a significant percentage of the population.

Fromm returned to the theme of social conformity fourteen years later in The Sane Society (1955), which identified a widespread, socially patterned pathology of normalcy governing advanced capitalist societies. The Sane Societyengaged in an extended critique of mid-twentieth-century US society, which for Fromm was essentially a bureaucratic form of mass-consumer capitalism.

As part of this critique, Fromm utilized the notion of the marketing orientation to describe what he saw as the newly dominant personality type in US society. This notion was clearly a social-psychological refraction of the Marxian notion of alienation, with the idea that humans were alienated from themselves and their own powers and capacities. For Fromm, the marketing orientation denoted a mode of existence in which people experienced themselves and others as commodities literally as something to be marketed.

Fromm wanted to transcend simplistic explanations of Nazism that depicted it as an exclusively political or economic phenomenon

The Sane Society did show a certain affinity with the emphasis of the other Frankfurt School theorists on the integration of the working class into capitalist society. But there was a greater sense in Fromms work of the possibilities for change, even if he did not identify a particular social agent that would be responsible for such change. Fromm devoted considerable space to practical alternatives, including an extended analysis of communitarian work practices, such as Marcel Barbus watch-case factory at Boimandau.

The Sane Society was also notable for its criticism of aspects of the Marxist project, especially concerning the traditional concept of revolution. Fromm believed that there was a profound psychological error in the famous statement that concludes The Communist Manifesto, suggesting that the workers had nothing to lose but their chains. As well as their chains, the workers also had something else to lose: all the irrational needs and satisfactions which had originated while they were wearing those chains.

Fromm argued that we need an expanded concept of revolution: in terms not only of external barriers, but of internal, subjective barriers as well. Such a concept would address the roots of sadomasochistic passions, such as sexism, racism, nationalism, and other deformities of individual and social character that arent necessarily going to disappear rapidly in the context of a new society.

Fromm continued his analysis of the subjective barriers to a true humanistic socialism in The Art of Loving (1956), perhaps his best-known work. He was adamant that there was a deep incompatibility between the principle underlying capitalistic society and the principle of love. The criticism of love which, for Fromm, is not a phenomenon restricted to its romantic manifestations was therefore also a criticism of capitalism, and of the ways in which it obstructed genuine forms of love that would be realized in a more human society. Fromm demanded that we analyse the conditions for the possibility of realizing love and integrity in the present society and seek to strengthen them.

During the 1950s, Fromm joined the American Socialist PartySocial Democratic Federation (SPSDF) and sought to influence its program. The resulting document, published as Let Man Prevail (1958), set out Fromms distinctive form of Marxism, which he called radical humanism. The text was full of criticism of the USSR as a form of vulgarized, distorted socialism.

What Fromm offered in its place was a democratic, humanist form of socialism that placed the human being at the center. He finished with a set of short- and medium-term goals, including proposals to increase grassroots participation in the economic, social, educational, and political spheres.

At the very time when Horkheimer and Adorno were moving further away from organized politics, in the shadow of Auschwitz, Fromm, the most Jewish of all the Frankfurt School thinkers, was moving towards it. He continued on this path in the 1960s. May Man Prevail? (1960) was an analysis of Soviet Communism intended to influence a move to unilateral disarmament during the Cold War.

Fromms extended critique of Stalinism and post-Stalinist Khrushchevism also stressed the managerial and bureaucratic similarities between the Soviet and American systems. His text referred approvingly to the anti-colonial revolutions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and there were some sharp words directed at Western hypocrisy.

In Marxs Concept of Man (1961), Fromm turned back towards Marx. The book contained the first full English translation of Marxs 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, which became a key reference point for Marxist humanism, prefaced by a few short essays on Marx and his philosophy. Fromm sought to restore Marxism to its original form as a new humanism, cleansed of the distortions of Soviet and Chinese Communism.

