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reading history is not enough. New forms arise.

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Opinion | The Attacks on Zohran Mamdani Show That We Need a New Understanding of Antisemitism

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It may be time to rethink the tragic events in Washington and Boulder.

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The Transformation of Hebrew Script: From Paleo-Hebrew to Aramaic - TheTorah.com

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Before the exile, Israelites and Judahites wrote in Old Hebrew script. During the Second Temple period, Aramaic script slowly replaces Old Hebrew to the extent that the rabbis even disqualify a Torah scroll written in Old Hebrew. | Prof. Aaron Koller

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It's a misnomer to say that Israeli Jews are not religious, according to Yair Lapid, head of the opposition party in Israel today.

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Israel's Judaism is the path to hope, not extremism | Opinion

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Our Treasure Chest, Our Jewish-Israeli Treasure Chest Is One Abundantly Filled With Culture, Historical Consciousness and the Love of Our Homeland. Our Jewish-I

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Reading Torah: Debunking the Conquest Narrative

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Reading Torah: Debunking the Conquest Narrative

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the actual history of the region is far more fascinating - and feels way too familiar.

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facing one of the hardest narrative arcs in the Bible armed with the truth of what really happened

This is Life as a Sacred Text 🌱, an expansive, loving, everybody-celebrating, nobody-diminished, justice-centered voyage into one of the world's most ancient and holy books. We're working our way through Numbers these days. More about the project , and to subscribe to this 100% NAZI-FREE CONTENT, go here
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So. Friends.

Now we begin Bamidbar/Numbers in earnest.

And we start right in with the real stuff, where the rubber hits the road.

Numbers begins with a census. And... the beginnings of a military draft.

On the first day of the second month, in the second year after the exodus from the land of Egypt, God spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, saying: Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head. You and Aaron shall record them by their groups, from the age of twenty years up, all those in Israel who are able to bear arms. (Numbers 1:1-3)

We've left Egypt, we've built the Tabernacle, we've been traveling with it for long enough to get sorted out with sacrifices and everything, and now it's time to start getting serious.

About- according to this narrative- getting ready for the upcoming war that may be necessary as the Israelites prepare to enter the Holy Land.

Yeahhh, war. Because, like, there are other people there already.

BIBLE SPOILER ALERT: Eventually, the Israelites make it to the Holy Land, wage war and kill a lot of people, as commanded. They take the land- as God had told them to.

Needless to say, we cannot elide or avoid engaging with this.

But nor will we engage with it on a purely surface level.

Because that's not what happens in this space.

OK, kids, I'll be the one to say it: The Divine-Authorized Conquest Of The Holy Land is a horrendous, toxic narrative that has not only been used to justify the Crusades, European colonialism,(1) the Occupation, the current atrocities being committed against the people of Gaza as we speak (2) and more.

Those of us for whom these texts are part of our sacred tradition(s) cannot continue dancing around this. That after "Genesis was about a family that was more dysfunctional and traumatic than what we usually say, like how most people are about their actual families," and then "we were enslaved, and that's an easier part of the story to tell, because particularly for people(s) with histories of oppression and epigenetic trauma, in the sense that there is a logic to the Exodus and how it fits into our self-conception," (3) there was part three of the narrative arc: "And then we were told by God to go take the Promised Land, by force if need be, no major stress about land rights or war ethics with regards to the current locals."

We cannot pretend that this massive narrative arc is not here. We cannot pretend that it has not done innumerable damage to many peoples and places over the course of history.

But what we can do is begin where we so often begin with the hardest stuff: By first putting down anchors in historical context.
If there's one thing that everything seems to be relatively in agreement about, it's that this (community, and narrative) was an inside job.
So what's going on here?

Well, one thing I can tell you for sure that isn't going on, one thing that seems to have rather clear scholarly consensus (which, given that we're talking about aaaancient history, is really saying something) is that the

Here's what we know:

There are 300 or so early Israelite Iron Age villages in the highlands north of Jerusalem, dating to about 1200 BCE.

Some posit that these villages developed in waves from the mid- Bronze Age- over a series of demographic and political changes, but really culminating in the collapse of the Bronze Age.

It's possible that the earliest inhabitants were pastoral-nomadic locals who settled down, finally. It's possible some were from the city-state regime of the lowlands ruled by the Canaanite elite, but were marginalized or dissenting and decided to leave for political reasons. It's possible that climate change played a role- a severe dry spell ca. 1250-1100 BCE (heralding the end of the Bronze Age) may have shifted the economy from specialization to more of a self-sufficient method, and/or sent people in search of... greener pastures. Perhaps they were joined by Canaanite nomads from other parts. Perhaps some of those "other parts" brought theological ideas (from Midian? Somewhere else?) that turned out to have changed the course of history. There's a lot we don't know.

And though there are other theories as well, they also debunk the conquest myth:

Dr. Tzemah Yoreh puts it,
Many people suggest that, ultimately, the first Israelites were actually (in whole or in part) Canaanites who set up shop somewhere new and eventually developed an independent tribal/religious identity.
Another origin theory is that they came from somewhere very early on, and settled [in these villages], and that there were wars, but not the genocidal ones posited by the biblical story, and that they were not conclusive ones. [The process was one of a g]radual settling over many generations, so [in many or most senses they were] virtually indistinguishable from the Canaanites. There is evidence that this was one of the Northern Israel myths of origin. And it could definitely be a combination of these factors and others as well. I think we don't know.

But it sure seems that by 1200 BCE and beyond, these villages really started to become hopping, and the tribes of people who would eventually be known as the Israelites began to grow in earnest around then.

And it seems that the land that they inhabited was not built on the top of anyone else's ruins. They didn't conquer anybody. They just found new spots and set up camp.

As noted archeologist Israel Finkelstein understands it:

The authors of the Bible, people from Judah at the end of the seventh century BCE, in the period of King Josiah, had a long score to settle with the northern kingdom, with its splendor and richness.

But! Then the Assyrian Empire conquers the northern kingdom in 721 BCE, causing untold devastation, and sending refugees from the north into Judah. (This is also the time of the "ten lost tribes," another story for another day.) Not long after, though, the Assyrian Empire began collapsing under the weight of the Babylonians. Poof.

Finkelstein said:

Josiah woke up one morning, looked to his left and to his right, and there was neither an Assyrian nor an Israelite to be seen. And then his officials decided to put into practice their religious and territorial ideas...Because they wanted to seize control of the territories of the kingdom of Israel and annex them, because, they said, `These territories are actually ours and if you have a minute, we'll tell you how that's so. The people of Judah started to market the story of Joshua's conquest of the land, which was also written in that period, in order to give moral justification to their territorial longings, to the conquest of the territories of Israel. The story also contains a `laundering' of foreigners, which was exactly the problem Josiah faced when he conquered Israel.... [aka] 'Our conquest is not really what it looks like, it is only the restoration of past glories.'(4)

"We were here before! This was ours previously! We're all one people, guys! And, uh, Our-Deity-worshipping foreigners showing up and conquering this land is exactly what God wants and commands us to do!" (5)

Prof. Rachel Havrelock, author of The Joshua Generation: Israeli Occupation and the Bible, has a slightly different take, suggesting that, rather, the narrative was- while still composed by the folks at State Central, Judah, intended to shore up support for a united front in the face of the Assyrian threat, and the violence directed at the out-groups was meant as an implicit threat to keep in-group members in line:

Rather than descendants of twelve sons of Jacob, I understand the twelve tribes of Israel as groups that at some point pledged allegiance to a centralized state or protostate... The groups that did not affiliate with state centralization, I propose, appear in biblical texts as interloping peoples of the land ineligible for marriage with Israelites.

The vitriolic, murderous stance against the peoples of Canaan, as I understand it, begins as a rhetorical attack on groups resistant to nationalization and crystallizes in their demonization as a corrupting presence deserving extermination. Foremost among the points that I want to make here is that Canaanites, Jebusites, and the various peoples of the land were likely not ethnically or racially different from the tribes of Israel. It seems rather that the mark of their difference arises from the unwillingness of these groups to participate in a movement toward state centralization. The so-called peoples of Canaan did not confederate with the tribes of Israel or Judah, but rather pursued alternate political forms such as the city-state. This means that although the conquest of Joshua reads like a genocidal attack on indigenous people by a colonizing group, its origins lie in a political movement seeking to reinforce the integrity of the state and dissuade its member groups from dropping out... The writers of Joshua so wish to differentiate their Israel from Canaan that they figure Canaanites as indigenous and the tribes of Israel as immigrants.

She makes the timeless observation that

"Military representations..endeavor to impose collectivity on a complex social reality"

Anyone has to just look at media in the US post-9/11 or some of what comes from Israel now to see how true this is. "We're all united," even if actually we're rather divided, politically, even if my presidency only happened because the Supreme Court stepped in to stop a valid recount of undervotes, even if tens of thousands of people had been protesting my government for nine months straight and 85% of my country wants me gone. Now we go to war, we are one!!!1!!

And in the face of threats from the mighty Assyrian Empire, she argues, the folks at Monarchy Central sought to do exactly that- through the creation of a militaristic narrative that could bring about a unified, nationalistic reality.

On the first day of the second month, in the second year after the exodus from the land of Egypt, God spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the Tent of Meeting, saying: Take a census of the whole Israelite community by the clans of its ancestral houses, listing the names, every male, head by head. You and Aaron shall record them by their groups, from the age of twenty years up, all those in Israel who are able to bear arms. (Numbers 1:1-3)

And, indeed, Dr. Tzemah Yoreh, who holds by the supplementary hypothesis, suggests that this whole opening section of Numbers dates- well, later than all that Assyrian business, above, roughly to the time of destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians or the early days of the Babylonian Exile- and that, notably, t he bit about the military draft was inserted later. He holds that much of the text is P, written with the agenda of the priestly/Temple class, but that the military draft bits were added by H, the redactor who put in the stuff about the Holiness Code. 100% Judean agenda stuff.

Richard Elliot Friedman (who holds by the documentary hypothesis) suggests that the whole thing I just quoted above is "P," the priestly agenda, written by the Jerusalem priesthood as an alternative version to what was told in the J and E stories. So again: Judean. And also later than the Assyrians.

All of this puts this statement from Ezekiel 16:2-3, writing from the 6th c. BCE-after Josiah, during and after the Babylonian conquest of Judah- in quite the interesting light:

Thus said the Sovereign God to Jerusalem: By origin and birth you are from the land of the Canaanites-your father was an Amorite and your mother a Hittite.

Ezekiel was likely born around the time that Josiah's reforms were kicking into high gear, so, you know, do with this what you will. (It signals to me that perhaps the Official State Narrative wasn't super persuasive before the Babylonians got to town.)

1) Israelites and Canaanites were likely basically the same peoples, with different customs. They were not "ethnically" different in any way, except that they eventually became a separate " ethnos" in the hiiiighly academic sense of "having a common national or cultural tradition," belonging to different peoplehoods, with different religious-tribal customs, different ideas about what made you an insider and outsider, etc. But were they "ethnically" different, in the way that we use it today? Nauxpe. Nope. Nawp. Which means...

2a) Both Israelites/Jews and Palestinians have existed on that patch of land as far back as history goes, and

2b) Those of us who have wayback Jew ancestry (see above: you can be part of the Jewish ethnos/people without being an ethnic Jew, dig) are related, genetically, to Palestinians. Surprise, surprise? ( To whom, exactly??) And it also means that

3) The "God gave us this land to conquer and encouraged us to genocide the locals" narrative was originally a political fabrication and it has since been used for innumerable horrific political ends, including now.

4) Also? Honestly? I don't actually need to prove that Jews were there forever and touched the dirt in this one area in the Bronze Age to validate.. whatever. We know already that it's the historic land of the Jewish people, that even after the Romans ejected a lot of us after the Bar Kochba revolt there were always Jews there, fine, and most importantly we know that:

There are 11 million people in the region RIGHT NOW for whom this area is home and none of them have anywhere else to go.

The real question is-

What will enable a future in which everyone can thrive, and that is just for everyone?

Debunking the conquest narrative feels like an important piece of this puzzle. We must suck the air out of the sails of those who feel entitled to commit genocide (5) and/or land theft because they feel divinely empowered or even commanded.

We must face, and grapple with, all the painful parts of our holy texts and figure out how to hold them up to the light, how to shake them and shake them until the insight falls out. Until we find those hidden sparks that we can release, until we know what they can teach us and how they can be redeemed.

That, my friends, is the process of Torah. Not accepting words on a page passively, unthinkingly, but wrestling with them until we figure out how they can bless us. Demanding that they bless us, even if we don't walk away unscathed.

I don't think we've gotten all the way there with the conquest narrative, but it's a big one, and this historical context is one important piece of the puzzle. It'll continue to come back up, and we'll be there to face it down when it does- won't we?

Thanks for being part of this journey, and traveling alongside me.

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Footnotes, a work in progress.
(Does this work for y'all, even if you can't click on a note to get it right away? Still working on a solution that works for this template and my preferred writing style.)

European Colonialism
Gaza
people(s) aligning with the Exodus narrative
Finklestein
Genocide

Just gonna leave this here, again, from the Parents' Circle Families Forum (formerly the Bereaved Parents' Circle), because it feels too on point for today's missive not to. The organization is comprised of Israelis and Palestinians who have lost a family member in the ongoing violence.

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facing one of the hardest narrative arcs in the Bible armed with the truth of what really happened

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Why won’t antisemitism die, or at least die down? In the months following Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, antisemitic incidents increased substantially. The Anti-Defamation League, which keeps track, says they tripled in the U.S. over the previous year, although its criteria also changed to include anti-Zionism. But from 2019 to 2022, the amount of people with highly antisemitic attitudes in the U.S. had nearly doubled, the ADL found. In Europe, Human Rights Watch warned in 2019 of an “alarming” rise in antisemitism, prompting the European Union to adopt a strategic plan for fighting it two years later.

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BERLIN, 2023: The words "Never Again Is Now" are projected onto the Brandenburg Gate on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Credit - Paul Zinken-dpa/picture alliance/Getty Images
Why won't antisemitism die, or at least die down? In the months following Hamas' attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, antisemitic incidents increased substantially. The Anti-Defamation League, which keeps track, says they tripled in the U.S. over the previous year, although its criteria also changed to include anti-Zionism. But from 2019 to 2022, the amount of people with highly antisemitic attitudes in the U.S. had nearly doubled, the ADL found. In Europe, Human Rights Watch warned in 2019 of an "alarming" rise in antisemitism, prompting the European Union to adopt a strategic plan for fighting it two years later.

No one can say definitively why the pre-Gaza War surge happened when it did. The salience of groups like the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 probably played a role, as did the influence of figures like the troubled rapper turned designer Kanye West. Historically, antisemitism has been a side effect of populism, which traffics in us-vs.-them stereotypes. Social media allows antisemitic influencers to recruit and communicate directly to followers, getting around the filtering bottleneck of the legacy media. The murder of 11 worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, by a shooter enraged at Jewish groups providing aid to immigrants, was the painful lowlight of this era.

It can be hard to think clearly and reason calmly about antisemitism. For 15 million Jews around the world, its resilience engenders fear, pain, sadness, frustration, and intergenerational trauma going back to the Holocaust and beyond. The superficial sense of security that many Jews feel on a daily basis in the contemporary world turns out to be paper-thin. Jews know enough of their own familial stories to realize that in historical terms, such moments of safety have often been fleeting, followed by renewed persecution. Sitting in my office in leafy Cambridge, Mass., a proud citizen of the freest country in the world, in which Jews have been safer than in any other country in history, I am not free of emotion on the topic. Nor could I be.

For many non-Jews, antisemitism matters deeply too. People everywhere who believe that all humans are created equal know that the presence of antisemitism in a society has often been the forerunner of other visceral, irrational hatreds, from racism to homophobia to Islamophobia. Worse, the persistence of antisemitism stands as a stubborn counterargument to Martin Luther King Jr.'s hopeful faith that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.

In the past, antisemites, whether medieval Crusaders or 20th century Nazis, were often proud of their views. Today, thankfully, almost no one wants to be accused of antisemitism.

That's a marker of human progress. It also means that the whole subject of antisemitism needs to be approached with charity and sensitivity. People who harbor no conscious negative ideas about Jews may unknowingly hold views that resonate with historical antisemitism.

Jews aren't exempt from this, and so, neither am I. In a world roiled by polarizing debate, my aim is to encourage introspection-to get you to ask, as I ask myself, whether your feelings and beliefs would be the same if seen through the lens of the history and context of antisemitism. I come not to accuse anyone of antisemitism, but to explore the topic in a way that deepens our understanding of where it comes from, and where it's going.

The easiest way to explain why antisemitism is still with us is to blame religion. Scholars agree that what we call antisemitism today has its historical origins in a strain of anti-Jewish thought that grew out of early Christianity. The Gospels describe the Jews as complicit in the Roman crucifixion of Jesus. Paul's theology was read to depict the Jews as having been replaced or superseded as God's special favorites by the community of Christian believers. By failing to become Christians, Jews implicitly challenged the narrative of inevitable Christian triumph. For well over a thousand years, Jews in Christian Europe were subject to systemic, institutionalized oppression. Historical antisemitism took the form of discrimination, expulsion, and massacre.

The problem with blaming religion is that antisemitism today is no longer driven primarily by Christianity. Although antisemitism can still be found among Christians, in the U.S. and around the world, most contemporary believing Christians are not antisemites. The old theological condemnation of the Jews for killing Christ has been repudiated by nearly every Christian denomination.

Nor does antisemitism among Muslims primarily reflect the classical Islamic claims made against the Jews, such as the accusation that the Jews (and Christians) distorted Scripture, resulting in discrepancies between the Bible and the Koran. Jews in Muslim lands mostly fared better than in Christian Europe. Until the 20th century, those Jews occupied a complex, second-class status, protected alongside Christians as "people of the book" and also simultaneously subject to special taxes and social subordination. The tropes of modern Europe's antisemitism-of Jews' power and avarice-mostly came to the Middle East late, through Nazi influence. Even the prevalence of antisemitism among Islamist groups like Hamas isn't primarily driven by religion. Rather, it is part of their politically motivated effort to turn a struggle between two national groups for the same piece of land into a holy war.

Read More: When Jews are Threatened, Why Can't Americans Condemn Antisemitism?

It emerges that far from being an unchanging set of ideas derived from ancient faiths, antisemitism is actually a shape-shifting, protean, creative force. Antisemitism has managed to reinvent itself multiple times throughout history, each time keeping some of the old tropes around, while simultaneously creating new ones adapted to present circumstances.

In each iteration, antisemitism reflects the ideological preoccupations of the moment. In antisemitic discourse, Jews are always made to exemplify what a given group of people considers to be the worst feature of the social order in which they live.

A crucial reason why is surely that Jews were the most salient minority group living among Christians for the bulk of European history-and Europe was the heartland of historical antisemitism. The practice of projecting immediate social fears and hatreds onto Jews grew from the human need to treat some nearby group of people as the Other. (Muslims and Asians eventually also became subject to projection and fantasy, a practice dubbed Orientalism by the literary scholar Edward Said.) Once Jews had become the go-to targets for exemplifying societal ills, the habit stuck.

In this way, crucially, antisemitism is not and has never been about actual Jews so much as antisemites' imagination of them. Because antisemitic ideology isn't accountable to real-life facts, its content can be altered and changed as a society's worries and moral judgments shift. Antisemitism's capacity to keep its familiar character while also channeling new fears is what confers its stunning capacity to reinvent itself.

The first major reinvention of antisemitism took place as the Enlightenment gradually reduced the role of religion as the main source of Europeans' attitudes and beliefs. Nineteenth century antisemitism preserved the old belief that the Jews were unique, having once been God's chosen people and then uniquely punished for rejecting Christ. But it transformed this uniqueness to match the concerns of contemporary society.

Preoccupied with economic and social upheaval, antisemites depicted Jews as both uniquely capitalist and uniquely communist. Concerned about an unstable global power balance, antisemites claimed that Jews secretly controlled the world. Entranced by the pseudoscience of race that flourished after Darwin, antisemites declared that Jews were racially inferior. The obvious contradictions-that far from running the world, most Jews were impoverished, or that capitalism and communism were warring ideologies-did not deter antisemites. They ignored the illogic, or fell back on conspiracy theory, like the myth that Jewish capitalists and Jewish communists were secretly in cahoots. Ultimately, in different ways, both Nazism and Marxism identified Jews as an enemy deserving liquidation. The virulent antisemitism that fueled the Holocaust was thus partly a descendant of Christian antisemitism and also the product of modern conditions.

Today, racial pseudoscience is an embarrassment and the struggle between capitalism and communism has become passé. Antielitist populism can still draw on old canards about Jewish power, and those still resonate with certain audiences, especially on the far right. But the most perniciously creative current in contemporary antisemitic thought is more likely to come from the left.

Instead of disappearing among people who would condemn neo-Nazis, antisemitism is morphing again, right now, before our very eyes.

The core of this new antisemitism lies in the idea that Jews are not a historically oppressed people seeking self-preservation but instead oppressors: imperialists, colonialists, and even white supremacists. This view preserves vestiges of the trope that Jews exercise vast power. It creatively updates that narrative to contemporary circumstances and current cultural preoccupations with the nature of power and injustice.

Concerns about power and justice are, in themselves, perfectly legitimate, much like past concerns about the effects of unfettered capitalism on working people-or for that matter, condemnations of elitism. So it is important to distinguish carefully between critiques of power that deserve serious consideration and the antisemitic ways in which those critiques may be deployed.

That caution is especially important because Israel, the first Jewish state to exist in two millennia, plays a central role in the narrative of the new antisemitism. Israel is not an imaginary conspiracy but a real country with real citizens, a real history, a real military, and real political and social problems that concern relations between Jews and Palestinians. It is not inherently antisemitic to criticize Israel. Its power, like any national power, may be subject to legitimate, fair criticism.

It is also essential not to tar all critics of Israel with the brush of antisemitism, especially in wartime, when Israel, like any other war-waging power, is properly subject to the strictures of international humanitarian law. To deploy the charge of antisemitism for political reasons is morally wrong, undermining the horror of antisemitism itself. It is also likely to backfire, convincing critics of Israel that they are being unfairly silenced.

At the same time, Israel's history and current situation confound categories that are so often used today to make moral judgments-categories like imperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy. And because people's ideas about Israel typically draw on older, pre-Israel ideas about Jews, criticism of Israel can borrow, often unconsciously, from older antisemitic myths.

To understand the complicated, subtle character of the new antisemitism, notice that the concept of imperialism was developed to describe European powers that conquered, controlled, and exploited vast territories in the Global South and East. The theory of settler-colonial white supremacy was developed as a critical account of countries like Australia and the U.S., in which, according to the theory, the colonialists' aim was to displace the local population, not to extract value from its labor. The application of these categories to Israel is a secondary development.

These borrowed categories do not fit Israel's specificity very well. Israel is a regional Middle Eastern power with a tiny footprint, not a global or continental empire designed to extract resources and labor. It was brought into existence by a 1947 United Nations resolution that would have created two states side by side, one Jewish and one Palestinian. Its purpose, as conceived by the U.N.'s member countries, was to house displaced Jews after 6 million were killed in the Holocaust.

The Palestinian catastrophe, or nakba, of 1948 was that when the Arab invasion of Israel failed to destroy the nascent Jewish state, many Palestinians who had fled or been forced out of their homes by Israeli troops were unable to return. Those Palestinians became permanent refugees in neighboring countries. Instead of ending up in an independent Palestine as proposed by the U.N., those who had stayed in their homes found themselves living either in Israel or under Egyptian and Jordanian rule. Then, in the 1967 war, the West Bank and Gaza were conquered by Israel. Palestinians in those places came under what Israel itself defines as an occupation. They have lived in that precarious legal status ever since despite the 1993-2001 peace process.

Notwithstanding undeniable Jewish prejudice and discrimination against Arabs in Israel, the paradigm of white supremacy also does not correspond easily to the Jews. Around half of Israel's Jewish citizens descend from European Jews, as do most American Jews. But those Jews were not considered racially white in Europe, which is one reason they had to emigrate or be killed. Roughly half of Israel's Jews descend from Mizrahi, (literally, Eastern) origins. They are not ethnically European in any sense, much less racially "white." A meaningful number of Israeli Jews are of Ethiopian origin, and the small community of Black Hebrew Israelites in Israel are ethnically African American.
Read More: Europe's Jews Are Resisting a Rising Tide of Anti-Semitism
Whether early Zionist settlers should be conceived as colonialists is a hotly disputed question. Were they stateless, oppressed people seeking refuge in their ancient homeland, where some Jews had always lived? That is certainly how they saw themselves. Or were early Zionists agents of the very European states they were seeking to flee, aiming to buy as much territory in Palestine as they could to create their own state? That is the view of critics, who emphasize the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which Britain, still very much an empire, announced that it looked "with favor" on the creation of a national Jewish home in Palestine.

The upshot is that while a well-meaning person, free of antisemitism, could describe Israel as colonialist, the narrative of Israel as a settler-colonial oppressor on par with or worse than the U.S., Canada, and Australia is fundamentally misleading. Those who advance it run the risk of perpetuating antisemitism by condemning the Jewish state despite its basic differences from these other global examples-most important, Israel's status as the only homeland for a historically oppressed people who have nowhere else to call their own.

To emphasize the narrative of Jews as oppressors, the new antisemitism must also somehow sidestep not only two millennia of Jewish oppression, but also the Holocaust, the largest organized, institutionalized murder of any ethnic group in human history. On the right, antisemites either deny the Holocaust ever happened or claim its scope has been overstated. On the left, one line is that Jews are weaponizing the Holocaust to legitimize the oppression of Palestinians.

During the Gaza War, some have argued that Israel, having suffered the trauma of the Holocaust, is now itself perpetrating a genocide against the Palestinian people. Like other criticisms of Israel, the accusation of genocide isn't inherently antisemitic. Yet the genocide charge is especially prone to veering into antisemitism because the Holocaust is the archetypal example of the crime of genocide. Genocide was recognized as a crime by the international community after the Holocaust. Accusing Israel of genocide can function, intentionally or otherwise, as a way of erasing the memory of the Holocaust and transforming Jews from victims into oppressors.

It is, of course, logically possible for an oppressed group to become oppressors over time. Allegations of genocide have been brought against Israel by South Africa in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), charges Israel has wisely chosen to contest rather than ignore. The charges are based on the numbers of civilians killed, the tactics that led to the deaths, and statements by Israeli officials. This evidence is supposed to prove Israel intends to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part, which is the legal definition of genocide.

The number of Palestinian dead, over 29,000 as of this writing, is heartbreaking. The rhetoric of some individual Israeli government officials cited by South Africa is particularly appalling, both in its dehumanizing character and in referring to Palestinians as Amalekites, a group whom the God of the Bible called on the ancient Israelites to "erase." Retired Israeli Chief Justice Aharon Barak, who serves on the ICJ panel considering the genocide charges, joined a part of the court's provisional measures that directed Israel to "take all measures within its power to prevent ... public incitement to commit genocide" in Gaza.

The U.S. government has itself condemned far-right members of Israel's Cabinet who called for Gazans to be pushed into Egypt. The repugnant policy of ethnic cleansing urged by the extremists would violate international law, even if it would arguably not count as genocide under the legal meaning of the term.

Notwithstanding these serious concerns, Israel's efforts to defend itself against Hamas, even if found to involve killing disproportionate number of civilians, do not turn Israel into a genocidal actor comparable to the Nazis or the Hutu regime in Rwanda. The genocide charge depends on intent. And Israel, as a state, is not fighting the Gaza War with the intent to destroy the Palestinian people.

Israel's stated war aims are to hold Hamas accountable for the Oct. 7 attack on Israel and to get back its citizens who are still being held captive. These aims are lawful in themselves.

The means Israel has used are subject to legitimate criticism for killing too many civilians as collateral damage. But Israel's military campaign has been conducted pursuant to Israel's interpretation of the international laws of war. There is no single, definitive international-law answer to the question of how much collateral damage renders a strike disproportionate to its concrete military objective. Israel's approach resembles campaigns fought by the U.S. and its coalition partners in Iraq in Afghanistan, and by the international coalition in the battle against ISIS for control of Mosul. Even if the numbers of civilian deaths from the air seem to be higher, it is important to recognize that Israel is also confronting miles of tunnels intentionally connected to civilian facilities by Hamas.

To be clear: as a matter of human worth, a child who dies at the hands of a genocidal murderer is no different from one who dies as collateral damage in a lawful attack. The child is equally innocent, and the parents' sorrow equally profound. As a matter of international law, however, the difference is decisive. During the Hamas attack, terrorists intentionally murdered children and raped women. Its charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Yet the accusation of genocide is being made against Israel.

These relevant facts matter for putting the genocide charge into the context of potential antisemitism. Neither South Africa nor other states have brought a genocide case against China for its conduct in Tibet or Xinjiang, or against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. There is something specifically noteworthy about leveling the charge at the Jewish state-something intertwined with the new narrative of the Jews as archetypal oppressors rather than archetypal victims. Call it the genocide sleight of hand: if the Jews are depicted as genocidal-if Israel becomes the very archetype of a genocidal state-then Jews are much less likely to be conceived as a historically oppressed people engaged in self-defense.

The new narrative of Jews as oppressors is, in the end, far too close for comfort to the antisemitic tradition of singling out Jews as uniquely deserving of condemnation and punishment, whether in its old religious form or its Nazi iteration. Like those earlier forms of antisemitism, the new kind is not ultimately about the Jews, but about the human impulse to point the finger at someone who can be made to carry the weight of our social ills. Oppression is real. Power can be exercised without justice. Israel should not be immune from criticism when it acts wrongfully. Yet the horrific history and undefeated resilience of antisemitism mean that modes of rhetorical attack on Israel and on Jews should be subject to careful scrutiny.

Just because antisemitism is a cyclical, recurring phenomenon does not mean that it is inevitable nor that it cannot be ameliorated. Like any form of irrational hate, antisemitism can in principle be overcome. The best way to start climbing out of the abyss of antisemitism is to self-examine our impulses, our stories about power and injustice, and our beliefs.
Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law School, is the author of the new book To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People
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Contact us at letters@time.com.

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How an ancient hatred has reinvented itself in the modern world

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When Theodor Herzl first presented himself at Israel Zangwill’s home in 1895, saying: “Help me to rebuild the Jewish state,” the two of them had no fluent language in common. “I don’t even know whether he understands me,” wrote Herzl. No matter. Their rapport was immediate and lasting, and together they established the Zionist movement. Later, after Herzl died in 1904, Zangwill became leader of ITO – the “territorial” branch of the movement that sought to find an interim Jewish homeland while Palestine remained unattainable.

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Theodor Herzl, an editor and journalist from Vienna, was beautiful, with the handsome beard and majestic bearing of "one of the ancient Assyrian kings". Israel Zangwill, from Kilburn, was variously described by contemporaries as "the homeliest man I ever saw" and "one of the worst-dressed men in London". His novels were bestsellers, but he was so clumsy that when his arrival at a meeting was heralded by a clatter out in the hallway, one of those waiting for him exclaimed: "Israel must be coming. Something's falling downstairs."

When Herzl first presented himself at Zangwill's home in 1895, saying: "Help me to rebuild the Jewish state," the two of them had no fluent language in common. "I don't even know whether he understands me," wrote Herzl. No matter. Their rapport was immediate and lasting, and together they established the Zionist movement. Later, after Herzl died in 1904, Zangwill became leader of ITO - the "territorial" branch of the movement that sought to find an interim Jewish homeland while Palestine remained unattainable.

In this formally ingenious book, Rachel Cockerell has chosen to tell their story, not from an Olympian viewpoint but by making a patchwork of up-close and personal observations. She explains that at an early stage of the writing, when she was doing the conventional nonfiction author's thing of offering a synthesis of the available sources, she grew impatient with her own words: "All of them felt useless." She boldly cut them out. Her finished narrative is entirely made up of quotations - some pages-long, some only a line or two - from diaries, speeches, letters, newspaper reports, the reminiscences of participants and the testimony of eyewitnesses. World leaders - Weizmann, Roosevelt, Churchill - are among the speakers, so are numerous hacks and ordinary bystanders. Multi-voiced, and with a legion of different perspectives, the resulting book is wonderfully vital and idiosyncratic, a model of how history writing can be made fresh.

Its first, longest and most compelling part covers the first Zionist congresses and early attempts to find a Jewish homeland. Joseph Chamberlain, reports Herzl, offered Uganda, rather as the manager of a junk shop might fish something out of an ill-organised stockroom. "I thought to myself: that would be just the country for Dr Herzl."

It wouldn't do (insufficient infrastructure and too many people already in residence), and nor would Cyrenaica in Libya or Western Australia or Mexico or Mesopotamia. As Zangwill explores all these failed options, Cockerell's great-grandfather, David Jochelmann, makes his first appearance: this book is, among other things, a family memoir. Still living in Russia up to 1914, Jochelmann travelled from shtetl to shtetl on behalf of ITO, offering Jewish people the chance to travel out to Texas, Zangwill having established a short‑lived concession from the US allowing them to enter the country through the port of Galveston and then disperse and settle inland.

Jochelmann and his second wife moved to England. Of their two daughters, Fanny (the author's grandmother) married an English gentile and set her offspring on the path to assimilation, while Sonia married a Russian Zionist. They and their children all lived in harum-scarum fashion (neither Fanny nor Sonia was interested in housekeeping) in north London, just a few streets away from where Herzl met Zangwill a century or so before Rachel Cockerell was born. In 1948, Sonia and her family moved to Israel, and the story comes full circle.

Cockerell relies on Jochelmann to hold her book together, which doesn't quite work. An ITO colleague called him "a mysterious and (deliberately) unpublicised personage". To his great-granddaughter he remains just a dark face looking out of a sombre portrait. Had his words been preserved and his career documented, her narrative might have felt more shapely. But if this book is not a perfectly structured whole, the sum of its parts adds up to an innovative and immediate account of a story that has world-historical significance.

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Melting Point: Family, Memory and the Search for a Promised Land by Rachel Cockerell is published by Wildfire (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

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Melting Point by Rachel Cockerell review - witnesses to history

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An ingenious and idiosyncratic book about the search for a Jewish homeland that blends high politics and family memoir

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anti Semitism on the left

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I'm in my Savta's breezy kitchen in Haifa. The balcony is open, bringing in gusts of warm wind from the Carmel Mountains. The tiled floor keeps my bare feet cool, tucked under my grandma's tiny kitchen table. She feeds me chicken with onions, white rice, and her famous pickled eggplants that she makes especially when she knows I'm coming over. She keeps bringing more food, as if she is trying to empty the fridge before a big trip. I tell her I can't possibly eat it all, but, like any good grandma, she ignores me. Finally Savta sits. She waves away my compliments, folds her hands neatly, and smiles, bashfully even, as she watches me enjoy her cooking.

Nine times out of ten, we talk about the Holocaust. When I think about it later, I'm not totally sure why. Maybe it's because I'm acutely aware of how much history will be lost when her generation is gone - feel guilty that I was more interested in playing soccer with the neighborhood kids than listening to my Sabba's stories while he was still alive - my grandpa who shouted in Yiddish at the TV, whose eyes twinkled when he laughed with me, who brought our leftover chicken bones down to the neighborhood cats every night. Or maybe, to me, part of my Savta is still stuck back there, like an artifact, an ambassador from another time. Maybe she is stuck there to herself too. This is, after all, how unhealed trauma works; we dance the same dance again and again, as if there were no other songs we could choose to dance to.

This is, after all, how unhealed trauma works; we dance the same dance again and again, as if there were no other songs we could choose to dance to.

Savta tells me about the German occupation of her shtetl in Poland, and the day they started shooting. She talks about seeing her father shot, when her neighbor pointed him out to the soldiers as a Jew. She tells me about the next few days of hiding, and how she joined up with the Jewish partisans, leaving the woods where many of the Jews were hiding - her mother and sisters and grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins and friends, and on and on. They were all murdered there soon after, when their Polish neighbors led the SS to their hiding spot. Just like that, a whole tribe disappears. It startles me to think of how quiet the woods must have been just after.

Savta tells me of her journey to Russia to find her little brother, her travels back through Europe after the war. She tells me about meeting my Sabba at a refugee camp in Italy, and getting on a rickety ship to Palestine. She tells it matter-of-factly, without ideology or pomp, as if this were the only rational thing to do. Savta talks about the kibbutz she lived on, and then their first apartment in Haifa. It had dirt floors and broken windows, and had belonged to a Palestinian family, gone before they arrived. She says it with a genuine sadness, but not guilt, as if to say that the world is tragic one way or another and we all just do what we have to in order to survive. Somewhere out there, perhaps, a Palestinian family still hangs the key to that home on their wall. Perhaps a young man and grandma sit, like we do, in Nablus or Amman or down the block from me in Brooklyn, and discuss the Nakba, the ruins of a much fresher tragedy lying on top of ruins from the tragedy before, and the one before that.

I have heard this story a hundred times, and Savta always tells it the same way. It's almost like she is reading from cue cards, like she is a bystander in the story and not its main character. The words seem to be held at arm's length, as if they are separate from her - separate from these legs that carried her through Europe, these arms that held family members living and dead, these hands that pickle eggplants, these eyes that look away bashfully as I eat them. In the end, it seems very sensible that my Savta doesn't cry, doesn't live her story again each time she tells it, doesn't acknowledge her trauma. After all, people do what they must to carry on; if she had to actually feel what she was describing, I doubt she would have survived.

As I wash the dishes it occurs to me that her stories are so powerful, her scars so deep, that they have left their imprints on me as well, two generations later and a world away. I think about the way I mistrust people for fear of being betrayed and abandoned, the anxiety I've carried with me everywhere I've gone as if the worst is still to come, the tendency I have to control things for fear that otherwise their design will not protect me, the way I've always tried to be the best at everything so that people would want me around, and more. I think about the guilt that drives so much of my behavior, guilt, I suppose, for not having had to live my Savta's life. It occurs to me that even my Savta seems to feel guilty; after all, she survived. I don't yet know the term ancestral Jewish trauma as I dry my hands on Savta's dish towel, but I do begin to realize that these traits were handed down to me by ancestors both living and dead so that I would survive, and it's the first time I think to forgive myself for them, even if just a little.
This is Your Life
A couple years later, I was in a discussion about ancestral Jewish trauma hosted by Jews for Racial and Economic Justice (JFREJ) and facilitated by Cherie Brown, who writes and speaks on the subject. She told us about an episode of This Is Your Life, an old American TV show where an audience member would be plucked from the crowd to become the subject of the show. The audience is carried through the story of the person's life as a cast of characters from their past are called up for them to reunite with.

In 1953, ( as Brown has written about as well), This is Your Life did an episode on Hanna Bloch Kohner, a young, beautiful wife of a Hollywood executive. Hanna was a Holocaust survivor - the first to appear on national TV.

I watched the episode on YouTube and I don't think I can quite describe how jarring it was. Only eight years earlier, this woman had barely survived a genocide that claimed her parents, fiancé, an unborn child, and so much more, and now she was propped on stage to re-enact that experience for a national audience. I can still hear the host's booming voice say something like: Do you recognize that voice, Hanna? It's Eva, your best friend from Auschwitz! Come out here and give Hanna a big hug, Eva. And yes, yes, your whole family died in the Nazi gas chambers, so very tragic...but do you remember this next voice? That's right, it's the American soldier who saved you! Come on out here Harold! Isn't this just swell?!

In 1945, many Jews were being freed from concentration camps only to be murdered by their neighbors upon returning home. In the aftermath, many of them were still trapped all over Europe, unsure of their futures. And at the same time, the American "liberators" were systematically liquidating the resistance groups that had fought the Nazis in France, Italy, and elsewhere, and putting fascists back into government all across the continent, from West Germany to Greece. McCarthyism was just kicking into gear in the US, with Jews disproportionately targeted. And as Brown reminds us in her own account, the same year that Hanna Bloch Kohner appeared on TV, thousands of Jews, wondering if they were still in the midst of the genocide many of them had barely escaped, gathered outside Madison Square Garden in breathless silence as the state executed the Rosenbergs for treason.

Of course the survivors had not yet healed - in many ways, the war wasn't even over yet. But This Is Your Life willed it all away with a magic wand, and its message was the perfect encapsulation of the American response to Jewish trauma: That awful thing happened, but we saved you. Now look how pretty you are - a Hollywood star! No need to thank us: just move on and be good, upstanding citizens. Just assimilate.

In many ways, we did assimilate, as Jews have been attempting to do on multiple continents since long before the Holocaust - and as many other oppressed peoples have attempted in the face of an imminent threat. But here lies an important difference between anti-Semitism and other forms of oppression. As Aurora Levins Morales writes: "The whole point of anti-Semitism has been to create a vulnerable buffer group that can be bribed with some privileges into managing the exploitation of others, and then, when social pressure builds, be blamed and scapegoated, distracting those at the bottom from the crimes of those at the top." The ruling class never meant for us to disappear entirely; it meant for us to be tamed, and put at the service of the ruling class.

The ruling class never meant for us to disappear entirely; it meant for us to be tamed, and put at the service of the ruling class.

So we brought the Christmas trees into our living rooms, gave up a bustling Yiddish-speaking Flatbush Avenue for the manicured suburbs of New Jersey, replaced a vibrant cultural and ethnic identity with a sanitized religious denomination modeled after Protestantism, more palatable (as April Rosenblum writes about) to the guardians of Christian Hegemony. Some elements of Jewish culture entered the mainstream, because the Jewish community fought to be included, and because the system is happy to appropriate that which its elites find exotic, controllable, and aesthetically pleasing - the bagels and lox, the Seinfelds, the quaint Yiddishisms like putz and shmuck. Some Jews became middle managers for the Empire and benefited greatly from it, the way some of our ancestors had been the tax collectors for the feudal lords of the centuries before. Mostly, as Karen Brodkin writes about in How Jews Became White Folks, we just tried to blend in. The mainstream Jewish community traded in its peoplehood for Whiteness, upward mobility, and a strong Israel - an arrangement that was based on the oppression of the Palestinians and the denial of that very same American Dream to people of color in this country, including many Jews of color.

I realized somewhere along the way that, even with Israeli parents and various entry-points into Jewish community, I had also, in a way, assimilated - repressed historical traumas, muted parts of myself, sectioned off different pieces of my identity, and separated my worlds for the sake of blending in. Only I, like so many of the other young Jews I know, didn't assimilate into the mainstream; we assimilated into the social justice movement.
Anti-Semitism on the Left
It is a bright, warm, summer day in July 2014. I'm in Midtown Manhattan, surrounded by thousands of people, protesting the Israeli assault on Gaza, which began a week ago.

At first, I feel small in the face of the big, shiny skyscrapers that ignore us with their cold glass, structures that were built so tall as if intentionally to remind us how tiny we are. It drives me a little crazy to know that one person can march on 5th Avenue in a sea of thousands of people protesting the war, while another person can eat a hot dog on 6th avenue and not even know that war is taking place.

But this march is alive - people weaving in and out of the police barricades, folks dancing and singing, banners waving in the Midtown wind tunnels. It's led by young people, but I notice, to my surprise, that it is also full of families - mothers in hijabs pushing strollers, kids waving Palestinian flags, teenagers climbing trash cans on the way downtown. There is a palpable feeling of warmth and hope and resilience, even despite the heartbreak and mourning and fury. I'm glad I'm here, with these people.

Then I see a poster that shows the Jewish Star of David, with an equal sign next to a Nazi swastika. I see the Neturei Karta (an Orthodox Jewish sect) in their black coats and hats and beards, paraded at the front of the demonstrations - as if to say, look, even the Jews hate Israel - even though they are right wingers who are anti-Zionists merely because they believe the land of Israel should be settled only after the Messiah comes. Another sign says "Good job Israel, Hitler would be proud," and a poster shows Israeli soldiers alongside black and white photos of the SS. No one says anything about it.

I don't immediately identify these signals as proof that the movement is anti-Semitic. After all, I know that claims of anti-Semitism are constantly used as a ploy by the Right to defend the worst of Israel and smear the Left. I remember that I too have been called a self-hating Jew for criticizing Israel. I know that the discomfort of Jews going to rallies in New York cannot even begin to compare to the suffering of the Palestinians in Gaza, or the Black folks being shot down in the streets in this country, or any number of other oppressed groups - that many Jews in this country have achieved an unprecedented level of security and prosperity. I know it is a good thing that the movement pays attention to the struggle for a free Palestine, that the Black movement today is seeing the links between occupation abroad and at home. And I know that, no matter what, there's never an excuse for occupation - for the death and torture and detention and separation that come along with it - and so there is also never an excuse for those of us in whose name these injustices are carried out to sit on the sidelines.

Nonetheless, I feel sick to my stomach, a kind of sinking knot of betrayal. I think back to the dozens of other things like these that I've seen in the past week - posts my friends have written on Facebook, articles they've shared, things they've said to me - and it hits me like an anvil: Yes, there is anti-Semitism on the Left. And it is a threat to me, to the movement, to all of us.

Yes, there is anti-Semitism on the Left. And it is a threat to me, to the movement, to all of us.

As I march, it dawns on me that this anti-Semitism I've been brushing under carpets my whole life sits not only in the far reaches of the movement, where folks peddle conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the media and the banks (these are as old as Christianity, and still alive and well, as Chip Berlet writes about). And no, anti-Semitism doesn't only creep up late at night at the end of the housing justice meeting, when folks blame their "Jew Landlords" for gentrification in hushed tones. It does not appear merely in the form of improprieties we might turn a blind eye to - like the participant who called my friend a "Jew Lawyer" at the Know-Your-Rights training he led last week. No, it is not only in these quiet corners we can forgive or ignore, but here, in the open, among my friends.

My knot turns into a hot anger. Why doesn't anyone say anything about this? And then it occurs to me that, I, too, have said nothing.

I said nothing when my friends blamed the Israel Lobby for US support of the war on Gaza and shared articles about how the US was tricked by Jews into supporting Israel in the first place, as if a lobby is actually what's responsible for US elites deciding that it is in their interests to support a colonial Israel, as if even an organ as powerful as AIPAC can be held responsible for centuries of US imperialist foreign policy, as if it is always the all-powerful Jews behind the scenes pulling the strings.

I said nothing as friends of mine rejoiced at the deaths of Israeli soldiers with a glee I'd never seen toward any other soldiers, as if to root for the underdog also meant relishing the death of the opponent, as if the dead soldiers were not 18 year old kids raised on war and drafted by law into it by their leaders but somehow patently evil in their blood and their bones, as if slogans we used during the Iraq war like "Bring the troops home," were too generous for them.