Marxs Concept of Man helped popularize Marx in the US and challenged some misunderstood views of his thought that predominated in the English-speaking world at the time. The book was not without its problems. In a letter to the Russian-American Marxist Raya Dunayevskaya, Fromm himself admitted that his account of Marx was too abstract. All the same, it is notable that Fromms engagement focused on the whole of Marxs work. Fromm rejected the idea of a sharp break between the early Marx and the late Marx, promoted by figures such as the French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser.

Fromms renewed engagement with Marx continued with the publication of Beyond the Chains of Illusion in 1962. In this work, Fromm further developed his Freudian-Marxist social-psychological theory of social character. This included an attempt to bolster the Marxian theory of ideology that praised the unacknowledged psychological insights in Marxs work. Fromm also explicitly praised Marx as a thinker of much greater depth and scope than Freud, underlining the centrality of Marx to his own project.

Fromm also played a leading role in the publication of Socialist Humanism: An International Symposium (1965). In this volume, he assembled a global collection of humanist Marxists and socialists, drawn largely from Eastern Europe (with many from the Yugoslav Praxis school), but also from Africa and India. Contributors included Herbert Marcuse, Raya Dunayevskaya, Karel Kosk, Gajo Petrovi, Mihailo Markovi, Lopold Senghor, Ernst Bloch, and Maximilien Rubel.

Fromm remained a prominent figure on the US Left over the years that followed, despite living mostly in Mexico. Unlike Horkheimer and Adorno, who refused to criticize the Vietnam War, Fromm was vocal in his anti-war stance. He gave many speeches on college campuses and even wrote speeches for Senator Eugene McCarthys 196768 anti-war challenge to Lyndon Johnson in the Democratic primaries.

In this capacity, Fromm drafted a long Memo on Political Alternatives that identified a series of democratic, grassroots movements, essentially similar to those outlined in The Sane Society, that could form the basis for a mass movement of people. The memo appeared in print as The Revolution of Hope (1968) after McCarthys failed presidential bid.

Fromm steadfastly defended himself against critics who accused him of social-democratic reformism, including his old friend Herbert Marcuse. Referring to the apparent hopelessness of Marcuses account of critical theory in his 1964 book One-Dimensional Man, Fromm suggested that if one is not concerned with the steps between the present and the future, one does not deal with politics, radical or otherwise.

From the late 1960, after a series of heart attacks, Fromms political engagement slackened, and his energies turned more towards academic concerns. Even so, Fromm did not sever his connections with left-wing causes. His 1973 book The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness engaged with contemporary academic discussions of human nature, challenging the view of that nature as innately aggressive and avaricious that would provide intellectual ballast for the neoliberal era.

The last of Fromms social and political writings, To Have or To Be? (1976), appeared after he had returned to Europe from Mexico. He took up again the discussion of Marxs Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, integrating them with a critique of capitalisms ecological destructiveness that helped inspire the European Green movement. Once again, Fromm worked the text around his call for practical economic, social, and political reforms, this time moving even closer to Marx in proclaiming what he saw as the beginning and rapidly increasing decline of capitalism.

In one of his few comments on Max Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School, written toward the end of his life, Fromm gave a sense of what he considered to be the nature of critical theory:

As far as I know, the whole thing is a hoax, because Horkheimer was frightened . . . of speaking about Marxs theory. He used general Aesopian language and spoke of critical theory in order not to say Marxs theory. I believe that that is all behind this discovery of critical theory by Horkheimer and Adorno.

While Fromms writings did pay insufficient attention to the waves of labor unrest in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, unlike Horkheimer, h did not view the rise of fascism as having marked the final defeat of the socialist project. Instead, the experience of fascism spurred Fromm deeper into forms of left-wing political engagement, characterized by a spirit of radical hope and optimism, and a return to Marx that was intended to help revive the Left on a mass basis.