I said nothing when friends pumped out articles about how Israelis had trained the American police officers that Black communities were now resisting - on one hand bringing to light important connections, but at the same time obscuring important power dynamics - as if we should take the connections to mean that Israel is so powerful that even the US war machine takes its direction from there, as if these police trainings or even Israel itself could exist without US imperialism, as if the Jews in Israel are the Americans' puppet-masters and not the other way around.

I said nothing when Qassam rockets were celebrated as they flew toward civilians in Sderot, as if questioning a strategy that targeted innocents was somehow giving cover to the brutality of the Israeli military - as if the Palestinian resistance is one homogenous blob, as if all strategies are equal, as if we are unable to hold both horror at the assault on Gaza and a critique of some forms of resistance to it.

I said nothing about the massacres of civilians in Syria that took place at the same time, just as most of my friends said nothing about it, as if the only reason to do so would be to distract from the war on Gaza, as if the Syrians must be forgotten so that the Jews can be held accountable.

I said nothing about the deafening silence of my friends about the children murdered at the Jewish day school in France, the shootings at Jewish community centers in Kansas City and Seattle, the Bat Mitzvah shot up in Denmark, the Jewish stores destroyed in Brussels, the synagogues firebombed in Germany, the Jewish graves defaced in Toronto - as if the only purpose of grieving Jewish death would be to justify Israeli militarism or American Islamophobia, as if mentioning these tragedies was to equate them with the oppression of other peoples, as if Jews today are too powerful to have compassion for.

I said nothing when, after helping lead a sit-in as part of If Not Now (a new group organizing young American Jews to end the Jewish community's support for the occupation), a friend implied that I needed to do more not because the struggle was still ongoing, and not because we all needed to throw down to stop it, but because I had a debt to pay - as if I needed to prove to the white non-Jewish leftists around me the that I was a Good Jew, the way Jews swore loyalty oaths to the US and European countries even as late as the 50s.

And I said nothing when, over and over and over again, my friends posted on Facebook that Israel is the leading cause of anti-Semitism today and that therefore we Jews are at fault for other people's hatred of us, as if we deserve to be hated because of the actions of elites who claim to represent us, as if a minority group could ever be held responsible for other people's categorical hatred of that entire group, as if any of my friends in the movement would tolerate that kind of talk about Black folks or Muslims or anyone else.

I said nothing about the silence about all of this, and the silence, I think, is what broke my heart the most.
My Friends are Anti-Semitic
I wonder whether my silence about anti-Semitism has been warranted. I wonder if my movement partners truly will abandon me if I challenge them in this, or find the weakest examples and pick them apart in order to argue that the pattern itself does not exist. I wonder if they'll reject me as an apologist for Israeli violence, discredit my movement credentials with the news that some years ago I was a leader in a Socialist-Zionist youth movement (I confess! And I'm proud of that time in my life, though I no longer identify as a Zionist - perhaps the subject for another piece). Or maybe my fear is just paranoia, an outdated defense mechanism handed down from my Savta, a fear and vigilance learned by Jewish bodies over literally thousands of years to protect us from the next crusade or pogrom or gulag or blacklist or cattle-car that we assume is surely just around the corner.

Alongside the fear, I find myself hesitating to speak out about these issues amidst such grief, mourning and resistance - a moment of such heightened crisis for so many people and groups. And at the same time, this is the world we live in, so there will never be a good time, and I will have to trust my friends to see that this is meant not to take away, but to make us stronger and more connected.

And then, alongside that, there is a deep resentment that we Jews, whose ancestors have been forcibly converted, raped, tortured, slaughtered, and chased across the globe for literally thousands of years, still have to prove that people hate us and that there are systems in place to ensure it. But my friends are worth convincing, and capable of transforming, and we need each other.

Throughout the dozen earlier drafts of this piece, I wrote: "My friends are not anti-Semitic, but..." I know my friends don't believe in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. I know they think anti-Semitism is wrong. And I know with every fiber of my being that they would defend me and my family if they believed anti-Semitism was a real threat. But I know, too, that their disbelief is part of the very fabric of anti-Semitism. I know that, in another time and place not far from here, it was a similar disbelief that made possible the wiping away of my tribe, the orphaning of my Savta, the chopping down of my family tree. Silence, perhaps more than the careless repetition of ignorant ideas, is fundamental to this system, perhaps to every system of oppression.

Being ignored or dismissed is not an experience unique to Jews; women, queer folks, people of color, working class folks, and other marginalized groups are always disbelieved, always have to fight like hell to be heard, understood, and supported. I know this to be true because I have been, many times in my life, the one unwilling to do the listening and transforming. And so it occurs to me finally that of course my friends are anti-Semitic. Not in any vulgar or intentional way, merely in the way that we are all shaped by the systems around us until we do the work of uprooting them - in the same way that I carried racism and sexism in my every mannerism until folks helped me practice something different instead (or in the way that I still do carry those values around with me, because such things are burrowed deep into our bodies and the work of unlearning them is perhaps as long as our lives).

And so it occurs to me finally that of course my friends are anti-Semitic.

Yes, my friends are anti-Semitic. Now the challenge: To convince them that anti-Semitism even still exists, that it is hurting all of us, and that it can be undone.
Anti-Semitism is Killing Us
The measure of anti-Semitism in a society isn't the number of synagogues being burned to the ground at any given moment. Anti-Semitism is cyclical.

As April Rosenblum writes in her groundbreaking pamphlet: "Attacks come in waves; but each time things calm down and Jews are able to blend in or succeed in society again, it gives the appearance that antisemitism is 'over.' In some of the most famous examples of anti-Jewish expulsion and mass murder (i.e., medieval Spain or modern Germany), just prior to the attacks, Jews appeared to be one of society's most successful, comfortable, well-integrated minorities." August Bebel, a prominent non-Jewish German socialist known for being vocal against anti-Semitism as a distraction from the real source of oppression (he famously called it "the socialism of fools,") wrote that anti-Semitism had: "...No prospect of ever exercising a decisive influence on political and social life in Germany." That was in 1906, less than thirty years before the Nazis took power.

I'm reminded that in that workshop with JFREJ and Cherie Brown, she mentioned that Harvey Jackins, founder of Co-Counseling, once drew a diagram of anti-Semitism as a loose noose. Perhaps the Jews in the US are safe for good. Or perhaps now is a time of loose nooses for us. Or maybe, they're not so loose after all. Perhaps the political crisis in which we find ourselves now - the rise of a Trump candidacy, the fascist grassroots he has awakened from its slumber, the openly anti-Semitic things he has said, the twitter trolls that have sprouted like weeds, the fascist politicians winning elections across Europe, the rise of hate groups around the country and the world, the rise of recorded hate crimes against Jews - can be seen as a tightening of that noose.

Even when Jews aren't being rounded onto cattle cars, anti-Semitism plays its part. The Israeli state uses it to justify its aggression, and the Right wing around the world uses it to justify its fascism. As Naomi Klein wrote in 2006, during the openly fascistic Jean-Marie Le Pen's rise to prominence in France and the Right wing Israeli Prime Minister Sharon's consolidation of power: "...Anyone interested in fighting Le Pen-style fascism or Sharon-style brutality has to deal with the reality of anti-Semitism head-on. The hatred of Jews is a potent political tool in the hands of both the right in Europe and in Israel. For Le Pen, anti-Semitism is a windfall, helping spike his support from 10 percent to 17 percent in a week. For Ariel Sharon, it is the fear of anti-Semitism, both real and imagined, that is the weapon." The very real anti-Semitism in the world, the unhealed trauma generationally passed down, and the silence around both in the movement are precisely the things the Right uses to support its claim that Jews need an Israel that is armed to the teeth and aligned with the Empire in order to survive.

And so, anti-Semitism is still playing its part today, taking the heat off the systems we're facing and the groups that control them, putting the Jews in the middle to obscure the bigger picture. As Levins-Morales writes: "Peasants who go on pogrom against their Jewish neighbors won't make it to the nobleman's palace to burn him out and seize the fields. This was the role of Jews in Europe. This has been the role of Jews in the United States, and this is the role of Jews in the Middle East." Israel is powerful, and deserves to be held accountable. And yet, how absurd it is to watch Anglo-European elites, sitting on piles of gold brutally plundered from the rest of the world in what must be the bloodiest transfer of wealth in human history, self-righteously scolding the naughty Jews in Israel. Let's not forget who drew those borders in the first place, and who funds their policing today. As James Baldwin wrote: "The crisis taking place in the world, and in the minds and hearts of black men everywhere, is not produced by the star of David, but by the old, rugged Roman cross on which Christendom's most celebrated Jew was murdered. And not by Jews."

Of course, This is Your Life tells us that the Jews are safe and sound, that anti-Semitism went down into the rubble with Hitler's bunker. Of course, the hangman wants us to believe the noose does not exist, that he has adopted the Jews as his children. But we should know better. The Empire's anointment of a people's struggle has never led to freedom. No, anti-Semitism is alive and well because it is in the interests of the ruling class. To quote Sartre from Anti-Semite and Jew: "If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him." Anti-Semitism is a system, part of Christian hegemony, tied to white supremacy and capitalism, fulfilling a function of protecting the ruling elite; it won't wither away on its own. And if that is the case, it shouldn't be so surprising that anti-Semitism finds its way into our movements too, just like the values of white supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism do. It must, like any other system, be confronted at its roots and replaced by something else.

The Empire's anointment of a people's struggle has never led to freedom.

Until we do this work, we will continue fighting in a way that strengthens our enemies. Until we face anti-Semitism, Jews will always be at risk of being targeted by the ruling class when it becomes politically useful. Until we face anti-Semitism, the fascist Right will continue to use it as a recruitment strategy, and Jews will continue to cling to a militarized Israel for protection. Until we face anti-Semitism, many Jews will continue to play the middleman role prescribed to us by the system, causing harm to other oppressed communities. Until we face anti-Semitism, the Jews in the movement will never address our trauma, never be able to bring our most powerful selves to the many struggles in which we are disproportionately active. And as I've written about before, becoming our powerful selves is not only a pre-requisite for winning the world we deserve, but a pre-requisite for survival.

Anti-Semitism, like any other system, can be undone. And people - including those of us who keep anti-Semitism alive whether intentionally or not - can transform. It is time, then, for Jews to step forward and lead this transformation.
A Note to Rebellious Jews
It's two days after the Palestine rally in Midtown. I'm on the back patio of an apartment in Clinton Hill with a mentor of mine. It is warm and still. Bars of sunlight crack through the trees, and the singing of flirtatious birds is interrupted from time to time by the pounding of construction two doors over. She tells me to feel my shirt on my back, and remember what is behind me - where I've been, my ancestors, my people. I've been given this prompt before, but it's never meant much to me. Today, maybe because of what is happening in the world around me, maybe because of what is happening in my body, I think of my Sabba and Savta. I think of their families in Poland, the Jewish partisans who helped them escape, the Jewish ghetto fighters who died defending their people, the Jewish revolutionaries across a dozen borders who struggled to topple the social orders that have brought the world such misery.

How strange, I think to myself, that in the fifteen years I've spent doing political work, I've always thought of myself as being in the movement despite my people - my people being white, class-privileged, straight men. I had always, it now occurs to me, thought of myself as a traitor, and even been proud of it. It is only now, as my mind scans the faces of the fighters and dreamers and martyrs and prophets behind me that I realize that it's not in spite of my people that I am here, but because of them. We all, I remember now, choose our origin stories. It is the first time my back has felt straight and broad, my chest open and powerful.

It is only now, as my mind scans the faces of the fighters and dreamers and martyrs and prophets behind me that I realize that it's not in spite of my people that I am here, but because of them.

Our inability, as young Jews in the movement today, to talk about anti-Semitism is a product of internalized anti-Semitism itself, and it is killing us. It puts us and our families at risk, weakens the political struggles of which we are a part, denies us our full agency, and makes it impossible for us to ask for help from our would-be allies.

So often, we collaborate with the silence around anti-Semitism, erase our own stakes in the struggles of which we're a part, do everything we can to impress the non-Jews in the movement so they'll keep us around. We perform our Jewishness for gentiles - tattooing our bodies with Jewish slogans about justice and making claims about how our ancestors wouldn't stand for this sort of oppression - but put so little of ourselves in actual Jewish community. We spend our time surrounded by one another, because so many of us are drawn to the struggle for freedom and justice for all peoples, but we so rarely speak to each other as Jews, so rarely look each other in the eye - like scared high school sweethearts who put their heads down as they pass one another in the hall. When the movement asks us to prove we are Good Jews by taking personal responsibility for everything Israel does, we oblige, and wear our Jewishness full to the brim with shame. We even, when we are asked to, compare ourselves to the people who murdered our families in Europe.

Have we forgotten where we come from? We have risen up against some of the most violent conquering armies ever assembled, played meaningful roles in revolutions throughout history, have been part of countless undergrounds, organized labor struggles, fought for civil rights, led student movements, stood up to Apartheid, and more. We are survivors of never-ending attempts to wipe out our people. We are famous for carrying humor, intelligence, and a commitment to truth as forms of resilience and resistance. I even read somewhere that the Romans used to think of us as innately rebellious.

We must become, once again, that rebellious tribe the Romans feared. We must acknowledge generational trauma so we can move past it, break open the ways we have internalized anti-Semitism so we can develop new practices instead. We must tell a different story about ourselves and invite the people around us be our allies in that reclamation. We must fight against anti-Semitism and demand that all our movements take responsibility for this alongside us. We must reclaim our identity.

We must become, once again, that rebellious tribe the Romans feared.

Identity is not merely about recognition, or acceptance, or representation; it is about becoming a people again, about finding our potential within that, about power. We must acknowledge the advantages we've been given by this system so we can use them as weapons to destroy it. But we must also acknowledge that we are an oppressed people - not so that we can evade responsibility for the ways we are empowered, or use our victimhood to shame and tear others down - but so we can align ourselves deeply and authentically with the titanic struggles for collective freedom before us.It is the only way we will ever genuinely stand in solidarity with others, the only way we will truly become our most powerful selves, the only way we will become whole again.

And as we become whole, we can play an even more grounded role as partners in the struggle for a free Palestine by refusing to allow Israel and the US to shed blood in our name. We can show up in this moment for Black Lives as true partners, as we are being called upon to do. Those of us who are white can disrupt white supremacy by using the benefits it gives us as tools to destroy it, sabotage it by reclaiming our Jewishness and refusing to do its dirty work. We can make all the movements of which we are a part stronger, smarter, fiercer, kinder, and funnier. And we can reclaim the peoplehood that is at our fingertips, protect our people - love our people. We can even, perhaps, give ourselves permission to grieve - for ourselves and our children, but also for our Savtas and Sabbas who never got the chance.

Imagine how the entire movement would benefit from this, how much better off we'd all be if we fought from a place of wisdom, pride, and love, instead of guilt, shame, and fear. Imagine how much closer we'd be to winning freedom for all people. And this is where the lesson transcends the question of Jewishness and anti-Semitism and goes hand in hand with the most essential questions the movement must ask itself today: What do we - each and every one of us - have to do to become our most powerful selves? We had better have a good answer, because becoming our most powerful selves is the only chance we have at winning the world we all deserve.

What a humbling challenge, then: to become whole again.

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A Brief Note to the Reader: I've been writing this piece for a year and a half. I've thought a lot about how complicated it is to share something like this in a time of such upheaval - in a country...

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The "New Antisemitism" and the Logic of Whiteness | Los Angeles Review of Books

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this is not your grandparents' suffering. European antisemitism was based on race; this is a different thing.

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AS I'VE WATCHED many Jewish people on college and university campuses react to others' reactions to Hamas's massacre on October 7 and Israel's siege and bombardment of Gaza, I keep coming back to James Baldwin. Specifically, his short essay, originally published in Essence, entitled "On Being White ... and Other Lies," and his 1967 New York Times essay "Negroes Are Anti-Semitic Because They're Anti-White." Baldwin's claim in the former essay is stark and resonating: the Jewish community in the United States "came here from countries where they were not white, and they came here, in part, because they were not white," but American Jews have "opted to become white" by embracing the subjugation of Black people. Whiteness is not a phenotype or ethnicity but a position, a status, a membership. Numerous immigrant groups, in Baldwin's telling, have become white by assuming this status (his examples include the Irish and the Norwegians), but because Jews were not white in Europe, and were not even white in the United States for a time, they have "paid the highest and most extraordinary price for becoming white." To bowdlerize Baldwin's point: Jews' whiteness is contingent, perhaps uniquely so.

Baldwin's essays are rich and challenging texts that I am not equipped to fully unpack. But as an American Jew who spent a decade engaged in political activism on various university campuses, and as an employee of a large nonprofit that has largely embraced the anti-racism canon that emerged following the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, I believe that they provide insight into the current struggle over claims of antisemitism in the academy and other "liberal" spaces. News coverage and social media posts have described broad pro-Palestinian feeling on US college campuses in the days following October 7, which has crystallized in various missives and marches. Many of these-according to media reports-took on the character of outright celebration of Hamas's "victory," with explicitly anti-Israeli statements made at a louder volume and among a wider swath of students and faculty than most campuses had seen before. This in turn prompted many professors and students to complain about an atmosphere of antisemitism on campus, with many Jews claiming to feel unsafe due to what they saw as a celebration of the murder of Jews (the dozens of Thai farmworkers and Bedouin who were kidnapped and killed by Hamas being inconvenient for both sides of the narrative).

Ironically, the claim that Jews on campus feel unsafe (physically or psychologically is never quite made clear) is being advanced at the same moment when the US government is deploying billions of dollars worth of weapons in an ostensible effort to maximize the physical safety of Israelis and making repeated statements intended to assuage the psychological suffering of American Jews. The response among many of those who oppose the Israeli state (Jewish and not) has been to ridicule these fears or to accuse those articulating them of playing the victim in order to gin up more support for the bombing of Gaza.

What Baldwin helps me to see is that something complicated and unarticulated is happening in the campus protests. I think what many Jews on campus are in fact reacting to is the perception that, among white progressive, liberal, or left-wing students and professors, support for the Palestinian cause has become not just canonical but of high salience today. These white students and (largely junior) faculty have spent the last few years suffused in a particular anti-racism curriculum that, in its most popular incarnation within colleges and other liberal, elite institutions, takes a Manichean view of race and racism. As should be clear from the fact that I began with Baldwin, I could not disagree more with the politicians who caricature these DEI efforts as being aimed solely at emotionally browbeating white students and who are seeking, in response, to ban the teaching of history outright. But these critiques are also not entirely baseless: the currently dominant anti-racism curriculum does tend to produce a sense of guilt in white students as its primary affective response and, in some of its theoretically sloppier incarnations, seems aimed primarily at doing so.

In this context, the Israel-Palestinian conflict represents an opportunity for tremendous psychological release. Yes, white Americans are implicated in the annihilation of Gaza through US military support for Israel, but they are not personally implicated in this instantiation of white-supremacist settler colonialism, as they are in US anti-Black racism, through privilege and microaggressions and national original sin. On this view, Jews in Palestine, by contrast, are the agents of (first British, now American) empire-they are whiteness concentrated. This ignores, of course, the actual ethnic and racial diversity (and intra-Jewish discrimination) of Israeli society, which is hugely important for understanding the original Zionist project and the history of Israel. But for these non-Jewish white students, Israel presents a way to condemn whiteness without implicating oneself, to support anti-racist ideology in a way that doesn't lead to shame and self-abnegation.

The sense of celebration some saw in the post-October 7 protests was not only originating from those who were personally-historically, familially-invested in freeing themselves and their loved ones from Israeli oppression, and who thus saw in Hamas's attack the possibility of military victory. Muslim, Arab, and anti-Israeli-government Jewish groups have been fighting for Palestinian liberation for a long time; I heard the phrase "from the river to the sea" many times on campus before this month, and no doubt most of those speaking out about unprecedented antisemitism had too. It is, rather, the fact that the white Left on campus is now shouting it that makes some mostly if not exclusively white Jews on campus-and in other places dominated, explicitly or otherwise, by a white Left-feel unsafe.

This feeling is, I suspect, the unconscious recognition that American Jews' contingent whiteness may be threatened if "the Jewish state" becomes a means by which other white people can disavow their own complicity in European colonialism. The relationship of leftist activists to their own whiteness is informing both the size and the tenor of the current wave of anti-Israeli campus protests, and inasmuch as this aspect forces into the open the lack of racial identification between white Americans and (Ashkenazi) American Jews, it threatens the success of assimilation and the accrual of white privilege for those American Jews. To put it another way: Many American Jews are not afraid of Hamas sympathizers in their dorms (though this may be what they claim to fear)-they are afraid of losing the status their parents and grandparents won in the diaspora, and the current anti-Israel protests suggest that that status may not be as secure as they had once thought. This fear is not irrational; losing the protection of whiteness is no small thing for people who may have grandparents or great-grandparents who survived the camps. But whiteness also, as Baldwin explained, comes at an enormous moral cost.

Those decrying the "new antisemitism" in colleges and other progressive spaces are therefore not entirely wrong when they attempt to articulate the presence of something ugly in the current campus protests. But what they are sensing is the product of young people working through their own discomfort with whiteness, and it would be a mistake for Jews, in response, to double down on their own. The current wave of pro-Palestinian sentiment on college campuses has to be understood in the context of the last three years of US anti-racist organizing and discourse-and the claims of a "climate of fear" for Jews on campus as a reaction, however subconscious, to facing the perceived loss of racial privilege.

That this fear reaction is especially intense in relation to flagging support for Israel is telling, since Israel presents, for many American Jews, a place where they can be white. What else can it mean for American Jews to support the existence of the state of Israel specifically as a guarantor of Jews' safety, at the same time that they point to its vulnerability to military incursion and terrorism from its neighbors as justification for billions in American military subsidies? If the United States turned on "the Jewish people," in what way would Israel-meant to be a hedge against discrimination or worse in the diaspora-offer safety? And why would so many people talk about an "unprecedented" wave of antisemitism in the US with so little, if any, acknowledgment that 11 American Jews were murdered in a Pittsburgh synagogue almost exactly five years ago? The psychological investment in US support for Israel among American Jews is, I think, a subconscious desire that Jews should be recognized as a people with a place, as one of the hyphenated communities Baldwin describes (the Irish-Americans, Norwegian-Americans, etc.), a people who have chosen the United States and thus whiteness. It is also, in a devastating historical irony, a desire to be folded into the ethnonationalist logic for which central European Jews were a "problem" in the first half of the 20th century, and to which the "solution" was annihilation.

The conflation of whiteness and safety, among those writing op-eds and Twitter threads and emails and petitions seeking the protection of white institutions by demanding official condemnation of pro-Palestinian protests and vindication of Israeli military actions, may in this light appear as more understandable and deserving of some sympathy, but it is still a profound mistake. Not only is the effort to reaffirm one's own whiteness an immoral choice, to use Baldwin's framing, but it is also one that, I fear, will have long-lasting and ruinous consequences for the Jewish diaspora. What I hope is that liberal American Jews who now sense the contingency of their belonging, not among MAGA Republicans but within their own progressive communities, and who simultaneously are confronted with the monstrous actions of the Israeli state in Gaza, may see this as a watershed to break with ethnonationalism altogether. Perhaps in this "unprecedented" moment there lies an opportunity for American Jews to embrace a return to universalism as a fundamental Jewish principle and to relinquish, in the United States as in Palestine, the poisoned gift of whiteness.