In many ways, Fromm is the Frankfurt School thinker most suited to the current age. His vision was attentive to the interrelations between economics, culture, and human emotions, and avoided the pitfalls of either melancholic resignation or schematic determinism. He placed the regressive and reactionary tendencies of the present firmly at the forefront of his analysis, yet also sought to identify tangible avenues for progress.

Kieran DurkinThe International Marxist-Humanist

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opinion

Yossi J. Liebowitz| Special to the Spartanburg Herald-Journal

The Yiddish writer Scholem Aleichem was rightfully called the Jewish Mark Twain. Folksy and wise, humorous and passionate he chronicled the social and political changes afflicting the Jewish people in the late 19thcentury. His stories about Tevye the Milkman eventually found their way to Broadway in the hugely popular musical "Fiddler on the Roof," translated and produced in dozens of countries around the world.

One of Aleichems most famous anecdotes concerned a conversation between three townsmen of the ghetto. After the first argued one point in a debate, Tevye said: Youre right! And then after the other debater argued his point, Tevye also said: Youre right! A fourth man hearing him support the assertions of both townspeople protested, He is right and he is right? How can they both be right? to which Tevye responded; You know, youre also right!

Comical, the dialogue was nevertheless embracing a desperately needed attitude which so eludes our argument culture, a phrase used in the tumultuous 1970s.The encyclopedia of Jewish lore and law called the Talmud celebrates a similar dynamic exhibited by two ancient sages by the names of Hillel and Shammai. Renowned for their differences in which the former was more lenient, they once vigorously debated a point of Jewish tradition. Eventually, as the legend would have it, a Divine voice emerged from the heavens and declared that both viewpoints were both worthy. It thundered from the beyond:These words and those words are the words of the living God, even though Hillels position was ultimately favored.

In the spirit of Aleichem, the sages mused; how was it possible that both positions could be celebrated earning Gods favor. They concluded that the ability of these men to show restraint when affronted by their opponent was what merited the praise of God. More than that, when they later discussed and taught the traditions and cited the dispute, they would teach their opponents views. As we live in a most tribal era in which polarization best defines our political and religious discourse, we would do well to celebrate these ancient teachings.How to, as the saying would have it, disagree without being disagreeable.

At times when I hear a Supreme Court decision promulgated in the news, I am happily struck by the American tradition of citing both the minority and the majority opinions. How our country is in dire need of that kind of spirit which tamps down our verbal pugilism!The name-calling, the labeling, the mockery of others is nothing new in the American experiment. Lincoln was portrayed in cartoons and his speech compared to an ape. Roosevelt was mocked for his programs, some of which took on anti-Semitic tones when the New Deal was called the Jew Deal! As Ecclesiastes once asserted, there is nothing new under the sun." But are these heated expressions nothing new? Our new forms of communication from Facebook to Messenger to emails and other poorly reviewed expressions have only amplified the vitriol.As our tough times are marked by civil strife, economic upheaval and the pain of the pandemic, it is so sad to see how the verbal assaults being hurled. How we yearn for statesmen and stateswomen to embrace the ancient spirit of Hillel and Shammai. I believe that more than anything, such could be the salvation of this nations spirit, and to quote one contemporary writer a reclaiming of the soul of America!

Yossi J. Liebowitz, rabbi of Congregation Bnai Israel in Spartanburg, can be reached at EZRabbi@aol.com.

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Religious education doesnt have to be put on hold as pandemic protocols continue into autumn school days. This weeks clergy discuss online resources parents can use to tutor kids in their faith, including workbooks, catechisms and colorful cartoon videos.

Rabbi Karen Reiss Medwed of Plainview

Member, Joint Beit Din of the Conservative Movement; Assistant Dean, Networks and Digital Engagement, Graduate School of Education, Northeastern University

This year many parents are facing difficult choices for schooling their childrenand, for some, the most reasonable answer is to opt into schooling at home.

Many online resources for Jewish education are accessible for parents schooling from home. PJ Library (pjlibrary.org/home) hosts a robust website to accompany its book distribution. Myjewishlearning.com provides resources in the written word, videos, quizzes and even recipes. For the older child, sefaria.org is a sophisticated digital collection of Jewish primary sources, as well as study guides and resources on a wide range of topics.

In the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Kiddushin 29a, the rabbis instruct: A parent is obligated with regard to the child to teach Torah to teach a trade, and some say a parent is also obligated to teach a child to swim. Parents now face many difficult obligations teaching their children at home. Instructing your own children in your religious heritage offers a healthy opportunity to imbue them with values and morals as well as practical tools and skills for growing and sustaining themselves. Online resources can enhance and supplement the love and pride a parent instills in their child'sreligious instruction.

The Rev. Kevin OHara

Education on Long Island is changing. Find out how.

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Pastor, Lutheran Church of Our Savior, Patchogue

During the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, Martin Luther evaluated the religious education being performed within churches and found it seriously wanting. Many pastors were distorting or picking and choosing Bible stories while ignoring the overarching theme of Gods salvation.

And if pastors werent trained correctly, how much less should be expected from the family? From this, Martin Luther wrote "Small Catechism," a short book that explores the Ten Commandments, Lords Prayer and Apostles Creed in child-friendly questions. Many Lutherans have memorized the whole book. Its available for free in the Google and Apple app stores (look for Luthers Small Catechism).

At this time we need to return to our congregations, which have been working diligently to figure out how to live in a COVID-19 world. Many of us have planned online classes. My congregation will help parents carry out Christian learning in daily activities that include monthly prizes for kids. Ask your pastor about kid-friendly Bibles available at Amazon and other sites, online kids weekly bulletins at childrensbulletins.com (a subscriber service from which they can print to do during and after worship) and websites that promote correct faith practices.

Mahmood Kauser

Imam, Ahmadiyya Muslim Community with mosques in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Amityville

In mid-March our mosques made the necessary decision to freeze activities and programs to stop the spread of the coronavirus. The greatest resource that was available for religious studies was the virtual connection via videoconferencing.

Moral education is ideally conducted through personal relationships, which we continued online with weekly classes, presentations and webinars. Recently, the Khalifa and Head of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, Mirza Masroor Ahmad, held a historic virtual class with 220 Canadian students, ushering in a new era of religious education. It was unique in the Muslim world for a spiritual leader to take such a direct and active role in the upbringing of future leaders. This has established a blueprint for our mosques around the globe to continue training and educating youth for a brighter future.

For parents who want to continue their childrens Muslim education at home during the pandemic, I recommend the website of the Tahir Academy, which provides religious education for more than 4,000 Ahmadi Muslim boys and girls in the United States. Online workbooks, links to colorful animated lessons for young children and other resources are available at the academys website, tahiracademy.org.

DO YOU HAVE QUESTIONS youd like Newsday to ask the clergy? Email them to LILife@newsday.com.

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The Sephardim have begun this week to recite the Selichot penitential poems and prayers, including at the Kotel. In keeping with the Health Ministrys pandemic regulations, service is conducted in separate capsules to limit the number of participants and allow them to maintain social distancing.

In the Sephardic tradition, recital of Selichot in preparation for the High Holidays begins on the second day of the Hebrew month of Elul. In the Ashkenazic tradition, it begins on the Saturday night before Rosh Hashanah.

If, however, the first day of Rosh Hashanah falls on Monday or Tuesday, Selichot are said beginning the Saturday night prior, to ensure that Selichot are recited at least four times.

This may be because originally the pious fasted for ten days during the season of repentance, and four days before Rosh Hashanah were added to compensate for the four of the Ten days of Repentance on which fasting is forbidden the two days of Rosh Hashanah, Shabbat Shuvah, and the day preceding Yom Kippurand, while the fasts have since been abandoned, the Selichot that accompanied them have been retained.