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Featured image: [Man with horse standing near the Dead Sea], ca. 1890-1900. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. loc.gov, CC0. Accessed November 27, 2023.

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The "New Antisemitism" and the Logic of Whiteness | Los Angeles Review of Books

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Megan Wachspress argues that the relationship of leftist activists to their own whiteness is shaping the current wave of anti-Israeli campus protests....

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words matter.

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Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone

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Anti-Zionism: The Language of the Oppressor In this week’s parashah a woman must discern how best to move within the patriarchal tribal system in which she has found herself. Our Torah narrative de…

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This is a terrific one-on-foot explanation

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The subject of this essay is, as one might expect, White Jews. By that term, I mean to evoke two different conceptions that are clearly related but distinct in important ways. First, there is the matter of particular persons who, but for their Jewishness, would be (in the American context) unambiguously White. We might simply call those persons White, or we might say they are conditionally White, off-White, functionally White, or "White but not quite." The intersection of Jewishness and race has a long and fraught history over several dimensions; there were and remain significant questions regarding whether Jews (at least those of proximate northern European descent) should be considered "White." Conditional Whiteness may be the most comprehensive describer: an American Jew whose grandparents immigrated from Austria might unambiguously benefit from White privilege when passing a highway patrol car, but not enjoy it in any way whatsoever when White supremacists are looking for a target to harass. Nonetheless, I do not wish to be hung up on the precise nomenclature. Suffice to say, there are many Jews whose ancestry proximately traces to European countries, whose status as White in America would be relatively uncontroversial save for whatever complications are posed by their Jewishness. For simplicity's sake we can refer to these Jews as "White Jews."

But, of course, not all Jews fit this description. There are Jews whose ancestry is not European: Sephardic Jews from Turkey or Latin America, Mizrahi Jews from Iraq or Tunisia, Indian Jews, Ethiopian Jews, African American Jews, and others. Yet, in most conversations or discourses that purport to be about "Jews," the archetypical Jew that is imagined as the subject of discussion does not look like those Jews and does not include their history. What counts as a "Jewish problem" or a "Jewish experience" or a "Jewish history" is often in fact particular and partial to the specific problems and experiences of the Jews described in the first paragraph: the White Jews. The merger of Jewishness into Whiteness places non-White Jews in a double bind-"split at the root," to use Adrienne Rich's evocative phrase. On the one hand, the discrete experiences, problems, or histories of non-White Jews will not be recognized as Jewish insofar as they are non-White (since Jewishness is understood as a White experience). And on the other, insofar as these experiences, problems, or histories are recognized as Jewish, then they will cease to be acknowledged as non-White (since, again, Jewishness is understood as a White experience).

Hence, the second conception meant to be evoked by "White Jews" is the vision of the Jew as White in the public imaginary. Even granting all of the qualifications present in the preceding paragraphs, the figure of the Jew is currently imagined as White-certainly in the Anglo-American world, and perhaps globally as well. The prototypical Jew is someone whose ancestors lived in Europe; if they did not remain there it is because they moved at some point to America or Israel due to some type of European oppression-Russian pogroms, the Nazi Holocaust, the Dreyfus affair, and so on. Jews who do not fit this narrative are often not acknowledged. Even where they are, their image is not the one that is initially evoked when people (very much including those in the overwhelmingly Ashkenazic and generally pale-skinned American Jewish community) talk about Jews. Put another way, "White Jews" are just "Jews"; if one is to talk about non-White Jews, a specific modifier is needed. So "White Jews" also refers to the figure of the Jew as it is currently conceptualized in the public imagination-a figure that is imposed upon the lives of all Jews, whether (individually) White or not.

The object of this essay, then, is to think about White Jews as individuals, and White Jews as a concept, and interrogate how the two constituent elements, "White" and "Jew," interact with one another. The methodological approach is (to complete our march through the title) an intersectional one; the idea is to think about how Whiteness and Jewishness in combination function in ways that are not necessarily grasped if one atomizes the identities and holds them apart. My claim is that when Jewishness-whether as a conceptual matter or as embodied in individual persons-is understood primarily as a subspecies of Whiteness, it obscures important features of Jewish experience for White and non-White Jews alike, while often accentuating or accelerating antisemitic tropes. In doing so, it perpetuates a form of antisemitic marginalization at the same time as it ratifies, even promotes, a racialized hierarchy within the Jewish community.

Placing Jews and Intersectionalists in Conversation

There could not be a more pressing time for a renewed and reinvigorated analysis of the contemporary operations of antisemitism. The growth of White nationalist and neo-Nazi sentiment has put the issue of antisemitism back on the American radar screen in an unprecedented way. Yet there is a consistent worry felt among many Jews-progressive Jews included-that left-wing critics deprioritize the fight against antisemitism, viewing it as a marginal issue, a distraction from more immediate concerns, or a fight that (but for a few stray cranks) has already been won. This fear is exacerbated by a noticeable lacuna surrounding antisemitism in progressive scholarship about contemporary issues of discrimination, oppression, and identity-based marginalization. Vigorous theoretical accounts of how antisemitism currently manifests in Western societies lag behind the excellent work focused on other oppressions. And though in theory intersectionality has much to offer Jews as an analytical tool for untangling some of these questions, in practice intersectional theorists have largely ignored the Jewish case. While intersectional approaches to Jewish difference are not unheard of, they are exceedingly rare. Reviewing the literature on intersectionality in 2016, Marla Brettschneider found virtually no mention of Jews as a subject of inquiry. What's worse, the main exceptions are reactionary-authors who make sure to include "Jewish fundamentalists" alongside Christian or Muslim peers, or who emphasize (Orthodox) Jewish opposition to same-sex marriage as part of broader discussion of antigay religious practices while eliding the fact that Jews are disproportionately proponents of marriage equality.

While I understand where this critique comes from, I do not share it. Intersectionality is a tremendously powerful analytical tool that, when deployed properly, does far more to undermine these exclusionary practices than it does to warrant them. Yet the theoretical gap in intersectionality analyses largely overlooking the Jews is not fully accidental. Specifically, the association of Jews with power as an antisemitic trope functions to classify Jews not just as "White," but as exemplifying or embodying Whiteness. Insofar as Jewishness is not understood as existing as a materially distinct category from Whiteness, the failure to consider Jews as a case of a marginalized identity is not intuitively felt as an absence.

Discourses about power (control, dominance), as well as discourses about hegemony (omnipresence, invisibility), can center both an intersectional analysis of the Jewish case as well as a meta-argument as to why Jewishness is often left untheorized in intersectional work. At one level, both power and hegemony are critical elements in exploring what Whiteness does as a social category. More than just a phenotype, Whiteness is a facilitator of social power and status, yet it is typically rendered unmarked. Consequently, the privileges and opportunities afforded to persons racialized as White are often not recognized as such-they are woven into the basic operating assumptions of society, such that their beneficiaries do not even perceive their existence. An important goal of much antiracism discourse is thus to unsettle the presumption of Whiteness as a neutral, objective vantage point and instead reveal or uncover the ways in which it provides specific and substantive power to those racialized as White.

For Jews, however, these concepts have a different social valence. Antisemitism frequently manifests as a concern over putative Jewish hyperpower. Whereas White individuals are often seen as an unmarked category ("just" individuals), Jewishness is very much a marked identity-and the markers quite frequently center around beliefs about Jewish power, domination, or social control. The Whiteness frame by design is meant to draw attention to these attributes, revealing things that otherwise go unseen or unspoken. But when it operates on the Jewish case-where these attributes are not unmarked but instead are exceptionally visible and salient-its cultural impact can be quite different. Instead of unsettling and particularizing a hitherto "neutral" identity, it can promote, even accelerate, deeply antisemitic tropes.

An intersectional approach-showing how Whiteness and Jewishness change in valance when conjoined together-can illuminate facets of antisemitism and oppression that otherwise might remain obscure. It allows us to see how an understanding of "White Jews" cannot be grasped simply by placing "Whiteness" and "Jewishness" side by side. The union of "White" and "Jew" is more than the sum of its parts. And indeed, since the "White Jew" is in part an imagined identity projected on all Jews (regardless of how they racially identify or-were they not Jewish-would be identified), the interrelation of Jews and Whiteness has impacts that extend well beyond those who, assessed individually, would be considered "White Jews."

Ultimately, the goal of this essay is in large part one of reconciliation. By demonstrating the utility of an intersectional lens in illuminating otherwise hard-to-articulate forms of antisemitic exclusion, I hope that I can model the inclusion of Jewish issues in the intersectional canon, encourage more Jewish writers to view intersectionality as an important tool, encourage more non-Jewish writers to view Jewish issues as significant components of intersectional work, and dissipate some of the Jewish skepticism and anxiety that is currently associated with intersectionality's importance in contemporary social activism.

Intersectional Methods and Intersectional Gaps: Relating Whiteness and Jewishness

Today, intersectionality is sometimes deployed whenever a scholar or activist wishes to evoke multiple axes of identity-based discrimination. In its initial formulation by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, however, "intersectionality" sought to tackle a much more specific problem. The issue was not just that, for example, racial oppression and gender oppression were often held out as separate inquiries. It was that even an inquiry that incorporated both an analysis of racial and gender oppression might still fail to adequately encompass the experiences of (say) Black women, to the extent that "racial oppression" was viewed through the lens of Black men, and gender oppression through the vantage of White women. Where that is the case, Crenshaw observes, the exclusion of Black women is not solved "simply by including Black women within an already established analytical structure. Because the intersectional experience is greater than the sum of racism and sexism, any analysis that does not take intersectionality into account cannot sufficiently address the particular manner in which Black women are subordinated." The core of the intersectional insight is that the experience that lies at the intersection of race and sex is not simply the combination of what are taken to be the "simpliciter" cases of race and sex, precisely because the "simpliciter" case is in actuality a discretely White (for women) or male (for Blacks) experience.

Hence, intersectionality is not a matter of building coalitions between groups combatting various forms of identity-based oppression: antiracist groups should also oppose sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and so on. This practice, sometimes dubbed the "additive" approach, simply ladles different marginalized identities on top of one another in the hopes that their summation will sufficiently include all persons in the full panoply of their diverse identities. The instinct behind such moves is typically noble and is not entirely unrelated to the problems intersectionality seeks to confront: a movement advocating on behalf of women that leaves aside matters of racism and homophobia would not be providing for the liberation of all women since, of course, many women are non-White and/or nonstraight. Yet such practice, while well meaning and often quite valuable, is not itself intersectional. It takes as given the status quo understandings of concepts like "racism" or "homophobia" that are culled from the experiences of the "otherwise-privileged members of the group." For example, a conception of sexism that focuses on the exclusion of women from the workforce stems from a particular White (and middle-class) experience-it does not necessarily resonate with the Black (or working-class) women who frequently worked outside the home well before the latter half of the twentieth century. If this conception is what sexism is imagined to be, then "adding" it to the antiracism mix will do little to rectify the exclusion of Black women.

Recently, Cynthia Levine-Rasky began applying intersectionality theory to Whiteness as a marked category. The basic insight of intersectionality proceeds on the assumption that the "otherwise-privileged" member of a group-the woman who is White, for instance-sets a neutral baseline by which other members of the group are measured. This observation is frequently valid as a descriptor, but a deeper dive allows it to be unpacked, disassociating Whiteness from neutrality and instead recognizing it as a distinct "color" with particular properties, associations, and characteristics-albeit ones that emerge out of historically situated processes and forces. By fleshing out Whiteness as a cohesive analytical category in its own right, Whiteness can be thought of in a textured and variegated way-an observation which, in turn, suggests that Whiteness can operate differently in conjunction with different social categories, "doing" different things to, say, a recent east European immigrant, a working-class Irishman, an upper-class WASP, or a Jewish college student. Through this lens, we can begin to answer Levine-Rasky's penetrating set of questions: "[W]hat does whiteness 'do' for Jews? How does it confer or deprive them of power or privilege? What does it ensure or endanger?"

White + Jew ≠ "White Jew"

The senator's comments were widely condemned as antisemitic or an apologetic for antisemitism; he ultimately withdrew his bid for reelection.

I agree that the statement in question was antisemitic in nature. And perhaps its utterance can be explained simply by there being some people who possess antisemitic attitudes. Yet I think one can reconstruct the thinking behind the senator's statement in a way that explains how-at least not knowing the particular history of the trope of Jewish hyperpower-one might have not instinctively recognized the problem. The line of argument would go as follows:

Contrast the framing that emerges if we looked at the matter from a Jewish lens:

Hopefully, this illustrates the sense of talking past one another that seems to explain at least part of this affair. The senator is talking about Jews no differently, he thinks, from how he talks about other members of the White community. How can it be that the argument shifts from valid to illicit simply because the subject is Jews? Meanwhile, the Jewish objectors think that the senator is talking about them in a way no different from any other antisemite. How could the same argument gain legitimacy simply because the senator thought his approach was antiracist in nature?

More importantly, it is clear that one cannot fully understand what was happening in this case if one insists on holding "Jewish" and "White" apart from one another. The incompatible narratives emerge because they seek to analyze the "Jewish" and "White" dimensions of the issue separately. One cannot simply add the two analyses back together at the end; the result would be gibberish. It is evident, rather, that something specific happened at the point of intersection. Discourses of White power and privilege-valid as far as they go-acted as a sort of accelerant for prejudiced tropes of Jewish power and privilege. The Whiteness of the Jewish figure served to cleanse, even validate, arguments that otherwise would reek in their antisemitic familiarity.

Tropes of Jewishness; Tropes of Whiteness

The above example illustrates that Whiteness and Jewishness do not simply sit side by side as social categories. Rather, Whiteness seems to be doing something to Jewishness. "White Jews" are not "White" and then also "Jews." Jewish Whiteness seems to inflect, in serious and fundamental ways, the understanding of what it means to be Jewish-or what Jewish experience could possibly be. At the extreme, it subsumes Jewishness entirely-Jewishness cannot be understood but through the interpretive frames offered by Whiteness.

Yet there are answers to be had upon a close look at the relationship between tropes about Whiteness and tropes about Jewishness. Viewed apart from one another, we can talk about Whiteness in a particular way and Jewishness in another way, without ever coming to grips with how these respective discourses interact. By placing them in a dynamic relationship, it becomes evident how Whiteness and Jewishness operate upon each other in particular and often troublesome ways.

Turn now to Jewishness. While perceptions about Jews are varied and diverse, antisemitism frequently manifests particularly as a putative criticism of Jewish power. In her influential pamphlet The Past Didn't Go Anywhere, April Rosenblum identifies several themes common to antisemitic narratives, including:

* Jews are mysterious, or act secretly behind the scenes;

* Jews have abnormal or supernatural amounts of power;

* Jews are disloyal to, or seek the destruction of, the society they live in;

* Jews are disproportionately the cause of harm in the world;

* Jews are unlike the rest of humanity (at best); or inherently evil, or tied to the devil (at worst);

* Jews are wealthy or greedy;

What these themes all share is their presentation of the Jew as distinctively empowered compared to humanity in general. In the antisemitic imagination, Jews are hated specifically because they are presumed to be dominant. "Anti-Semites," writes Phoebe Maltz Bovy, "weren't -aren't-just people who think they're better than Jews. They're people who think they're being oppressed by Jews." As Moishe Postone thus observed, "Anti-Semitism, consequently, can appear to be antihegemonic.... the expression of a movement of the little people against an intangible, global form of domination."

The antisemite views the Jew as an omnipresent, world-spanning character-distinguished by his or her unrivaled ability to act, control, dominate, or take over. As Frantz Fanon observed, "Jews are feared because of their potential to appropriate. 'They' are everywhere. The banks, the stock exchanges, and the government are infested with them. They control everything. Soon the country will belong to them." This power is distinguished by being both extraordinary (they control everything, nothing is outside the Jewish grasp) and illicit (they gained such control through trickery, deceit, or other underhanded or illegitimate means). Viewed through Ahmed's frame of what is "within reach," the answer given by the antisemite regarding the Jews is "everything." Jews are marked by their exceptional, even superhuman, capacities-there is nothing they can't do, no institution or community that is insulated from their tendrils.

Narratives of ill-gotten Jewish power convert basic Jewish political participation into a "Kosher conspiracy." It is presumed that Jews are persistent and perpetual winners in the political game, such that the proper orientation towards Jews in society is to rein in their exceptional influence and leverage. To the extent Jews are even recognized as marginalized, they are taken as a model of legislative and social protection-the out-group that's in. Other groups seek the bounty that Jews are assumed to already possess. So, for example, Didi Herman documents the use of the Jewish case as justification for expanding the Race Relations Act (the United Kingdom's major antidiscrimination law) to other out-groups such as Sikhs and Muslims. Shouldn't they enjoy the same protections as Jews? And surely the answer is yes-but what was overlooked was that Jews had never actually won a reported case under the Race Relations Act against a non-Jewish defendant. The image of the Jew as modeling protection completely overwrote a reality of continued vulnerability.

The point here is not that Jews are somehow distinct from other minority groups in receiving often-inadequate protection from formal or informal legal sources. That, of course, is an experience quite common to political out-groups. What may well be distinctive is that, in seeking out these protections, Jews lose even as-or perhaps because-they are thought of as winners.

What Does Whiteness Do to Jewishness?

Jewishness outside of Kyriarchy

The problem should now be evident. The Whiteness frame looks at its subjects and asks that we see their power, their privilege, their enhanced societal standing. So far so good-it is important to unpack all of these things. But stereotypes of Jewishness sound many of the same notes: they too look at Jews and point out their putative power, privilege, and domination of social spaces. The issue is not that (some) Jews do have power or privilege along certain dimensions in American or Western society-for example, insofar as they are White, or male, or heterosexual, or economically well-off. But in those cases, the power that they have is as Whites, or men, or straight, or wealthy-it is not by virtue of being Jewish that they hold these benefits.

Yet the kyriarchical frame is definitively not how we talk about "White Jews." Antisemitism is cast as an intramural divide within White populations, something that alters or degrades the status of Jews vis-à-vis other Whites. Harold Cruse made this point explicit: antisemitism may be a problem for Jews, but it is, he contended, "a problem for [Jews] to settle with other whites with whom they share political, economic, and cultural power." It is not seen as impacting Jewish standing qua Jews compared to non-Jews as a whole. Indeed, the rare attempts to make this kyriarchical observation are beset with anxiety-as when Brenda Cossman and Marlee Kline laboriously articulate what they are not saying when they are saying that Jews continue to face antisemitism. (We are not saying Jews are more oppressed than others, we are not saying Jews are oppressed identically to others, we are not saying that Jews do not necessarily possess advantages as White or wealthy or well-educated, nor are we saying that all Jews necessarily do possess those advantages.) It is a preemptive defense against the assumption that discourse about antisemitism is in reality a "burst of victim-competition" where Jews "will deny both responsibility for racism and privileges derived from it."

For many White Jews, the upshot of all of this is the denial of antisemitism's status as a unique and distinctive axis of marginalization, one that neither displaces nor is displaced by racism. Instead, writers act as if the operative question about antisemitism is whether Jews are properly labeled White. If they are not, or if they were in eras when they were not, then Jewish claims of marginalization make sense. But if/when Jews are White, they lose access to claims of ever being outsiders even as Jews. In effect, Whiteness absorbs Jewishness, removing it from the kyriarchical field and cordoning it off from any sort of system-wide reckoning of privilege and marginalization. All that is left of antisemitism, under this view, is a sort of internal jockeying for position among White people.

Additionally, this framing has important marginalizing effects on non-White Jews, both as Jews and as non-Whites. "The Whitening of Jews," writes Lewis Gordon, meant "that large groups of nonwhite Jews simply disappeared, or at least disappeared as Jews." So it is for Fanon, who, in a striking passage where he begins by declaring the Jew "a white man," writes, "Of course the Jews have been tormented-what am I saying? They have been hunted, exterminated, and cremated, but these are just minor episodes in the family history." Indeed, Corey Balsam goes so far as to say that "the simple attribute of being Jewish functions to whiten Sephardic and other non-white Jews"-putting them in a position of relative power by virtue of their Jewishness. All Jews are "White Jews" in this sense-non-White Jews are deemed White in their Jewishness; Jewish problems are assumed to be White problems regardless of which particular Jew is the one experiencing them.

For many Jews from outside Europe, the persistent identification of Jews as White (or Western) obscures or mischaracterizes their experiences in ways that go beyond simply "forgetting" their existence. On the one hand, Jewish Whiteness is what impedes the acknowledgment of (for example) Middle Eastern Jews as authentically Jewish; on the other, Jewish Whiteness is likewise what impedes the acknowledgment that Middle Eastern Jews are authentically Middle Eastern. Rachel Wahba, an Indian-born Iraqi Jew, complains bitterly of how the understanding of all Jews as European-a view promoted by both Jews and non-Jews, inside and outside of Europe-boxes out her story as a Middle Eastern Mizrahi Jewish refugee. The story of Jews is a White, European story, which means any Jewish refugee story is also a White, European story, which then raises the question of (as Wahba imagines it) "What do the Arabs have to do with what Europe did to the Jews?" The Mizrahi narrative is ignored not just as a Jewish story, but as a Middle Eastern story as well. Ruth Knafo Setton describes her experience of being kicked out of Morocco for being Jewish, being denigrated by American and Israeli Jews for being Moroccan, and finally being excluded by American non-Jews for being Jewish and Moroccan. Any individual element of these stories might be assimilable into orthodox Middle Eastern or Jewish narratives. But they tend to be adopted in quite partial and opportunistic ways-those who are interested in tales of antisemitic oppression of Mizrahi Jews in Morocco or proud Mizrahi identification with Zionism are often less invested in the important influence and value such Jews place on Arab culture and identity or the serious discrimination they faced in Israel; and vice versa.

Conclusion: Is Gal Gadot White?

The "White Jew," as a figure, does more than ask that pale-skinned Jews who immigrated from Europe reckon with how and where they enjoy White privilege. It seems to step forward and subsume Jewish identity entirely: Jewishness is only recognizable as an empowered, even hyperpowered, status. Even-especially-when speaking of antisemitism, Jews "are recognized as only the privileged, the powerful, the oppressors." Any parallel discourse that might otherwise emerge about Jewish marginalization is rendered unintelligible.

That Whiteness seems to absorb Jewishness and seems to make Jewishness disappear as a distinctive category appears to be at least partially the reason some pale-skinned, European-descended Jews insist that they are not White in any capacity. This debate-which never seems to lose its luster in the Jewish press-recently flared up again as a question of whether Israeli actress and Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot is "White."

The initial spark for the controversy was an article by Matthew Mueller titled "Wonder Woman: There IS a Person of Color in the Lead Role." Mueller's piece was framed as a response to several Black women who were unhappy about the relative lack of women of color in superhero-type movies. As a contribution to that debate, telling a group of Black women concerned about racial representation in cinema "Good news-Gal Gadot is Israeli!" comes off as more than a little ridiculous.