Alternatively, the Rosh Hashanah liturgy includes the Biblical phrase, you shall observe a burnt offering, and like an offering which needs to be scrutinized for defects for four days, so too four days of self-searching are needed before the day of judgment.

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August 31, 2020 by Rabbi Raymond Apple

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Ask the rabbi.

AN EYE FOR AN EYE

Q. Does Judaism really teach an eye for an eye (Ex. 21:4)?

A. The lex talionis (an eye for an eye) is understood as requiring a criminal to pay compensation.

It is not a primitive law of revenge whereby if you injured my eye, I injure yours.

It also establishes that the compensation paid by a criminal is not affected by whether the criminal is a noble or the victim is a slave.

The law of capital punishment (seen as necessary on the statute book in order to highlight the gravity of offences such as bloodshed) was hardly ever applied.

The sages of the Mishnah (Makkot 1:10) say that a court which imposes the death penalty is a bloodthirsty court.

FINDING A RABBI

Q. What is it about rabbis that makes it so hard to find a suitable one for our synagogue?

A. If I believed in old jokes I would simply say the rabbinate is not a job for a Jewish boy.

But the subject is too serious to be brushed aside with tired witticisms that were never really witty anyhow.

The paradox is that more people than ever before are learning Torah, but less and less want to be community rabbis.

Some taste the profession and give it up after a few years. One former rabbi used to say, I was a pulpit rabbi for twenty years and then I went straight!

One explanation is that the life is hard, it tells on the rabbi and his family, and it constantly upsets you when your community is unresponsive to your message of piety and prayer.

The community judges its rabbi by his television charisma, his platform oratory, his tolerance (especially towards his congregants transgressions), his ability to mix, mingle, and tell jokes. The rabbi judges himself by his ability to be a man of Torah and to convey the timeless teachings of the tradition.

Both sides find the other wanting and quickly determine to divorce one another.

Whom do I blame?

The community, for being unfair and making a mockery out of the rabbinic profession especially for calling the rabbis spiritual leaders and not letting them lead.

The rabbi, for not always being prepared to take a long-haul view and realising that true progress is bound to be slow.

The elder statesmen on both sides, for not properly mentoring the rabbi and the community.

I also blame the more religious and learned groups within the community. So what if they think they could do a better job than the rabbi? If they are so competent and clever, let them try being the rabbi for a change.

The Rav of Lublin was once asked where he expected to find rabbinic positions for his 300 yeshivah students, and he replied, I dont want them all to be rabbis; I want one to be a rabbi and the other 299 to be supportive and helpful.

FOR RICHER FOR POORER A THOUGHT FOR THE MONTH OF ELLUL

The month of Tishri when we observe the High Holydays is awesome and demanding, but the previous month, Ellul, is even harder.

In Tishri we face the Almighty Judge but in Ellul we get ready for the court appearance, and that is when we should really shake with dread.

Of course many people use the days and weeks before facing the music of any kind looking for alibis and excuses that might mitigate the sentence.

I wasnt there, Your Honour, when the crime was committed Everybody knows I am incapable of committing a crime I have a psychological condition and cannot be held fully responsible for my actions

We all become paragons of virtue at times like these anything to avoid being given a heavy sentence.

A modern syndrome? Far from it.

The Talmud (Yoma 35b) records what people in those days might say when asked why they did not study Torah and keep away from sin. I was too poor, one might claim. Another: I was too rich. A third: I was busy with my health and looks.

The first one was told, Were you poorer than Hillel? He had hardly any assets yet nothing would ever get in the way of his learning Torah.

The second one was told, Were you richer than Elazar ben Harsom? He had a huge business yet nothing impeded his Torah study.

The third one was told, Were you better looking than Joseph in the Bible? Yet he would not succumb to the temptation to sin!

We can look for excuses but what is best in the end is to confess, Aval anachnu chatanu We admit our failings; we have indeed sinned.

Thats what should occupy our minds in Ellul, the month of real trepidation.