This raises the question of why any Jew would be invested in identifying Gal Gadot as non-White-and, more broadly, why many Jews possessing pale skin, whose immediate ancestors lived in or immigrated from Europe, and who are in most day-to-day interactions (particularly with state actors) racially perceived as White, nonetheless passionately resist the label. One answer is that doing so serves to elide Jewish enjoyment of White privilege. And that may well be a sizeable part of the explanation. But Tamar Herman offers up another angle to the story that is quite illustrative. Forthrightly agreeing that Gal Gadot is White, she nonetheless declares that "Gadot isn't just another white woman on screen, and it's dismissive to say so." Herman's essay speaks movingly of how important and meaningful it was to have someone so openly and distinctively Jewish on screen in this sort of role-it genuinely mattered that someone like her was on screen, in a way that it would not if she were "just another white woman." Those correctly insisting on Gadot's Whiteness, Herman suggests, sometimes acted as if that meant she did not count as a representational victory of any sort-even as a Jew, and in particular, a noticeably accented non-American Jew. It seems plausible that at least some of the Jewish writers arguing that Gadot was not White were reacting to the sense that the "White Jew" concept impedes, even obliterates, the recognition of a distinctive Jewish qua Jewish experience. Contesting their Whiteness is a means for White Jews to create space to talk about their Jewishness.

One need not find this decision to be analytically sound or ethically warranted to think that it is reacting to genuine social phenomena. Yet if complete denial of Jewish Whiteness ends up obscuring the ways in which White Jews enjoy and have in some cases helped propagate White privilege as against their non-White peers (Jewish and not), that only underlines the need for an alternative approach that affirms the legitimacy of Jewish articulations of Jewish experience as existing in relation with, but not displacing, a nuanced and complex understanding of Jewish Whiteness for those Jews who are of European descent. Accepting that, in their relations with African Americans and other people of color in America, White Jews are indeed White should not be taken to negate the existence or importance of antisemitism as a distinctive axis of marginalization-one that cannot always be fully disassociated or disentangled from Whiteness as a social concept. In this way, grasping how Whiteness and Jewishness intersect not only can further illuminate certain mechanics of antisemitism, but also can facilitate Jewish acknowledgment of the ways and contexts in which they are White and do benefit from White privilege.

As noted at the outset, White Jews-at least in the American context-surely enjoy many of the hierarchical benefits of Whiteness. We can debate the precise degree to which White Jews receive these boons and how "conditional" they might be, but there is no serious dispute that, over the past fifty or so years, pale-skinned, European-descended Jews have received a great number of the perks accorded to Whites in America. Nor should anyone object to the implied ethical command that White Jews should seek to undermine White supremacy and pursue racial justice, in part because they are directly implicated in and often beneficiaries of our racist systems.

The purpose of this essay, rather, is to offer a critical presentation of the interplay of Whiteness and Jewishness. In contrast to either the wholesale denial that White Jews enjoy some form of White privilege, or the complete subsuming of Jewishness into Whiteness, there is virtue in "illustrat[ing] the dangers of unambivalent readings with particular regard to the presumed 'whiteness' of European Jewry." Without careful attention to the particular social location that exists where Whiteness and Jewishness intersect, the Whiteness frame can reinscribe-even accentuate-deep antisemitic tropes of Jewish power, hegemony, and dominion.

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White Jews: An Intersectional Approach | AJS Review | Cambridge Core

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White Jews: An Intersectional Approach - Volume 43 Issue 2

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Neo-Nazis salute Hitler during Wisconsin march that stopped at local synagogue building - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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the war between Israel and Hamas has led some U.S. Jews to assert that Israel is the "least safe" place for Jews, counter to the Jewish state's assertion that it is a haven for all Jews. Yet how safe really are Jews elsewhere? and how would their situation change if there was no State of Israel?

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Neo-Nazis salute Hitler during Wisconsin march that stopped at local synagogue building - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Members of the Blood Tribe white supremacist group shouted, “Israel is not your friend.”

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“Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

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Senior Columnist Rob Eshman October 10, 2023

Have you ever read the Hamas charter?

It's worth taking a break from the unrelenting, tragic news to better understand the founding document of the group whose attack plunged Israelis and Palestinians into their current hell.

Founding documents are aspirational. It took well over 100 years for the United States to begin to live up to "All men are created equal." And Israel, even within its pre-1967 borders, is still lurching toward upholding "the full social and political equality of all its citizens without distinction of race, creed or sex" promised in its Declaration of Independence .

Similarly, a close reading of Hamas's charter, which was created in 1987 and revised in 2017 , explains a lot about its decision to slaughter innocent Jewish civilians, and unleash a reaction that has inevitably claimed innocent Palestinian lives as well.

Hamas was founded in 1987 as an Islamic fundamentalist party - an offshoot, really, of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. In 2006, a year after Israel withdrew its armed forces and settlers from the Gaza Strip in what is widely known as the disengagement, Hamas won legislative elections, beating the rival Fatah party of Mahmoud Abbas, 74 seats to 45. A year later, it launched a bloody military campaign against Fatah, and took complete control of Gaza.

After Hamas's takeover, Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza, controlling travel and trade in and out of the coastal enclave. Hamas, which the United States, Israel, the European Union, Canada, Egypt, and Japan designate as a terrorist organization, had by 2006 conducted terror attacks in Israel that killed 506 and wounded thousands . After the blockade, the number of attacks plummeted.

But Hamas has never changed its aspirations to wrest control of all of Israel by killing its Jews- a goal you will see clearly when you read the Hamas charter, as I did on Tuesday.

The first version of the charter , adopted in 1988, begins with a preamble. Only instead of "We-the-People," it reads: "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."

The 36 articles that follow are buttressed by quotes from the Quran and lessons of the Prophet Muhammed ... as interpreted by the militant Islamists of Hamas.

After establishing the primacy of Islam, the charter pivots to removing Jews from historic Palestine. "Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land," states Article 12.

The charter's description of Jews echoes millennia of antisemitic tropes.

"With their money, they took control of the world media," reads Article 22, "news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others."

The 9000-word document blames Jews for the French and Communist revolutions, World War I and II, the Rotary Club and the United Nations, " to enable them to rule the world through them."

"There is no war going on anywhere," it reads, "without having their finger in it."

The charter directs the killing of Jews, drawing on a , or prophetic saying: "The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.'"

In 2017, Hamas issued a revised charter , which softens its Islamist rhetoric somewhat. While maintaining the right to Palestine "from the river to the sea," this new version accepts the idea of a Palestinian state in territories occupied by Israel since the 1967 War - the so-called two state solution.

Analysts say the group's continued loss of popularity among Gazans - even in 2006 a plurality of the total votes cast, 44% - forced the changes.

The new charter states that Hamas's conflict is with Zionism, not Jews.

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Hamas' charter, first written in 1988 and revised in 2017, blames Jews for the French and Communist revolutions, and World Wars I and II.

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Yuval Noah Harari backs critique of leftist 'indifference' to Hamas atrocities

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the left's antisemitism grows out of ethical indifference

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the left's antisemitism grows out of ethical indifference

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“there is no contradiction between staunchly opposing the Israeli subjugation and occupation of Palestinians and unequivocally condemning brutal acts of violence against innocent civilians. In fact, every consistent leftist must hold both positions simultaneously.”

it's not ethical rocket science, but it seems to be beyond many people to allow that Israelis are also human beings.

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The Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari has backed academics and peace activists in his home country in an attack on the "indifference" of some American and European progressives to Hamas atrocities, accusing them of "extreme moral insensitivity" and betraying leftwing politics.

Harari - the author of bestselling books including Sapiens and Homo Deus - joined 90 signatories of a statement expressing dismay with "elements within the global left ... until now, our political partners" who had, on occasion, "justified Hamas's actions".

The 47-year-old, who has recently become a high-profile political activist in Israel, opposing Benjamin Netanyahu's rightwing populist coalition and its plan to weaken judicial oversight, told the Guardian he intervened after speaking with peace activists in his home country who were "completely devastated" and "feeling abandoned and betrayed by supposed allies" in peace efforts, after academics, artists and intellectuals signed letters which failed to condemn Hamas.

Harari's aunt and uncle lived in one of the kibbutzim targeted by Hamas in attacks that killed more than 1,400 people and saw more than 220 people taken hostage. They had survived after hiding while gunmen went house-to-house killing neighbours.

Speaking about the reaction from parts of the left in the US and Europe while on a visit to London, Harari said it was "shocking to hear some of the responses that did not only not condemn Hamas, but placed all responsibility on Israel" and to see "the lack of solidarity with regard to the horrific attacks on Israeli civilians".

The letter, whose other signatories included the celebrated Israeli novelist David Grossman, said: "We never imagined that individuals on the left, advocates of equality, freedom, justice, and welfare, would reveal such extreme moral insensitivity and political recklessness."

It concluded: "there is no contradiction between staunchly opposing the Israeli subjugation and occupation of Palestinians and unequivocally condemning brutal acts of violence against innocent civilians. In fact, every consistent leftist must hold both positions simultaneously."

Harari cited a statement from 30 Harvard student groups issued the day after the attacks which said it held "the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence". He said this suggested "the people that murdered babies don't even have 1% responsibility, and 100% responsibility is on Israel''.

He pointed to another statement by the Democratic Socialists of America on the day of the attacks which said: "Today's events are a direct result of Israel's apartheid regime."

Giving the historical example of some US and European socialists supporting Stalin, he said: "This is not the first time the radical left, in pursuit of some fixed vision of justice, finds itself aligned with some very brutal movements and regimes."

That approach may be founded in a "belief or fantasy that absolute justice is possible [where] one side is absolutely to blame for everything, including the crimes of the other side".

"[But] reality is complex," he said. "The same people can be victims and perpetrators at the same time. In most conflicts the blame for crimes and atrocities is not shared 100%/0% but somewhere in between. This is quite banal, but still people find it hard to accept this."

The tenor of the response of international leftist groups was important to the left in Israel, he said, because it felt it was the last bastion of hope for a peaceful two-state solution and so needed international support.

He highlighted a letter signed by the actors Tilda Swinton and Steve Coogan and the director Mike Leigh calling for "an end to the unprecedented cruelty being inflicted on Gaza" without specifically condemning the Hamas assault, although it condemned "every act of violence against civilians and every infringement of international law whoever perpetrates them".

"There is not a single word about the massacre [of 7 October]," Harari said.

The actor Maureen Lipman has already criticised the "Artists for Palestine" group, which compiled the letter as "bleeding heartless liberals". She signed a letter with more than 200 others including the TV presenter Rachel Riley, which called on the BBC and "everyone in public life to call out Hamas for what it is: a terrorist organisation".

Last week, the New York Times headlined its website with claims that Israel was behind the bombing of the al-Ahli Arab hospitalin Gaza City. On Monday, the paper conceded it "relied too heavily on claims by Hamas" and editors "should have taken more care ... and been more explicit about what information could be verified".

Harari said that for the people in Israel and Gaza who "have suffered tremendously ... your mind is so full of your own pain that any attempt to even draw your attention to the pain of somebody else feels like a betrayal".

So, he said, "in a moment like this, we entrust the possibility of peace to outsiders".

"We cannot hold it right now, but we hope that outsiders hold it for us and help de-escalate the current situation," he said. "The job of intellectuals, artists and scholars is to try and go deeper. [It is] to try and see the complexity of reality, especially in today's climate of post-truth. It feels intellectually and emotionally lazy to just pick a side."

Harari said he believes "the idea that Israel should just destroy Gaza is unacceptable".

"We don't see a campaign of just obliterating Gaza," he said. "The situation of the Palestinian population is horrific but at least it is clear that Israel is not intending to kill as many civilians as possible. This is not what the Assad regime did in Homs and Aleppo. The only solution will come when not only is Hamas disarmed but the Palestinian people have some kind of alternative future."

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Yuval Noah Harari backs critique of leftist 'indifference' to Hamas atrocities

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Exclusive: Sapiens author among 90 signatories to statement of dismay at 'extreme moral insensitivity'

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A good academic book on antisemitism on the left written by leftist scholars

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A good academic book on antisemitism on the left written by leftist scholars

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The Jewish experience offers an equivocal test case. Universalism has stimulated the struggle for Jewish emancipation, but it has also helped to develop the idea that there is something peculiarly harmful to humanity about Jews - that there is a 'Jewish question' that needs to be 'solved'. This original and stimulating book traces struggles within the Enlightenment, Marxism, critical theory and the contemporary left, seeking to rescue universalism from its repressive, antisemitic undertones.

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Antisemitism and the left: On the return of the Jewish question

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Antisemitism and the left: On the return of the Jewish question [Fine, Robert, Spencer, Philip] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Antisemitism and the left: On the return of the Jewish question

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Tomorrow we join in an international public Jewish fast day

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Tomorrow we join in an international public Jewish fast day

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Ta’anit Tzibbur: A Day of Communal Fasting

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Please join us this Thursday, October 12th, the 27th of Tishrei, for a communal fast day supported by rabbis and leaders from across the Jewish world. The fast will begin at dawn and end at nightfall.

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US pro-Israel groups in bitter feud over Netanyahu's far-right government

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these two organizations of American Jews both support Israel, but in very different ways. The president of J Street, Jeremy Ben Ami, is appearing for one presentation in Portland OR next Thursday evening Sept 7 at 7pm at the Eastside Jewish Commons; it is likely to be a sell out crowd so sign up now if you still can!

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A public feud has broken out between the US's leading pro-Israel lobby groups over who represents the true interests of the Jewish state in Washington under the most rightwing government in its history.

The hardline American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) has called its smaller and more liberal rival, J Street, a "grave threat" to Israel's security and accused it of endorsing the country's "most virulent critics" in Congress.

J Street has responded by portraying Aipac as a front for Benjamin Netanyahu's extremist coalition, while accusing it of failing to support unprecedented Israeli public protests against an undemocratic power grab by the government.

The vitriolic dispute reflects a deepening divide among American Jews about what it is to be pro-Israel. But it also comes as Aipac's once-unchallenged influence in Washington has been diminished by its unwavering backing for Netanyahu over the past decade or more, including siding with the Israeli leader against President Barack Obama, and by growing support for the Palestinian cause within the Democratic party as Israel further entrenches its occupation.

Aipac's standing was also damaged when, for the first time in its history, it broke with its claim to be bipartisan last year and began directly funding political campaigns against critics of Israeli government policies. It was accused of being "morally bankrupt" for endorsing Republican members of Congress who tried to block President Biden's presidential election victory.

At the heart of the dispute is Aipac's position that support for Israel means virtually unquestioned backing for whatever government is in power. J Street argues that support for Israel requires standing for the country's broader interests, including an end to occupation, even when that is in opposition to the policies of a particular administration in Jerusalem.

As the two lobby groups prepare to face off by pouring millions of dollars into backing rival candidates in next year's congressional elections, Aipac sent its donors a letter attacking J Street's policies such as imposing conditions on the US's $3.8bn a year in military aid to Israel to prevent it being used to annex Palestinian territory, expand Jewish settlements or other actions to entrench occupation. J Street endorsed Democratic congresswoman Betty McCollum's 2021 bill to place similar conditions on US aid.

"Today, one of the gravest threats to American support for Israel's security comes from an organization that outrageously calls itself pro-Israel," Aipac said in the letter.

"J Street's efforts fracture the bipartisan consensus for Israel and give its radical opponents in Congress a veneer of legitimacy from an allegedly 'pro-Israel' group. This is a clear and present threat to American support for the Jewish state."

J Street's president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, fired back in a series of tweets.

"Sadly, over time, Aipac has embraced an increasingly distorted vision of what it means to be 'pro-Israel' - one more aligned with the goals of the Netanyahu government and the American right than with the Jewish, democratic values of most Jewish Americans (+ Israelis themselves)," he wrote.

"There's no room for genuine concern over eroding democracy, endless settlements, racist rhetoric and the growing toll of maintaining a permanent, unjust, undemocratic occupation."

Aipac's attack in part reflects a growing concern within the Israeli government that demands by J Street and others for the US government to take a stronger stand to end the occupation will gain wider traction in Washington.

The dispute has spilled over to Israel itself.

The liberal Tel Aviv newspaper Haaretz two weeks ago described Aipac as "the pro-Netanyahu, anti-Israel lobby" and accused the group of flying in 24 Democratic members of Congress "so that Netanyahu could mollify them with lies".

"Effectively, the organization has become an operational wing of Netanyahu's far-right government, one that peddles a false image of a liberal Israel in the United States and sells illusions to members of Congress," it said.

The leaders of Israel's pro-democracy movement, which has led months of mass protests against the government's moves to weaken the power of the judiciary, accused Aipac of blocking the visiting Democratic members of Congress from meeting the protestors.

"It is about time Aipac realizes that there are no longer any buyers for the fake picture of Israel it's trying to sell," said the authors, who included the former deputy head of Israel's National Security Council and former officials in the prime minister's office.

"Aipac is trying to offer an alternative reality and is effectively turning from a pro-Israel organization to one that promotes the anti-democratic overhaul and the de facto annexation of the West Bank, led by Netanyahu and aided by the most extreme, racist and violent elements of the Israeli far right."

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US pro-Israel groups in bitter feud over Netanyahu's far-right government

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Hardline Aipac - condemned for unquestioning support of PM - calls liberal rival J Street 'grave threat' to Israel's security

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Opinion | Israel’s Democracy Movement Is Built on a Contradiction. That’s an Achievement.

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protests in Israel every Saturday night...what for?

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protests in Israel every Saturday night...what for?

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This article by Gershom Gorenberg is a good description of the current political situation in Israel

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Opinion | Israel’s Democracy Movement Is Built on a Contradiction. That’s an Achievement.

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The protesters in Israel have one goal for now: to keep the state democratic.

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This Padlet is already full of good stuff for High Holy Days

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This Padlet is already full of good stuff for High Holy Days

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I just wrote the Elul post and when I looked at the posts from 12 months ago I saw the same thing!!
That's the beauty of Judaism: we keep returning to wisdom we need to learn again and again. We are forgetful humans.
Scroll down twelve months of posts and you'll find good stuff: articles, books, recommendations for films....feel free to suggest posts yourself, too! We all learn from each other.

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High Holy Day preparation begins with the month of Elul

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High Holy Day preparation begins with the month of Elul

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7 weeks after Tisha B'Av Jews celebrate Rosh HaShanah, the "head of the year." We ready ourselves for the intense Ten Days of Repentance between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur starting on Rosh Hodesh Elul.

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This Jewish month marks the period of soul-searching leading up to the High Holidays.

Although the month of Elul - the sixth month of the Jewish year, which immediately precedes Rosh Hashanah - has no special importance in the Bible or in early rabbinic writings, various customs arose sometime during the first millennium that designated Elul as the time to prepare for the High Holy Days. Because these days are filled with so much meaning and potency, they require a special measure of readiness. We are called upon to enter them thoughtfully and to consider what they mean. As the Maharal of Prague said, "All the month of Elul, before eating and sleeping, a person should look into his soul and search his deeds, that he may make confession."
When is Rosh Hashanah 2018? Find out here. Or wondering when is Yom Kippur 2018? Click here to find out!
Jewish tradition points to the name of the month as symbolically appropriate - the letters of Elul form an acronym for the words in the verse Ani le‑dodi ve‑dodi li-"I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine" ( Song of Songs 6:3). Believing that the "beloved" refers to God, the sages take this verse to describe the particularly loving and close relationship between God and Israel. Elul, then, is our time to establish this closeness so that we can approach the Yamim Noraim, or Days of Awe, in trusting acceptance of God's judgment. We approach the trial not out of fear, but out of love.
Excerpted with permission from Entering the High Holy Days, published by the Jewish Publication Society.

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This Jewish month marks the period of soul-searching leading up to the High Holidays. Although the month of Elul - the sixth month of the Jewish year, which immediately precedes Rosh Hashanah - has no special importance in the Bible or in early rabbinic writings, various customs arose sometime during the first millennium that designated Elul as the time to prepare for the High Holy Days.

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the haunting five chapters of Lamentations, or Eikha in Hebrew, are chanted on Tisha B'av

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Lamentations in Seasonal Context - TheTorah.com

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The reading of Lamentations on Tisha b'Av functions both as the climax of the three weeks of mourning and the beginning of the seven weeks of conciliation, which leads us into the High Holidays | Dr. Elsie R. Stern

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excellent overview of the archaeology of the Second Temple and Western Wall area

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excellent overview of the archaeology of the Second Temple and Western Wall area

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and a good update on what you see there today

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June 7, 1967. It is the third day of the Six Day War and after 19 years of exile by the Jordanians, the Old City of Jerusalem has been captured by Israeli forces. Dan Bahat, a soldier stationed in the country's now reunified capital, asks for two hours of leave from his commanding officer. A secular Jew, Bahat makes his way to the Temple Mount.

"I came to the Western Wall the moment I heard it was liberated," he told The Times of Israel. He recalled that he reached the wall exactly when former prime minister David Ben-Gurion arrived for the first time.

Called the "Wailing Wall" since the 13th century, it is here at this remnant of the two Jewish Temples' retaining wall that Jews have historically mourned their destruction: the First Temple was destroyed in 586 BCE by the Babylonians, and the Second Temple, first modestly built some 70 years later, was fully renovated and massively enlarged by Herod circa 20 BCE, then destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE.

Following the 1967 war, the houses surrounding that portion of the Western Wall were razed, making way for what is now the stone-paved plaza used for prayer and state ceremonies. On the south side of the plaza, the Mughrabi Bridge, the only entrance available for non-Muslims to ascend to today's Aqsa compound, separates the prayer pavilion from the section of the Western Wall that was set aside for archaeological research and a national park.

Standing in the park, what immediately captures the imagination is the massive stone rubble, lying exactly where it landed when Roman soldiers pried the huge ashlar stones from the Temple Mount high above. Here, more than in any other place in the park, one can resoundingly conceptualize the horror of the fall of the Second Temple and the destruction wrought there.

However, since a High Court case in 2000, the archaeological park is also officially used as a space for egalitarian prayer. And now, after decades of contentious struggle and negotiations between all major Jewish denominations in Israel and abroad, under the auspices of the Prime Minister's Office, a large permanent prayer platform is in the final planning stages for construction.

"The Western Wall is sacrosanct," said Bahat, now retired from a career as a prominent archaeologist. "But out of a national monument, it has become a synagogue."

It is the unrivaled historical value of this site and the antiquities in it that led former Six Day War soldier Bahat to petition the High Court of Justice in March for a stay of construction in the Western Wall's Robinson's Arch area. A hearing is set for December.

From 1963-1990, Bahat was employed by the predecessor to the IAA, eventually becoming the district archeologist of Jerusalem. From the mid-1980s on, he served as the long-time lead archaeologist on the Western Wall Tunnel excavations.

Represented by the prestigious Yigal Arnon law firm, Bahat's March petition is against the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) and its head, the Prime Minister's Office, Culture Minister Miri Regev, Education Minister Naftali Bennett, and Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked, who all have played a role in the planned platform.

The platform's implementation is a remnant from the much-negotiated, now-frozen 2016 government decision that earmarks the site as a permanent location for egalitarian prayer, would have granted the non-Orthodox movements and feminist prayer group Women of the Wall a seat at the table in its planning, and somewhat equal public status with a new joint entrance to the renovated prayer pavilions.

"Unfortunately," said Bahat, the Robinson's Arch site "has become easy prey for those who decided to make a non-Orthodox prayer plaza."

Bahat told The Times of Israel that because he is no longer employed by the IAA and doesn't need the agency for an excavation license, he is able to speak out against what he sees as a destructive, desecration of the hard-won Western Wall archaeology - and the IAA's role in it. According to a deal reached with the PMO over the planned expansion of the permanent platform, the IAA is deeply involved in the construction project. In February, it began preliminary checks in the area intended as a new, much widened entrance to the planned platform.

The Israel Antiquities Authority, said Bahat, is the body "in charge of guarding all the archaeological sites."

"This is not protection, it is a desecration of the site," said Bahat. "The IAA should be on my side not to touch the place. But they are the ones who are undertaking the work of destruction," he said.

The Davidson Archaeological Park, said Bahat, is "the pearl in the crown" of ancient Jerusalem archaeology. "There is nowhere else where you can so clearly see the results of the 70 CE Roman conquest. What you see today is really how everything ended."

Jewish tradition states the Second Temple was destroyed because of " sinat chinam " - baseless hatred and infighting among the Jewish people. Today, as the Israeli government pushes forward with a construction plan designed to bridge gaps with Diaspora Jewry, archaeologists fear that the evidence that preserves a previous time of destructive Jewish factionalism is set to be erased from history.

Ahead of Tisha B'Av, the Jewish day of mourning over the destruction of the two Temples, The Times of Israel spoke with archaeologists about what exactly is currently being "destroyed" at the Robinson's Arch prayer area, and, after getting a glimpse of still unfinalized plans for the new expanded permanent platform, what other evidence of Judaism's historical past may be "desecrated" - or even potentially better preserved.

What archaeology is there exactly in this crown jewel?

In 1968, head of the Hebrew University Prof. Benjamin Mazar began his large-scale excavation alongside hundreds of workers and volunteers. According to Mazar, remains from as early as the Iron Age and as late as the Arab period have been uncovered at the site.

These were heady times for Israeli archaeology. Yigael Yadin called Mazar's excavations there "the greatest archaeological enterprise Jerusalem has witnessed." Numerous questions of Jewish identity and heritage that had been left unsolved began to receive answers.

One riddle, left over from the campaign of American Bible scholar Edward Robinson was the meaning behind an arch he discovered in 1838 while charting Holy Land sites for his landmark book, "Biblical Researches in Palestine." Then, the arch jutted out of the wall about a meter above street level and was most used as a bench. Robinson saw it as a clear identifier of the spot of the ancient Jewish Temples.

Robinson writes in "Biblical Researches in Palestine," "The existence of these remains of the ancient bridge, seems to remove all doubt as to the identity of this part of the enclosure of the mosk with that of the ancient temple. How they can have remained for so many ages unseen or unnoticed by any writer or traveller, is a problem, which I would not undertake fully to solve. One cause has probably been the general oblivion, or want of knowledge, that any such bridge ever existed."

For years, Robinson and other scholars felt the arch, which springs out from the Western Wall, was used to support a bridge. As he writes in a 1980 Biblical Archaeology Review article, Mazar, however, determined it was indeed part of a support system - but for a monumental stairway.

The staircase led to one of the main entrances to the Temple Mount, originating from the well-preserved Herodian road that visitors can still walk on today, and was supported by the 17-meter-high Robinson's Arch. At the southern end of the Temple Mount built on a man-made plateau was a massive, impressive structure called the Royal Stoa.

Jewish pilgrims of all sorts - possibly even Jesus - would have walked these steps supported by Robinson's Arch to ascend to the Temple.

Among the other early discoveries there, Mazar found a Hebrew inscription in the Western Wall just under Robinson's Arch reading, "You shall see and your heart shall rejoice. Their bones shall flourish like grass," which appears to be a paraphrase of Isaiah 66:14: "When you see this, your heart will rejoice and you will flourish like grass."

Mazar, writes granddaughter Dr. Eilat Mazar, today a leading Israeli archaeologist, believed the inscription to have been written by the few Jews who, in Emperor Julian's day in 363 CE, were briefly allowed back into the city to rebuild the Temple. Others, she writes, tie the inscription to mass burials about a meter and a half below it, which took place in 900 CE.

Standing in the Davidson Archaeological Park near the Western Wall today, visitors are struck by the Herodian road, the shops that sold sacrifices to pilgrims on their way to the Temple Mount, and a 1st century CE cornerstone fallen from the wall above inscribed with, "the trumpeting place." The stone arguably indicates where priests may have sounded the entrance of the Sabbath and holidays during the days of the Second Temple.

What is currently covered up?

Archaeologist Prof. Ronny Reich uncovered the section of the park that is adjacent to the current egalitarian prayer platform in excavations there from 1994 -1996. Reich told The Times of Israel that while the road and other finds are significant, the in-situ rubble of the destroyed massive wall is of unparalleled importance.

"This is the only place where you can touch, experience, become excited by the very impressive stone collapse from the destruction of the Second Temple," said Reich. He said it has incomparable educational, emotional and historical value that is unmatched by any other in the country.

When Reich excavated this area of the site, the entire roadway next to the wall was covered by these massive ashlar stones. A portion of these stones, the heaviest of which weighed some 14 tons, were lifted out by a crane, so archaeologists could study the debris from beneath. But a decision was made to merely dig around the section that remains today, and leave a visceral reminder of the wide-spread razing of ancient Jerusalem.

Today, the small 12-meter-wide egalitarian prayer platform in the north corner of the Robinson's Arch area that is adjacent to the Western Wall covers over a portion of these ancient stones, which are now inaccessible to the public. Visitors on this platform can also see, in a corner adjacent to the wall and the Mughrabi Bridge, a pier that was excavated by Mazar and shows many other deeper courses of the Western Wall. Now it is used as a de facto garbage can.

The second, much larger "temporary" platform erected in 2014 by then-Jerusalem Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett covers much more territory, and therefore more antiquity.

According to Reich, who excavated this area, much of what is covered comes from the Byzantine (Christian Roman) and early Muslim periods, although there is also still some evidence of Second Temple shops similar, but less preserved than what is on display directly under Robinson's Arch.

In his 1980 aricle, Mazar writes that between the series of arches that supported the staircase were shops of the Lower Market. "We found the remains of these shops as well as some of their contents: stone vessels, weights, pottery and coins," noting one of Emperor Agrippa I, who ruled from 41-44 CE. "We may assume that the shops served those coming to the Temple, pilgrims in particular.

Is the evidence of destruction being destroyed?

Both Reich and Bahat said that none of the antiquities covered by the prayer platforms have been caused irreparable damage - so far.

At the same time, Bahat called the Ezrat Yisrael platform built by Bennet "ugly," and that "the dirt underneath is unbelievable." The construction of the platform is "inserting an artificial element into an archaeological site."

"It's as if, suddenly in the middle of Beit Shean, they'll build a big platform to celebrate [the Moroccan Jewish holiday of] mimuna," he said, or, at Tel Megiddo "to put up a platform to celebrate Allenby's victory. Can you imagine such a thing?"

According to Bahat's attorney, Amnon Lorch, the former Chairman of the East Jerusalem Development Company, 250,000 visit the archaeological park annually. "Instead of seeing the awesome site that was there until a few years ago, today they see the porch with the umbrellas that looks like an entrance to a swimming pool in the Bahamas. It is a complete desecration of the site."

For Lorch, the matter is both professional and personal. He worked there as a volunteer in the massive excavations. All the site's unique archaeological glory will be covered, he said, "because maybe someone will pray there? The fact of the matter is that a few thousand yearly pray there, whereas hundreds of thousands pay tickets into the park. There must be a balance of public interests."

Lorch's case targets the IAA, which he claimed was formed as an independent authority to defend the antiquities of the People of Israel. "That's their job, their mission, their legal obligation," he said. Instead, "they have bent their head before the politicians at the whim of the prime minister who, after the government froze the decision to build the porch there, gave an order to build it."

In his case, Lorch references past IAA heads' statements fending off previously planned construction. Likewise, he claims that the current platforms do not have the required Jerusalem municipality building permits, nor the approval of the recently headline-making ministerial committee on Holy Places, which has yet to sign off on the project.

But more than anything, in speaking with The Times of Israel, Lorch sounded personally betrayed by the government, which is overlooking its heritage and the preservation of it.

"If the Polish would have done a thing like this to Auschwitz, the [Israeli] government and the Jewish people would have gone crazy," he said. "But here we're taking the destruction of the Second Temple," he stopped the sentence there, apparently astounded.

The IAA as 'protectors' of Israel's ancient past

The IAA of yesteryear also used such strong language in fending off the archaeological site from encroaching construction. Today, it takes a much more pragmatic approach.

Attorney Firas Badhe, legal advisor for IAA, spoke with The Times of Israel this week about the Bahat case and evaluated its chances of success as slim. It is not the first time Bahat has petitioned on similar grounds, he said.

There is no finalized construction plan, said Badhe, and there won't be one until the IAA is satisfied it can preserve and protect the antiquities there. The IAA is further making sure that the archaeology is as accessible as possible to the public - both what is uncovered now, and what may be revealed in the future.

"If something is found in the [building] process, then the planning must accommodate the new finds," said Badhe.

A glimpse at an architectural simulation of the provisional plans indicate that the new platform will be much higher than the current one, allowing for much more access to the massive stone rubble from the Temple Mount. Likewise, the platform will basically maintain its size on the portion closest to the Western Wall, and gradually fan out over the now temporary prayer section. There, the plans indicate that it will be slightly more narrow, potentially allowing for visual access to the pilgrimage shops' remains.

Badhe confirmed that the current provisional plan shows more accessibility, but repeatedly emphasized that there will be no final approval until all professional checks, including consultations with archaeologists and engineers are completed.

"We promise more accessibility and promise that the antiquities will not be harmed... We are standing guard," he said.

Badhe said that many archaeologists are divided over the platform's construction due to a misunderstanding of the planned work.

"It is a very sensitive place, we are very carefully working towards a solution that will promise preservation and accessibility - and not according to how the petitioners conceive of what will be harmed," he said.

Archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar, who has vocally stated her opposition to the construction, when learning that the construction will be much higher than the current platform, cautiously said that it appears the planners are taking the archaeologists' concerns into account. "The important thing is to expose [the rubble]. Even if they take one more meter and raise the whole section - it is very significant," she said.

Reich was even more enthusiastic. "If it will be higher, we will get an underground space where visitors can see it [the rubble] exactly as it was. See and touch, without having to crouch down," he said.

As for the covered pilgrimage shops and some ritual baths which may be inaccessible in the new plan, he said, "It's all a question of proportion. If there are already shops on one side, will whether there's another shop or two on the other side change the picture?" he asked.

What's needed in addressing the the evidence of Second Temple Roman destruction of the capital of the Jewish people, according to Reich, is an agreement that allows parties to overcome their ongoing, factionalizing conflicts and live together in peace.

Wryly using a Latin phrase, Reich said, "Really, it's a matter of modus vivendi."

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Is evidence of Temple's destruction being destroyed by a bid for Jewish unity?

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Archaeologist Prof. Dan Bahat files a High Court petition to stop Western Wall construction. What is the archaeology that is currently covered, and what is in the provisional plan?

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Israel's rule over the Palestinians has created a new Judaism

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an essay on how Jewish life continues to transform Judaism

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an essay on how Jewish life continues to transform Judaism

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Jewish experience in the State of Israel is unprecedented in the entire history of Judaism; this new experience is shaping a new Judaism.

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Can there be Judaism without Jews? Is there somewhere an entity called "Judaism" that exists in a disconnect from Jews in terms of time and place? This question does not relate to the source of the authority of Judaism. In other words, it does not address the issue of who authorized people to create this entity - whether it was God, as tradition maintains, or a social-human initiative, as biblical criticism argues. The question I pose here deals with a given situation in which Judaism already exists. Who if not human beings created it? And can it exist without Jews, detached from a concrete social experience?

I want to argue that it cannot. The fact is that Judaism as we've known it for the past 2,000 years is post-Temple Judaism. It's a Judaism that the sages renewed upon the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 C.E., and the failure of the Bar-Kochba revolt in 132-136 C.E.. Effectively, the sages fomented a total revolution in Judaism; they changed the modes of worship, the religious experience and the connection with God. Prayer and intensive study of the Holy Scriptures replaced animal sacrifices. The rabbinical revolution also changed the social stratification of the Jewish people. Its leaders supplanted the priests and the Levites as the social and religious elite.

As a result, the path by which one entered society's elite underwent a dramatic transformation. It no longer depended on one's biological origins - being born to a father from the tribe of Levi - but rather was dependent on the individual's intellectual and religious deeds and personality.

The historical circumstances of the time also led to geographical and political decentralization. Jerusalem remained only a symbolic focal point of Judaism. Religious authority was no longer centered in one place or in a hierarchical establishment of priests, as had been the case in the past. After 70 C.E., the Jews had neither a church nor a pope, as it were. Even well after that era, there was no single model of authority. Alongside the Torah scholar were now the admor (a spiritual Hasidic leader), mystic, folk preacher, dayan (religious judge) and professor.

If the face of Judaism reflects the situation of Jews, and if Jews shape Judaism in keeping with the circumstances of time and place - then what Jews are doing in the sovereign State of Israel is also shaping Judaism. Sovereignty involves the exercise of effective rule over a territory and a population. It behooves us, then, to consider how ruling a territory and population has changed Judaism. And, in the main, how rule over a non-Jewish population - in our case, the Palestinians - has spawned a new Judaism.

There is no precedent in Jewish history for the existence of a Jewish state that constitutes a regional power and rules another people. Never before has the Jewish people possessed a combination like this of sovereignty, power and control, which are being exploited to oppress another people. The Hasmonean Kingdom (140-63 B.C.E.) was not a regional power. The Hasmonean ruler and high priest John Hyrcanus I converted the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Edom to Judaism in 125 B.C.E., after conquering them. But a mass conversion to Judaism of the Palestinians was not and is not on the agenda - they are meant to remain outside the Jewish collective.

The Jewish people was always ethnocentric. It believes in the supremacy of its ethnic collective over other nations. This is a blatantly hierarchical conception, according to which the Jew is superior to the non-Jew. But throughout history, this was a supremacy that lacked the force of a state and an apparatus for wielding control over non-Jews. On the contrary: The Jews were inferior in status in the social and religious order that was established by the empires and states that ruled them over two millennia.

Internally, by contrast, Jewish writings and conduct accorded with the self-perception of being a chosen people. In the 11th and 12th centuries C.E., Maimonides explained that this was based on what Jews saw as the supremacy of the Torah, their religion and way of life, while, on the other hand, Rabbi Yehuda Halevi believed that the collective possessed an existential-biological supremacy vis-à-vis other peoples. And in the late 18th century, Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the founder of the Chabad Hasidic dynasty, wrote in the "Tanya" about the Jewish soul being superior to the inferior soul of the rest of humanity.

Grounded in these notions of supremacy, Jewish messianism connoted the establishment of a new world order, in which Jews would openly realize their spiritual and political supremacy over other peoples. There was an expectation that messianism would create a new reality and would be spearheaded by a descendant of King David. Jewish tradition states that God will establish this new order at some point in the future. For their part, the rabbis of the Hasidic dynasty transposed the idea of the new order from a sought-after historical reality into a form of mental consciousness. The result was the emergence of a concrete spiritualization of messianism, severed from historic reality.

The extensive dissemination of such approaches among the Jewish people in exile was not only a theological matter, but also a counter-reaction to the position taken by the societies and the religions under whose auspices Jewish communities existed. The status of the Jews was a priori inferior. Indeed, Jews were influenced by all the cultures surrounding them; some individuals rose to senior positions in their countries' political and financial establishments. But as long as they did not convert to the dominant religion in their countries, they were "the Other," an inferior people. In some cases they were forced to reside in a defined space: the ghetto, the Pale of Settlement and so on. Their perception of being chosen, superior people whose time would come was compensation for their plight.
Colony across the fence
The emancipation, modernity and Jews' integration into contemporary life created a new conception of the so-called Chosen People. This conception was translated into a universal-educational mission, rather than referencing the insular superiority of Orthodoxy. Instead of an isolated form of Judaism, passive in the face of the surrounding social environment, Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) and Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), and to certain extent also Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888), proposed an open, universal and egalitarian Judaism - messianism without a Jewish king-messiah, and without territory and rule over other peoples. The goal of the Jewish people, according to these scholars, was to extend the ideological boundaries of their religion to include all of humanity. This was a Judaism of content, not of weapons or force. Based on the experiences of World War I, Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamares (1869-1931) advocated a Jewish nationalism based not on the creation of a state per se, rather nationalism of a predominantly spiritual and civil nature. Similar ideas were propounded in 1945 by Makhlouf Avitan (1908-1960) in Casablanca.

These approaches developed at a time when the majority societies in which Jews resided were imperialist, colonialist and missionary in nature. Imperialism spawns the development of mechanisms of control over regions and societies across borders, overseas. To this, colonialism adds the element of settlement in such areas, aimed at perpetuating control over land resources and over the labor of an indigenous population, exploiting it for the benefit of the occupying power. Imperialism and colonialism generate power relations in which the foreigner, the occupier and the settler hold a position of superiority vis-à-vis local residents, although those in power are far fewer in number than the latter.

The Western, colonizing settlers were accompanied by missionaries who sought to change the indigenous people's religion and culture. The objective of civilizing others that was undertaken by the missionary - and by the so-called enlightened settler as well - reduced the religious and cultural distances between the occupiers and the native-born people. The occupiers would learn the language of the local population, fall in love with them, marry and have families with them. Time and distance would typically reduce the settler-colonizers' connections to their homeland and heighten their pursuit of local interests at the expense of the society in the distant metropolis from which they came.

Jews integrated proudly into the imperialistic and colonialist establishments for some 300 years, through the 20th century. They served as cabinet ministers, financiers, settlers in colonies and employers of slaves. For her part, educator Emma Mordecai (1812-1906), who was religiously observant and active in the Jewish community of Richmond, Virginia, was a slave owner who openly supported the Confederacy in the American Civil War. Throughout the second half of the 18th century, the Gabay family in Jamaica employed hundreds of Black slaves in the large sugar plantations it owned throughout the Caribbean. Edwin Montagu (1879-1924) was secretary of state for India from 1917 to 1922, when the subcontinent was the jewel in the crown of British imperialism. Léon Blum (1872-1950) served three terms as prime minister of France when that country ruled vast swaths of Africa. The Jewishness of these figures was a part of their own personal identity, not part of the colonial and missionary project per se.

In contrast, the idea of a universalist mission was also a Jewish response to the spirit of the times: It involved a sort of missionary work without a defined religious mission and without a church, cultural expansionism instead of colonial rule, and creation of relations of authority and power vis-à-vis the indigenous peoples.

Zionism and the establishment of the Jewish state foisted a territorial framework and regime upon the modern conception of a chosen people. David Ben-Gurion demanded that the State of Israel be a light unto the nations. The Labor movement spoke of creating an egalitarian model society. Of course, a gap always existed between the self-perception of Jews and their behavior, as was seen, for example, during the era of Western colonialism, in the socialist society of the Soviet Bloc, and in the United States. But that consciousness existed together with the ambition to be the best and to constitute a model for the enlightened world. And then came the Six-Day War, the occupation and the settlements.

In fact, rule over the Palestinians did not begin in 1967. A sovereign state with a large Jewish majority could not have existed without the ethnic cleansing that was carried out in the 1948 war and its aftermath. Back then, a new form of Judaism had already started to take on form and substance. That process was accelerated after 1967 with the establishment of the settlements. In school textbooks, the Books of Joshua, Judges and Kings supplanted those of the prophets who had preached social justice and a moral regime - Isaiah, Jeremiah and Amos.

Initially the settlements were a semi-wild phenomenon that was cultivated by the Labor governments. The ruling establishment turned a blind eye, while the other eye ensured that its collaboration with the settlers would stay under the radar. Likud leaders since 1977 happily opened the government's gates to the settler groups; indeed, the entire project that those groups spawned took root as an act of state. Unlike Western colonialism, Israeli colonialism has been implemented on the playing fields of the neighbors, just across the fence. The geographical proximity between sovereign Israel, the metropolis, and its colony has created convenient conditions for massive investment by the state and the private sector in the settlement project. It is the largest and most expensive enterprise undertaken by Israel since its establishment, and Israel has become subjugated to it.

The geographical proximity has also given rise to settlers without settlements - that is, family members, friends and supporters of their ideology and their politics who are not directly involved in actual colonization on the ground. These other individuals continue to reside within Israel proper. In contrast to classic colonialists, the majority of settlers created a hybrid reality for themselves that is associated with their country of origin - not the indigenous population. They are dependent on their state financially and institutionally. Many of them cross the imaginary boundary between the occupied West Bank and sovereign Israel, and go back again, every day. They maintain their ethnic isolation from the indigenous Palestinian population and do not intermarry or carry on romantic relations with its members, as was true of colonizers in centuries past, elsewhere in the world. The settlers' local councils and municipalities are separate in every way, from those of their "neighbors." The settlers do not aspire to refashion the Palestinians' culture or to turn them into Israelis. Like many Israelis living west of the Green Line - the internationally recognized border between Israel and the occupied territories - they want to seize control of most of the West Bank and to wipe out the separate identity and national aspirations of the Palestinians.

In the 21st century, the expansion of the settlements and the transformation of the Palestinian Authority into a subcontractor of Israel has resulted in a single regime between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The settlements are not built "there," far away; they are "here." This is, in effect, a regime of Jewish supremacy. The number of Jews living under that system is roughly equal to or slightly less than the number of Palestinians. Therefore, there is no point in continuing to hide the ethnic supremacy felt by these Jews behind the slogan of a "democratic majority" in a Jewish state. Thanks to the 2018 nation-state law, in fact, one can take pride in Jewish supremacy and in national exclusivity. There is also no need for the "grandchild clause" in the Law of Return of 1950 (which allows anyone with one Jewish grandparent to become an Israeli citizen) - an important anti-Nazi declaration - in order to create an artificial Jewish majority. Recent coalition agreements even aspire to expunge that policy.

Jewish supremacy is also the response to the challenge posed by Palestinians who are Israeli citizens. Their increasing integration into the Jewish-controlled public domain and labor market, even as they emphasize their indigenous Palestinian identity, and their collaboration with Jewish civil society organizations, are giving rise to a hybrid reality for them as well. This is an ethnic-civil hybridity. Although these Palestinians are discriminated against, their citizenship is secure and thus threatens the ethnic underpinnings of the regime.

In Jerusalem a hybrid reality exists that is both geographic and ethnic. Fully 40 percent of the city's residents are neither Jews, nor are they citizens of Israel. But in contrast to West Bank Palestinians, their counterparts in Jerusalem have permanent residency status. Their prominent role in the labor market and in Israeli institutions of higher learning, on the one hand, and the establishment of settlements in the Jerusalem's Palestinian neighborhoods, on the other, put paid to Israel's categorical assertion that Jerusalem is a Jewish city. In reality it is binational.
Governability and revolution
Sovereignty, power and rule over the Palestinians have transformed Judaism. This new Judaism was not shaped in the beit midrash as classical Judaism was, but within the framework of a dominant Israeli regime in general and rule over the Palestinians in particular. The ethnocentrism evolved from a form of self-awareness into a modus operandi, from a universal mission into oppression and occupation. The moral paradigm that Ben-Gurion and the Labor movement demanded was converted into arms exports and various other means of control and aid to despotic regimes, to enable them to surveil their opponents.

Until 1967, religious Zionism was still dragging itself in the wake of secular or traditionalist Zionism. In similar fashion, it founded kibbutzim and moshavim, workers unions, a youth movement and an anti-ultra-Orthodox ideology. After the war, religious Zionism harnessed its Zionist activism to ruling the territories and the population conquered by Israel in 1967. Since the Oslo Accords, this activism has been aimed at changing the status quo on the Temple Mount and establishing settlements in the heart of Palestinian residential areas in Jerusalem, Hebron and in so-called mixed cities in Israel.