Rabbi Raymond Apple served for 32 years as the chief minister of the Great Synagogue, Sydney, Australias oldest and most prestigious congregation. He is now retired and lives in Jerusalem where he answers interesting questions.

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In 2004, a controversial mockumentary-style film was released. A Day Without a Mexican, directed by Sergio Arau, offered its take on immigration issues facing the United States by imagining California without its crucial Latinx workforce. Crops are left unharvested, restaurants are left unstaffed and households are left unmanaged. In this 100-minute dystopia, the viewer cant help but notice how every aspect of our states day-to-day lives are touched by the absence of Latinxs, be it on a personal or economic level.

As Reform rabbis, we recently heard from colleagues around the country that some families are considering a temporary break from synagogue life.

Families arent quite sure where synagogue in general, and Jewish education in particular, fit into their lives as we all try to prepare for a year of unprecedented realities. This year has become the year of unknowns; distance learning in secular schools, hybrid models, canceled sports, virtual extracurriculars. With these concerns as a baseline for families, it is simply too difficult to also imagine virtual High Holidays, reimagined Jewish education and a Jewish community that doesnt gather together in person.

Many rabbis are terrified that we will hear in our own synagogues, I think well just have to take this year off Can we wait and see what happens in January? Im not sure we can manage anything extra right now.

These are sentiments expressed by families who are clearly struggling, stressed and holding so much disappointment.

Before anyone in our community considers this response, we hope they will consider a broader picture:

Quite simply, if everyone were to have A Year Without a Synagogue, would there be synagogues when people are ready to return? This is a serious concern. As nonprofit organizations that rely on the support of our members, all synagogues, big and small, are concerned about sustainability.

Your congregation remains a place of gathering virtually or in person. We are a community. We hold sacred space. Supporting a synagogue is completely different from utilizing a fee-for-service institution. We are not providing after-school care or tap lessons or physical fitness. Our value cannot be measured only by programs.

It is precisely at this moment that members need to support the most important things in their lives. This is the moment to show up in larger numbers than ever before.

Synagogues are extensions of our homes where Jewish life is marked and celebrated. Synagogues are the people who show up at your door with a meal, the phone calls when you have lost someone you loved, the rabbi who is there to listen.

For our children, synagogues are the place where they are nurtured and loved without the pressures of secular school. Synagogues are where we grapple with big ideas. They are a place for identity experimentation and self-expression. A place where ethics are upheld, and love and kindness prevail. Through our synagogues, the world is healed. Synagogues bring families together to honor sacred time. During hard times, they are where we learn to handle challenges and where resilience is built.

And, yes, we cannot hide the fact that synagogues cost money to run. Like many small businesses and nonprofits, our doors have been closed during Covid-19, but our operations are running. Mortgages, staff and infrastructure all cost money and all are necessary to support Jewish life.

Without membership dues, tuition from religious schools and donations, we simply would not exist.

The attitude of taking a year off implies a diffusion of responsibility. It says it is someone elses job to support the ongoing expenses of synagogues while washing ones own hands of the obligation. When Rabbi Hillel taught, Do not separate yourself from the community,he reminded us that each is responsible for our community.

Jewish synagogue life is not here to add additional work or stress to ones life. It is here to be a place that holds emotion, whether joyful or disappointing. Yes, it takes commitment. Those commitments come in the form of time, money, energy and emotional investment. Ideally, what one gets out of belonging to a synagogue cant be measured by any standard metric. It can only be measured in feelings of love, community, and connection to each other and to the Divine (or to something greater than ourselves).

Some families still may consider pausing and taking A Year Without a Synagogue.

But we hope this is not the case.

If families do pause, we can hope that when they are ready to return, our synagogues will be here, having weathered the harsh realities of the pandemic. In the meantime, synagogues will persevere by teaching, praying, grieving, celebrating and hoping. We will continue to be places of thriving Jewish life.

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A year without a synagogue? J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

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