Orthodox Jewry has changed accordingly. The Temple Mount is no longer treated as a site that is forbidden to visit until the conditions are ripe for the arrival of the Messiah. On the contrary: The sovereignty of the State of Israel must also be extended there. Groups seeking to rebuild the Temple go even further. They seek to transform Judaism from a post-Temple religion into a pre-Temple faith. For them, sovereignty of a people that is like all other peoples is not Jewish.

Jewish messianism has undergone a transformation. Classic Jewish literature depicted the advent of a messianic age following a catastrophe or great crisis, the birth pangs of the Messiah, a war of Gog and Magog. All those elements are part of the messianic transition from the realm of history into one that transcends history. In contrast, the new Jewish messianism is a product of historical success, the achievement of Jewish sovereignty and the wielding of power over non-Jewish surroundings. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook saw Zionism as a breakthrough to ushering in the coming of the Messiah, whereas his son Zvi Yehuda Kook and his disciples believe that we have already reached that stage. The secularity of Zionism is only a pretense, they believe; in practice, it is helping to realize Jewish messianism. While not a personal form of messianism - the Messiah is not a human being - it is taking place at a time when Jews have achieved territorial rule and sovereignty. This way of thinking has been strengthened since the Six-Day War.

Another attribute of this form of messianism is its unidirectional determinism. Messianic determinism negates a priori possible failure, and provides an incentive to propel the process forward. This determinism constitutes a sort of divine insurance policy under whose auspices Jewish sovereignty and rule over the Palestinians are intensifying. That situation mollifies believers in the new messianism, who are disappointed that secular Jewry has rejected Orthodoxy despite their multiple efforts to get that population "to repent."

Concurrent with these streams, Rabbi Meir Kahane developed a power-based, racist approach toward non-Jews in general and Palestinians in particular. For him and his followers, Jewish sovereignty above all meant the use of force and violence by Jews against non-Jews. Indeed, the relocation of his activity from New York to Israel cemented the combination of wielding force and asserting Jewish sovereignty, and made the Palestinians a particularly sought-after target - especially those in Hebron, where Kahane's supporters have a solid base.

Among those affiliated with Chabad, sovereignty and rule over the Palestinians are intertwined with ethno-Jewish supremacy, as per the teaching of the Hasidic sect's founder and the messianism of its late Rebbe.

A toxic mix of all these phenomena ignited the flames that consumed homes in the Palestinian town of Hawara last month - and brought settlers and Chabad followers back there a week later to celebrate Purim with soldiers, near the burned-out wreckage of homes and cars.

In recent years, those people have been joined by the ultra-Orthodox, both Ashkenazim and Sephardim alike. The historic successes of the State of Israel, and the integration of the Haredim into the government, Israeli society and the settlers' movement have eroded the status of classic, non-Zionist Orthodoxy. Bolstering that trend are the antiliberal and fundamentalist traits of the new Judaism. Public opinion surveys show a consistent correlation over recent years between the level of one's religiosity and a hawkish, racist stance. It's not by chance that the most strident statements informing this new form of Judaism are being uttered by rabbis who come from such circles. They are shedding any of the ostensibly normative coating of this discourse.

Jewish supremacy is no longer something one needs to be ashamed of - to the contrary. Jewish supremacy and rule are not merely instrumental, enabling religious precepts to be upheld, but a goal in and of themselves that creates a common denominator among all the Orthodox streams. Just as it is difficult today to imagine a Jewish present and future without the State of Israel, so too it is difficult to imagine Judaism without sovereignty, Jewish supremacy and domination over Palestinians.

The new Judaism is not proposing to annul or even add to the existing commandments. The observant communities that see military service as a religious obligation include that imperative in their existing reservoir of mitzvot. The new Judaism is proposing a new public domain, identity and means for belonging to an apparatus of sovereignty and rule. For the hard-core proponents of the new Judaism, governability and a judicial overhaul are not only libertarian practices advanced by a central government, but a cluster of values. Together with support for "the normative family," they are part of a package of conservative principles that have supplanted the social democracy and moderate liberalism that once characterized Israeli Orthodoxy.

Linking religion to the state may indeed have transformed religion into the handmaiden of the state, as Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz argued. But the opposite also occurred. Because Israeli citizenship is based on ethnicity, and because it is linked to religion, there is no clear separation in Israel between religion, ethnicity and the state. Nor is there such a significant number of secular individuals, in the full sense of the word. Most of the Jews in Israel are positioned along the spectrum between rigid Orthodoxy and atheism. Along this broad spectrum there is a mixture, to varying degrees, of religious practice, mainly relating to rites of passage, belief in God, religiosity, family tradition, historical consciousness and myths. The binary perception of religion and religious people vs. secular people does not reflect Israeli reality properly.

It is not by chance that the Israel Defense Forces and the security establishment are at the center of the new Judaism. They constitute principal agents of control over the Palestinian territory and population, and defend Jewish sovereignty. Moreover, Israeli society is militaristic; it confers on the army and the security organizations not only means and disproportionate material rewards, but also prestige and status. Moreover, the army is an instrument of socialization and citizenship. Military service is considered an entry ticket to society and proof of good citizenship. People considered to be non-Jews on the basis of halakha (religious law) who serve in the army, are considered to have entered the Jewish state and undergone a sociological conversion to Judaism. On the other side, in the eyes of the general public, military service by Haredim is considered to be a condition for their receiving full rights. For religious Zionism, military service is a mitzvah, and every security-related activity has theological and messianic import.
Marching blindly
The writer A.B. Yehoshua noted the fact that Israel's collective, state framework is forging a type of new Jew who does not exist outside the Jewish state, for example, in the United States. Back in 2012, Yehoshua characterized this individual as a "complete Jew" (as opposed to the "partial Jew" living in the Diaspora, a declaration that caused a furor among American Jews in particular).

"Who is a complete Jew, or in a different, precise word - an Israeli?" he asked. "It's a Jew who is governed by Jews, pays taxes to Jews, is bound by solidarity to other Jews, is sent to war by Jews, evacuates Jews from their homes or goes to guard settlements he abhors. In short, who lives in a binding relationship with other Jews. For example, when the State of Israel was established, the Israeli Jew entered into an austerity regime in order to integrate hundreds of thousands of other Jews who chose to ascend to the Land of Israel and to transform their partial Jewishness into complete Jewishness - in the historic Jewish territory and in Hebrew, which is the original language that unites the whole people."

Yehoshua also asked: "Are we marching with political blindness to an apartheid state, will the occupation be a permanent part of our identity... Will the racism and the pogroms against the Arabs in the soccer fields continue... Will the religious fanaticism trample more precious aspects of the Israeli identity?"

More than a decade later, those question marks have been replaced, at least in part, by exclamation marks. Rule over others is not something that's effected outside religion in the Israeli sense - it's part of it. For the Orthodox, it is a substantive element of their theology and messianism.

The influence of the new Judaism is felt also outside Israel. It is very much present in Jewish Orthodoxy in the West, and to a lesser degree also in the liberal and traditionalist streams, whose members adopt pared-down versions of it thanks to their identification with Israel. The Israeli flag can be found in many synagogues next to the American flag. The members of the liberal communities tend to close ranks with their brothers and sisters in Israel these days, in light of the assault on their Jewish identity by the racist right. In some cases that assault is not only violent in a verbal way, but also actually brings about loss of life.

The State of Israel, Jewish sovereignty and rule - all these provide a haven during times of trouble. It's difficult for Jews in the West to disengage from Israel even if the country has experienced a radical face-lift. Their emotional-romantic bond with Israel is strong and is based on support for Jewish sovereignty that makes no apology for the force it wields, even if Israeli violence conflicts with their values from time to time.

Progressive Jews in the West who cannot identify with the new Judaism, among them the young generation, whose consciousness is already less shaped by the Holocaust, are taking an interest in tikkun olam - repairing the world. They are actively working to protect human rights in general and of the rights of the Black minority, in the United States, in particular. They belong to organizations that deal with climate change, environmental issues, animal rights. This is a contemporary version of the Jews' universal mission. They reject the concept of Jewish sovereignty and rule that is at the core of the new Judaism. Instead, they are proposing supra-ethnic frameworks for improving the world and using Jewish rationales to support them.

The new Judaism - Israeli Judaism, it should be said - identifies sovereignty and the rule wielded in its name, with Jewish supremacy and oppression. That is not only a justification for sovereignty, it is also a directive for implementing a particular practice and assuming responsibility for activating sovereignty as an instrument to subjugate Palestinians. The Jewish challenge today, both theological and practical, is to establish Jewish sovereignty without oppression. That would be a sovereignty that can deservedly be described as "Jewish." Sovereignty without oppression translates into equality and full partnership of non-Jews in the exercise of that sovereignty.

As long as Jewish nationalism is bound up with Judaism as a historic religion and people, equality and partnership of non-Jews in sovereignty cannot be seen as just a secular phenomenon involving a division of power and government. One could of course argue against the self-determination of the State of Israel as a Jewish state, and endeavor to divorce it completely from historic Judaism and from the ideology and practice of Jewish supremacy. Separation of that kind would create an Israeli nation in which all the citizens are equal - a far-reaching move that has failed in the past, in society and in the Supreme Court.

Another possibility, which hasn't yet been tried, is to find a Jewish theological and historic basis for sharing sovereignty with non-Jews. That challenge now awaits the opponents of Jewish supremacy.
Menachem Klein is professor emeritus of political science at Bar-Ilan University.

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Israel's rule over the Palestinians has created a new Judaism

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Supremacy, Oppression, Force - Never Before Has the Jewish People Engaged in Such an Explosive Fusion of Sovereignty and Rule. Messianic Fervor, Once Under the Radar, Is Now Rearing Its Head

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ast month, Israel marked its 75th birthday. In the aftermath of eight wars, two intifadas and countless terror attacks, its population swells toward 10 million. Per-capita gross domestic product tops $55,400. Silicon Wadi, Israel's hi-tech base, drives the economy. But wealth has not birthed national contentment. Decades-old grudges have morphed into pitched political warfare. The social fabric frays.

This year, independence day was acrid. Even cemeteries were not off-limits. A day earlier, Isabel Kershner reported in the New York Times, "commotion broke out as Itamar Ben-Gvir, the ultranationalist minister of national security, began speaking on behalf of the government.

"Loud shouting matches erupted over the graves between the families who opposed his presence at the cemetery and his supporters."

Ben-Gvir never served in the military, which deemed him unfit. Still, he loves to swagger.

A cold civil war simmers, fueled by religion, blood and soil. God and country breed controversy - as they do in the US. With The Land of Hope and Fear, Kershner, a Jerusalem-based correspondent, dives headfirst into this cauldron of enmities.

Subtitled Israel's Battle for Its Inner Soul, her book delivers an in-depth look at the tribes that compete and clash within the Promised Land. Painstakingly researched, the book is the product of scores of interviews coupled with living on the ground for more than three decades. Kershner knows of what she writes.

Originally from Manchester, England, she moved to Israel with an Oxford degree in hand. Hirsch Goodman, her husband, was a paratrooper and founding editor of the Jerusalem Report, where she first worked. Their sons served in the Israeli military.

The Land of Hope and Fear is reminiscence, scorecard and guidebook all in one. It is personally revealing. Early on, Kershner attempts to make sense of what she describes as a "national unraveling". Cue Reuven Rivlin, the country's 10th president, and his 2015 "Four Tribes" speech, which Kershner details at length.

In Rivlin's taxonomy, Israel is broadly split along the lines of Arab, ultra-Orthodox, national religious and secular. "The 'new Israeli order' is not an apocalyptic prophecy," he says. That "reality" can "already be seen in the composition of the first-grade classes in the Israeli education system".

Eight years later, all that is truer than ever. The divides grow starker and deeper, going beyond the classroom, touching the hot-buttons of military service, religion, income and education. What it means to be Israeli is up for grabs.

"There's no single answer," Kershner writes. "There never was."

These primordial cleavages undergird the Israeli right's attempt to neuter judicial independence and the continuous waves of protest against this bid to transform Israel into a state bound to halacha, Jewish religious law. Demographics are not on the side of secular Israel.

"Democracy is doing what God says," Simcha Rothman, an ally of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, helping to drive the judicial overhaul, declared in 2021. For good measure, Rothman expressed his admiration for Viktor Orbán of Hungary, adding: "Those who don't wear a kippa are actually harming democracy."

Rothman's sentiments are unoriginal.

" I don't think the Bible says anything about democracy," the late Sheldon Adelson - a US billionaire and sometime Netanyahu-backer - remarked in 2014. God "didn't talk about Israel remaining as a democratic state", he said. "Israel isn't going to be a democratic state - so what."

So what? A sitting US president and his party are alarmed. Joe Biden will not be inviting Netanyahu to the White House in the foreseeable future.

By the numbers, the Israeli military is a realm of secular Jews and religious Zionists. Ultra-Orthodox Jews and Arabs are generally exempted. At the same time, their populations grow.

Kershner speaks with members of each competing and at times clashing community. She provides a series of poignant windows but no resolution. Once upon a time, secular Israel stood socially and politically dominant. Not any more.

The resentments between secular Israelis and the ultra-Orthodox are particularly acute, amplified by yawning gaps in education and income. In the latest election, educated secular Israelis overwhelmingly voted against Netanyahu.

In the US election of 2012, when Mitt Romney spoke of "makers" versus "takers", he could have been channeling the sentiments of what has come to be known as the State of Tel Aviv, home to the top quintile of the Israeli socio-economic ladder, city become hi-tech incubator.

By contrast, Israel's religious parties, denizens of the State of Jerusalem, draw their votes from the lower rungs. Piety dominates. There, the past is the present. A reminder: politics is about values, interests and anger.

Whether Israel remains a liberal democracy is an open question. Pressed on that point by CNN's Fareed Zakaria, Netanyahu appeared hesitant. "I am a 19th-century democrat," he once told Bari Weiss. For many, including Yair Netanyahu, the prime minister's son, Orbán's Hungary provides the comforting model.

Kershner is mindful of history and political realities. The Land of Hope and Fear dwells on the 2021 independence day speech by Aviv Kochavi, then the military chief of staff. Amid festivities, Kochavi went out of his way to strike a discordant note.

"This was only the third time in all of Jewish history that a unified nation of Israel was sovereign in its country," the general reminded his audience. "The previous two times had ended disastrously."

On Wednesday, the Knesset, Israel's parliament, enacted a budget that provides a windfall to Netanyahu's base. Elections have consequences.

Kershner remains optimistic. "As the drama plays out, the actors are staying put," she writes. "The air is thick with memory and premonition. This land, thrumming with obstinate, exuberant life, is their home."

Said differently, the land and its people are very much in ferment.

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The Land of Hope and Fear review: vivid portrait of Israel in ferment

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ast month, Israel marked its 75th birthday. In the aftermath of eight wars, two intifadas and countless terror attacks, its population swells toward 10 million. Per-capita gross domestic product tops $55,400. Silicon Wadi, Israel's hi-tech base, drives the economy. But wealth has not birthed national contentment. Decades-old grudges have morphed into pitched political warfare.

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120 Jewish Books For Every Age | My Jewish Learning

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Not for nothing are the Jews called the People of the Book. Across time and space, cultural and denominational differences, Jews are united by the tradition's central sacred books, the Torah and the Talmud. Jews have long been a literate people, one who valued reading and writing even before the idea of mass literacy was widespread. And through the ages, Jews have not only read widely but they have always produced books ... and more books. As the biblical author Ecclesiastes so wryly observed more than two millennia ago, "of making many books there is no end." (Ecclesiastes 12:12)

For Ecclesiastes, the dizzying production of endless volumes - none of which would cure that pesky human condition of mortality - was wearying. But for the Jewish people it has also been a necessary means of communicating the tradition in every generation, and of working through the challenges and possibilities of every historical period, and a way to hold international and intergenerational conversations. The question is: Where should we begin?

Reading is a lifelong Jewish practice, and great Jewish literature should grow with us over the years. Psalm 90, traditionally ascribed to King David, declares: "The span of our life is 70 years, or, given the strength, 80." But Jews are an optimistic people. Moses lived to 120, and we wish the same for ourselves and those around us. Ad me'ah v'esrim - to 120! - is a common Jewish birthday wish.

So here we offer recommendations of the best that Jewish literature has to offer, a book for every age, from birth all the way to 120.

This list was compiled by Zachary Solomon, Rachel Scheinerman and Abby Seitz.
Looking to go even deeper? My Jewish Learning offers a 10-part email series on must-read Jewish books from the past 100 years. Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means we may receive a commission if you click a link and purchase something that we have linked to. While clicking these links won't cost you any extra money, they will help us keep this site up and running. Thank you!

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120 Jewish Books For Every Age | My Jewish Learning

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Not for nothing are the Jews called the People of the Book. Across time and space, cultural and denominational differences, Jews are united by the tradition's central sacred books, the Torah and the Talmud. Jews have long been a literate people, one who valued reading and writing even before the idea of mass literacy was widespread.

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The Pilgrimage Festivals

Towards the end of the Second Temple (1 st cent. C.E.), Jerusalem had turned into an exciting destination as the religious focus for Jews from all over the Mediterranean world and beyond. It was the place to be for Jews during the pilgrimage festivals of Pesach,[1] Shavuot, and Sukkot, where worshippers could rejoice before the Lord as mandated in Deuteronomy 16.

The protection of travelers across the Mediterranean ensured by the Pax Romana (Roman peace), and the safe anchorage afforded by Herod's new harbor at Caesarea Maritima, encouraged international tourism. The magnificence of the Temple compound, which had been greatly extended by Herod with a vast new platform, attracted huge crowds.

The New Testament's Acts of the Apostles (2:5-6), written probably in the late first century C.E., presupposed the international character of the city on pilgrimage festivals, and imagined "devout Jews from every nation under heaven" in Jerusalem at the festival in the 30s C.E. Acts describes the city as containing:

Acts 2: ⁹⁻¹¹ Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judaea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs.

Josephus, the Jewish historian, relates that King Herod, wishing to protect Judea from attack by the Trachonites (apparently a group of bandits living in southern Syria), builds a large city in the Hauran (modern day southern Syria and northern Jordan), asking a Babylonian Jewish man to oversee it. He then adds:

Jud. Ant. 17.26 [=2.2] This man was a shield both to the inhabitants exposed to the Trachonites and to the Jews who came from Babylonia to sacrifice in Jerusalem; these he kept from being harmed by the Trachonites. (LCL trans.)

Shavuot: Celebrated by Locals

Travel from Mesopotamia took many weeks, and most diaspora Jews made the journey only occasionally. They are more likely to have sought to arrive for the extended celebration of one of the other two pilgrim festivals, Pesach or Sukkot, than for the single day of Shavuot. Thus, Shavuot crowds were likely comprised primarily of Jews from the land of Israel, arriving in convoys from each locality with their first-fruits.

Mishnah Bikkurim (3:2-4) preserves a vivid description of their processions into the holy city, bearing their first-fruits in baskets and preceded by a flute player and an ox with horns overlaid with gold and a wreath of olive-leaves on its head. The Mishnah's description from more than a century after the destruction of the Second Temple is likely to represent an authentic memory precisely because these characteristics of the ritual lack any biblical warrant but appear to reflect the adoption by Jews of practices common in religious processions in the contemporary Greek world.[2]

Disputes about the Date of Shavuot

Shavuot was a time for rejoicing, but a debate raged among different factions in Judah concerning the proper date for the festival. The Torah does not specify the calendar date for Shavuot, as it does for Pesach and Sukkot, using instead imprecise formulations.[3] Deuteronomy speaks of counting seven weeks from the first cut of grain,[4] while Leviticus speaks about counting fifty days from the omer (the first sheaf of newly harvested grain), which is itself brought "after the Shabbat."[5]

The Pharisees (and later the rabbis) understood the reference to Shabbat in this text to be the first day of Pesach, and began counting the omer on the second day of Pesach. The Boethusians, however, rejected this interpretation (as reported in m. Menachot 10:3), understanding Shabbat literally, which means they would have celebrated the festival later than the Pharisees.[6]

Josephus, who had himself served as a priest in the Jerusalem Temple, tells us that "all prayers and sacred rites of divine worship are performed according to their [the Pharisees'] exposition" (Jud. Ant. 18.15), so we can assume that the sacrificial liturgy in the Temple followed their prescriptions. Boethusians in Jerusalem would undoubtedly have been upset that the priests were celebrating Shavuot on what they considered to be the wrong day.

It is evidence of surprising toleration of difference within the variegated Judaism of the late Second Temple period that these disagreements about the religious calendar in the national shrine do not seem to have carried over into violence. This is particularly notable given the potential for violence in Jerusalem during the pilgrim festivals was considerable simply because of the size of the crowds, even on Shavuot.

Violence on Pilgrimage Festivals in the Temple

That hostility could easily erupt in the crowded Temple is reflected in several such incidents: One Sukkot, during the long reign of the Hasmonaean High Priest, Alexander Jannaeus (103-76 B.C.E.), hostile demonstrations broke out against him, that are said to have involved pelting him with etrogim (κιτρίοις, citrons), provoking a massacre ( Jud. Ant. 13.372).[7] Similarly, a mass demonstration on Sukkot in 35 B.C.E. in support of Jonathan Aristobulus, the last Hasmonaean High Priest, was said to have prompted his brother-in-law, Herod, to arrange his accidental drowning in a swimming pool in Jericho.[8]

The danger of mass insurrection on Pesach was sufficiently patent for the Roman governor of Syria to arrange a census of the number of pilgrims in 65 C.E., the year before revolt broke out against Rome, and to send the figure (much inflated) to the emperor Nero in Rome.[9]

Varus Attacks the Temple on Shavuot, 4 B.C.E.

One serious incident that occurred on Shavuot itself remains curiously undiscussed in Jewish tradition and deserves to be better known. The story, preserved in Josephus, was recounted by Nicolaus of Damascus, Herod's court historian, who was a participant in the events, and whose work was Josephus' main source for this period.[10]

Herod died in Jericho just before Pesach in 4 B.C.E., after prolonged suffering from illness. Crowds who gathered to mark his passing were treated to a feast to mark the end of the seven days of mourning by Archelaus, the son finally designated as his heir, but they took advantage of a mass assembly in the Temple to pour out their grievances, demanding lighter taxes, the release of prisoners put in chains by Herod over many years, and the replacement of the high priest appointed by Herod shortly before his death.

Archelaus tried to stall, asking the crowd for patience until his position as king, which had been stipulated in Herod's will, had been confirmed by the Roman emperor Augustus, but anger boiled over during the celebration of Pesach. Disorder was suppressed only by sending in the cavalry, which massacred three thousand Jews.[11]

Despite the chaos, Archelaus traveled to Rome to seek confirmation from Augustus but on arrival found himself faced with extensive opposition.[12] As he was delayed in the imperial city, Judaea erupted in unrest, which reached a peak on Shavuot.

Archelaus had instructed his officials and the commanders of Herod's fortresses to keep Herod's property secure while he was away, but a junior Roman official named Sabinus harassed the rioting crowds and took possession of the royal palace in Jerusalem on behalf of Augustus. Soon the Romans in the palace were besieged by the crowds of pilgrims who had gathered in the city in preparation for Shavuot:

Jud. Ant 17:254 [=10.2] When Pentecost came round-this is how one of our ancestral festivals is called-a great many tens of thousands of men gathered (in Jerusalem) who came not only for the religious observances but also because they rejected the insolence of Sabinus.

Fierce battles broke out throughout the city:

Jud. Ant. 17:258 [=10.2] And when the Romans boldly sallied out, a fierce battle ensued, in which the Romans were superior to the enemy in effectiveness, but yet the Jews did not lose courage at the sight of the terrible loss of many men. Instead, by a roundabout way they mounted the porticoes that surrounded the outer court of the Temple, 17:259 and while a heavy fight was going on, they threw down stones, hurling some with their hands and others from slings, for they were well trained in this kind of fighting.

Soon the Romans ended this Judean advantage by setting fire to the porticoes of the Temple, only very recently erected by Herod:

Jud. Ant. 17:261 [=10.2] Eventually the Romans became desperate at their situation and set fire to the porticoes without being noticed by the Jews who had mounted them. And the fire, being fed by many hands and with very combustible materials, very quickly reached the roof. 17:262 This contained woodwork filled with pitch and wax and also had gold smeared with wax, and so it at once yielded (to the flames). This was how those great and most notable structures were completely destroyed....

Josephus continues with the fate of the rioters:

17:262 ...And those who were on the porticoes were caught in this unexpected destruction, for when the roof fell down, they were caught along with it, and others were struck down from all sides by the enemy. 17:263 Many, in despair of being saved and in dismay at the awful fate that confronted them, either threw themselves into the fire or escaped it only by turning their swords on themselves.

Following this incident, Judea rapidly melted into chaos, with violent uprisings all over the country.[13] Rome expected the governor of Syria to intervene when there was serious trouble in Judaea. Publius Quinctilius Varus,[14] the current governor of Syria, accordingly marched south from Antioch with a large army, and he savagely suppressed the uprisings around the kingdom.

The invasion of the country by Varus was recalled a century later by Josephus as one of the great upheavals in the history of Jerusalem. It had created such havoc that the Temple authorities needed to compile anew the genealogical records of priestly families in the archives-the original version was likely destroyed in the riots.[15]

The Humiliating Fate of Varus

In the collective memory of Romans, the name of Varus was long connected with the greatest disaster to afflict the empire in the reign of Augustus. In 9 C.E., thirteen years after his posting in Syria, he suffered a catastrophic defeat as a general in Germany, known in Latin as Clades Variana (the Varian Disaster).

Marching back from his summer camp near the Weser River (northwest Germany), Varus and his three legions were lured by Arminius, war-chief of the Cherusci, into the Teutoburger Forest. The legions were destroyed, and Varus committed suicide. Augustus was said never to have recovered from the shock of the news.[16] In later centuries, Roman tradition blamed the disaster on the incompetence and laziness of Varus.[17]

Varus vs. Pompey

Varus' disgrace should have been a gift for Jews seeking evidence in history for divine retribution for his brutal actions in Judaea. We know, for example, that Jews reveled in the ignominious murder in 45 B.C.E. of the Roman general Pompey in Egypt, treating his demise as punishment for his sacrilegious entry into the Holy of Holies in the Temple in 63 B.C.E. ( Psalms of Solomon 2.25-27). And yet, they do not seem to have made any connection between Varus as persecutor of Jews in Judaea and the same man who killed himself in ignominy a decade later in the Teutoburger Forest.

The explanation may simply be geography: Germany, on the northern edge of Rome's empire, may have been too distant from the Land of Israel for Jews in Judaea to be aware of Varus' fate.

The Shavuot of the Therapeutae in Egypt

For Jews unable to be present in Jerusalem for the festival, Shavuot was generally more low-key. There were no extensive domestic arrangements to be made, as for Pesach, with its baking and eating of matzah, or Sukkot, with its construction of sukkot (huts). The festival, however, fifty days after the omer, seems to have appealed to some Jews of a philosophical bent. Philo (c. 20 B.C.E. - c. 50 C.E.), a philosopher deep into Pythagorean numerology, explains:

On the Contemplative Life 65 [Fifty is] the most sacred of numbers and the most deeply rooted in nature, being formed from the square of the right-angled triangle which is the source from which the universe springs.

Philo describes how the Therapeutae, ascetic Jews living in Egypt, who dedicated their lives to knowledge and contemplation, celebrated Shavuot in a distinct way. On Shavuot, "after seven sets of seven days" on the eve of "the chief feast which Fifty takes for its own," Philo notes:

On the Contemplative Life 66 [T]hey assemble, white robed and with faces in which cheerfulness is combined with the utmost seriousness, but before they recline, at a signal from a member of the Rota, which is the name commonly given to those who perform these services, they take their stand in a regular line in an orderly way, their eyes and hands lifted up to Heaven, eyes because they have been trained to fix their gaze on things worthy of contemplation, hands in token that they are clean from gain-taking and not defiled through any cause of the profit-making kind. So standing they pray to God that their feasting may be acceptable and proceed as He would have it.

The people recline on hard couches, in order of seniority, with men on the right and women on the left.

On the Contemplative Life 68 The feast is shared by women also, most of them aged virgins, who have kept their chastity not under compulsion, like some of the Greek priestesses, but of their own free will in their ardent yearning for wisdom. Eager to have her for their life mate they have spurned the pleasures of the body and desire no mortal offspring.

They then enjoyed a frugal vegetarian banquet with water in place of wine. As they ate, they listened in appreciative silence to their leader expound the scriptures in a leisurely fashion, using allegory. A series of hymns followed, sung first by individuals and then by the assembly as a whole, either in harmony or antiphonally.

Philo even abandons his customary misogyny, characteristic of male authors of his time, to describe how women took a full role in the assembly both as individuals in their search for wisdom and in their participation in a female choir. When he speaks of how "the treble of the women blending with the bass of the men" created the best possible harmony, he was probably reflecting the genuine practices of a self-selected group of religious enthusiasts.[18]

This ritual continues throughout the night:

On the Contemplative Life 89 Thus they continue till dawn, drunk with this drunkenness in which there is no shame,[19] then not with heavy heads or drowsy eyes but more alert and wakeful than when they came to the banquet, they stand with their faces and whole body turned to the east and when they see the sun rising they stretch their hands up to heaven and pray for bright days and knowledge of the truth and the power of keen sighted thinking. And after the prayers they depart each to his private sanctuary once more to ply the trade and till the field of their wonted philosophy.

The First Tikkun Leil Shavuot?

Philo provides us with our only knowledge of the Therapeutai and their practices. This picture of pious dedication was undoubtedly idealized, but the Therapeutai were almost certainly real Jews and not wholly imaginary;[20] they lived near Lake Mareotis, which was not far from Alexandria where Philo was writing.

The description provides us with evidence that in Egypt, two thousand years ago, at least some Jews celebrated Shavuot with prayers and study throughout the night in a fashion strikingly similar to Tikkun Leil Shavuot, the all-night study of Torah on Shavuot night, popular from the early modern period until today.

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Forgotten Shavuot History: The 4 B.C.E Rebellion and the Therapeutae - TheTorah.com

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The Shavuot rebellion and consequent burning of the Temples' porticoes during the time of Augustus Caesar made no impression on subsequent Jewish historiography, despite the later humiliating defeat of the rebellion's suppressor, Varus, in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest.

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the Barley Festival, the Book of Ruth, and Cheese

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Shavuot commemorates the spring harvest and the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

Shavuot, the "Feast of Weeks," is celebrated seven weeks after Passover (Pesach). Since the counting of this period ( sefirat ha-omer) begins on the second evening of Passover, Shavuot takes place exactly 50 days after the (first) seder. Hence, following the Greek word for "fifty," Shavuot is also referred to sometimes as Pentecost. Although its origins are to be found in an ancient grain harvest festival, Shavuot has long been identified with the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

Shavuot combines two major religious observances. First is the grain harvest of the early summer. Second is the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai seven weeks after the exodus from Egypt. The first determines the ritual for the holiday, which was one of the three pilgrimage festivals of ancient Israel, when Israelite males were commanded to appear before God in Jerusalem, bringing offerings of the first fruits of their harvest. The second determines the significance of the holiday for Judaism, tying it in with the seminal event of Jewish religious memory, namely the entering into a covenant between God and Israel, exemplified by Israel's assumption of Divine law.

Since Shavuot is an ancient pilgrimage holiday, it is not surprising that its ritual focuses on the community. Nonetheless, there are a number of customs associated with personal practice. Chief among them is the eating of dairy products on Shavuot. Although the reasons for this custom are not completely clear, it has become traditional to eat milk and cheese products as part of the celebration of Shavuot. Some Sephardic communities also enjoy foods flavored with rosewater at this time of year.

Much of the observance of the holiday centers on the synagogue and its rituals. The special readings for the holiday include medieval poems ( piyyutim) and the Book of Ruth. A number of reasons are given for the inclusion of the latter. Among them are that the book takes place at the time of the barley harvest, that Ruth's assumption of Naomi's religion reflects the Israelites' acceptance of the Torah at Sinai, and that King David, who is alleged to have died at this time of year according to rabbinic tradition, is mentioned at the end of Ruth.

Another tradition is to participate in a Tikkun Leil Shavuot, an all-night study session marking the holiday. And finally, Shavuot is one of the holidays on which , the Psalms of Praise, is recited. In Ashkenazi communities, Yizkor, the memorial service, is observed. In Sephardic communities, it has become customary to read a ketubah l'Shavuot, a symbolic marriage contract between God and the Jewish people.

By associating an ancient holiday of the grain harvest with the exodus from Egypt, Jewish tradition has imbued Shavuot with religious significance derived from the foundational event in Jewish historical consciousness. In the specific case of Shavuot, this takes the form of the entering into a covenant or formal agreement between God and Israel at Mount Sinai. This is a joyous time, since it is the moment at which God and Israel entered into a figurative marriage with each other, the hopeful springtime of their relationship.

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Shavuot, the Feast of "Weeks," is celebrated seven weeks after Pesach (Passover). Since the counting of this period (sefirat ha-omer) begins on the second evening of Pesach, Shavuot takes place exactly 50 days after the (first) seder. Although its origins

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The process of revelation

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Contemporary Jewish polemics use the term " Torah mi-Sinai " to mean a doctrinal belief in the Mosaic authorship of the Torah. The Sages, however, use the term differently, to claim that all of Torah, written and oral, including their very own words, come from Sinai. But is this claim meant to be taken literally?

Writing the Torah and Passing on Oral Torah

P arashat Vayelech (Deuteronomy 31), the shortest portion of the Torah, mentions Moses' completion of the torah twice [all translations mine unless otherwise noted]:

דברים לא:ט וַיִּכְתֹּב מֹשֶׁה אֶת הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת וַיִּתְּנָהּ אֶל הַכֹּהֲנִים בְּנֵי לֵוִי הַנֹּשְׂאִים אֶת אֲרוֹן בְּרִית יְ-הוָה וְאֶל כָּל זִקְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל.

Deut. 31:9 And Moses wrote this torah, and delivered it to the priests the sons of Levi, who bore the Ark of the LORD's Covenant, and to all the elders of Israel.[1]

דברים לא:כד וַיְהִי כְּכַלּוֹת מֹשֶׁה לִכְתֹּב אֶת דִּבְרֵי הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת עַל סֵפֶר עַד תֻּמָּם. לא:כה וַיְצַו מֹשֶׁה אֶת הַלְוִיִּם נֹשְׂאֵי אֲרוֹן בְּרִית יְ-הוָה לֵאמֹר. לא:כו לָקֹחַ אֵת סֵפֶר הַתּוֹרָה הַזֶּה וְשַׂמְתֶּם אֹתוֹ מִצַּד אֲרוֹן בְּרִית יְ-הוָה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם וְהָיָה שָׁם בְּךָ לְעֵד.

Deut. 31:24 And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this torah in a scroll, until they were finished, 31:25 that Moses commanded the Levites, who bore the Ark of the LORD's Covenant, saying: 31:26 "Take this scroll of the torah, and put it in the side of the Ark of the LORD your God's Covenant, that it may be there for a witness against you."

In his introduction to Mishneh Torah, Maimonides explains that this text refers to the written Torah; however, the interpretation, i.e. the Oral Torah, was given over to Joshua.

כל התורה כתבה משה רבינו קודם שימות בכתב ידו. ונתן ספר לכל שבט ושבט וספר אחד נתנהו בארון לעד. שנאמר לקוח את ספר התורה הזה ושמתם אותו וגו'.

Our master Moshe wrote the entire Torah, by hand, before he died. He then gave a scroll to each and every tribe, while one scroll was put in the Ark as a witness, as it says: "Take this scroll of the torah, and put it," etc.

והמצוה שהיא פירוש התורה לא כתבה אלא צוה בה לזקנים וליהושע ולשאר כל ישראל. שנאמר את כל הדבר אשר אנכי מצוה אתכם אותו תשמרו לעשות וגו'. ומפני זה נקראת תורה שבעל פה.

And the commandment, which is the interpretation of the Torah, he did not write, but rather he commanded the Elders, Joshua, and the rest of all Israel regarding it, as it says (Deut. 13:1): "The entire matter which I command you to do today, you shall guard to perform it," etc. For this reason, it is called the Oral Torah.

Oral Torah from Sinai

Maimonides clarifies the mechanics of the transmission of the Oral Law:

אף על פי שלא נכתבה תורה שבעל פה למדה משה רבינו כולה בבית דינו לשבעים זקנים. ואלעזר ופנחס ויהושע שלשתן קבלו ממשה. וליהושע שהוא תלמידו של משה רבינו מסר תורה שבעל פה וצוהו עליה. וכן יהושע כל ימי חייו למד על פה. וזקנים רבים קבלו מיהושע.

Even though the Oral Torah was not written, our master Moses taught it in its entirety, in his court, to seventy elders. Eleazar, Phineas and Joshua - all three of them -received from Moses. However, Moses our master gave over to Joshua his disciple the Oral Torah and commanded him concerning it. Similarly, Joshua taught orally all his days, and many elders received from Joshua.

Maimonides is basing himself on one of the most famous tractate openings in the Mishnah ( Avot 1:1):

משה קבל תורה מסיני ומסרה ליהושע ויהושע לזקנים וזקנים לנביאים ונביאים מסרוה לאנשי כנסת הגדולה.

Moses received the Torah from Sinai and gave it over to Joshua, Joshua to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets gave it over to the Men of the Great Assembly.

In Maimonides' understanding, the "Torah from Sinai" here is the Oral Torah, which was taught to everyone but given over specifically to Joshua. This oral component is an integral part of every one of the mitzvot.

כל המצות שניתנו לו למשה בסיני בפירושן ניתנו. שנאמר ואתנה לך את לוחות האבן והתורה והמצוה. תורה זו תורה שבכתב. והמצוה זו פירושה. וצונו לעשות התורה על פי המצוה. ומצוה זו היא הנקראת תורה שבעל פה.

All of the commandments given to Moses at Sinai were given along with their interpretation, as it says, "And I will give you the tablets of stone, the law and the commandment" (Exod. 24:12) - "the law" refers to the Written Torah, "and the commandment" to its interpretation.[2] And we were commanded to follow "the law" according to "the commandment." This "commandment" is what is called the Oral Torah.

Laws from Sinai in Rabbinic Literature

Surprisingly, only three times in the Mishnah, "a rule to Moses from Sinai" ( halacha le-Moshe mi-Sinai) is invoked. In one case, Nahum the Scribe testifies before Rabban Gamliel about how to leave a corner for the poor if the field contains two types of wheat ( Pe'ah 2:6). His testimony buttresses the anonymous ruling in the previous paragraph.

אמר נחום הלבלר מקובל אני מרבי מיאשא שקבל מאבא שקבל מן הזוגות שקבלו מן הנביאים הלכה למשה מסיני בזורע את שדהו שני מיני חטין אם עשאן גורן אחת נותן פאה אחת שתי גרנות נותן שתי פאות:

Said Nahum the Scribe, "I have received from R. Miasha, who received [it] from his father, who received [it] from the Pairs,[3] who received [it] from the Prophets, a rule to Moses from Sinai, regarding one who sows his field with two types of wheat..."[4]

Similarly, Yadayim 4:3 records a lengthy debate regarding what tithe is to be taken in the lands of Moab and Ammon in a Sabbatical year, a matter defined as ma'aseh zekenim, "an enactment of the Elders."[5] After being informed of the ruling of the majority, Rabbi Eliezer concurs:

בכה רבי אליעזר ואמר (תהלים כה) סוד ה' ליראיו ובריתו להודיעם צא ואמור להם אל תחושו למנינכם מקובל אני מרבן יוחנן בן זכאי ששמע מרבו ורבו מרבו עד הלכה למשה מסיני שעמון ומואב מעשרין מעשר עני בשביעית:

R. Eliezer wept, saying, "'The secret of the Lord is with those that fear him and he will show them his covenant (Ps. 25:14).' Go and tell them, 'Do not be anxious about your vote. I have received from Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, who heard it from his master, and his master from his master, a rule to Moses from Sinai, that Ammon and Moab give poor man's tithe in the Sabbatical year.'"

The third usage is a bit different. The Mishnah is discussing what Elijah will do with Jewish yichus (lineage) issues when he comes, and R. Joshua's tradition comes not at the end as a ratification but as the opening salvo in a prolonged aggadic debate ( Eduyot 8:7).

אמר רבי יהושע מקובל אני מרבן יוחנן בן זכאי ששמע מרבו ורבו מרבו הלכה למשה מסיני שאין אליהו בא לטמא ולטהר לרחק ולקרב אלא לרחק המקורבין בזרוע ולקרב המרוחקין בזרוע.

Said R. Joshua, "I have received from Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai, who heard it from his master, and his master from his master, as a rule to Moses from Sinai, that Elijah is not going to come to declare unclean or to declare clean, to put out or draw near, but only to put out those who have been brought near by force and to draw near those who have been put out by force."

These three cases show that the Sinaitic tradition is not confined to strictly halachic matters, nor is it used to stifle or even settle debates. So what is its purpose and nature in Rabbinic[6] usage?

Torah Mi-Sinai of the Future

Although Torah mi-Sinai refers to laws and explanations Moses received in the past, both Talmuds indicate that Torah mi-Sinai paradoxically includes what later generations may innovate. The most famous and systemic or comprehensive example is Resh Lakish's comment in b. Berachot 5a, which glosses Exodus 24:12 (paraphrased by Maimonides above):

ואמר רבי לוי בר חמא אמר רבי שמעון בן לקיש: מאי דכתיב ואתנה לך את לחת האבן והתורה והמצוה אשר כתבתי להורותם, לחות - אלו עשרת הדברות, תורה - זה מקרא, והמצוה - זו משנה, אשר כתבתי - אלו נביאים וכתובים, להורותם - זה תלמוד; מלמד שכולם נתנו למשה מסיני.

R. Levi bar Chama said further in the name of R. Simeon ben Lakish: "What is the meaning of the verse (Exod. 24:12): 'And the LORD said to Moses, Come up to me into the mount, and be there: and I will give you the tablets of stone, the law and the commandment which I have written to teach them'? 'Tablets of stone' - the Decalogue; 'the law' - Scripture; 'the commandment' - Mishnah; 'which I have written' - the Prophets and Hagiographa; 'to teach them' - Gemara. This teaches that all these were given to Moses from Sinai."

According to Resh Lakish, the Sinaitic revelation extends from God's words in the Decalogue, to the rest of the Five Books of Moses, Mishnah, Nach (Prophets and Writings), and even the Gemara, i.e., Resh Lakish's own words. All of these can be traced to Sinai.

R. Yochanan has a similar statement (b. Megilla 19b), which he supports with a gloss on Deut. 9:10:[7]

ואמר רבי חייא בר אבא אמר רבי יוחנן: מאי דכתיב ועליהם ככל הדברים אשר דבר ה' עמכם בהר מלמד שהראהו הקדוש ברוך הוא למשה דקדוקי תורה ודקדוקי סופרים, ומה שהסופרים עתידין לחדש, ומאי ניהו - מקרא מגילה.

Rabbi Chiya bar Abba said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: "What is the meaning of the verse, 'and on them was written according to all the words the LORD spoke with you'? This teaches that the Holy One, Blessed be He, showed Moses the minutiae of the Torah, the minutiae of the Scribes and the innovations that would be introduced by the Scribes. And what are these? Reading the Scroll of Esther."[8]

A similar derasha on the same verse appears in the Jerusalem Talmud. This time, the expounder is R. Joshua ben Levi, who takes note of specific particles attached to words in the verse (i.e., "and," "according to," and "the") and claims that these represent a form of Torah that God gave Moses at Sinai (j. Pe'ah 2:4):

ריב"ל אמר: עליהם ועליהם כל ככל דברים הדברים מקרא משנה תלמוד ואגדה אפי' מה שתלמיד ותיק עתיד להורות לפני רבו כבר נאמר למשה בסיני...

Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: "'on them' 'and on them,' 'all' 'according to all,' 'words' 'the words,' Scripture, Mishnah, Talmud and Aggada - even that which a veteran student is destined to teach before his master - were all told to Moses at Sinai..."

"Even What a Student Teaches his Master Counts as Torah from Sinai"

The final category, "that which a veteran student is destined to teach before his master," builds on a point hammered home in a series of statements found earlier in the same tractate (j. Pe'ah 1:1), which traces this phenomenon of "student revelation" to the foot of Sinai itself:

היה ר' יוסי בר' בון בשם ר' לוי כך היתה הלכה בידם ושכחוה ועמדו השנים והסכימו על דעת הראשונים ללמדך שכל דבר שבית דין נותנין נפשן עליו הוא מתקיים כמה שנאמר למשה מסיני...

Rabbi Jose son of R. Bon said in the name of Rabbi Levi: This was the ruling in their hands, but they forgot it. So the latter ones arose, and their view accorded with that of the former ones. This teaches you that a matter to which the court devotes its soul will end up in accord with what was told to Moses at Sinai...[9]

ר' יוחנן בשם ר' בניי ר' חונה בשם ר' תורת אמת היתה בפיהו דברים ששמע מפי רבו ועולה לא נמצא בשפתיו אפי' דברים שלא שמע מפי רבו.

Rabbi Yochanan said in the name of Rabbi Banai and Rav Chuna in the name of Rabbi: "'A law of truth was in his mouth' (Mal. 2:6) - matters he heard from his master; 'and injustice was not found on his lips' - even matters he did not hear from his master.

According to this text, students of Torah have the ability to correctly intuit the halacha as it was presented to Moses, even when no one actually knows or remembers the rule as it was stated.

How Can Debates be Sinaitic?

Since Torah mi-Sinai encompasses the totality of aggadic and halachic exploration, this necessarily means that even the disputes, debates, and discussions which make up the bread and butter of the Oral Torah come from Sinai. This is reflected in Midrash Tehillim (12:7):

אמר ר' ינאי לא ניתנה דברי תורה חתיכין, אלא על כל דבור שהיה אומר הקדוש ברוך הוא למשה היה אומר מ"ט פנים טהור, ומ"ט פנים טמא, אמר לפניו רבונו של עולם עד מתי נעמוד על בירורו של דבר, אמר ליה אחרי רבים להטות, רבו המטמאין טמא, רבו המטהרין טהור.

Rabbi Yannai said: "The words of the Torah were not given cut-and-dried; but for each and every matter, the Holy One, Blessed be He, told Moses 49 ways to declare pure and 49 ways to declare impure. He said to him: Lord of the Universe, when shall we ever clarify the matter? God said: 'Follow the majority' (Exod. 23:2) - if the majority say impure; it is impure; if the majority say pure, it is pure."[10]

According to Rabbi Yannai, the multiple, sometimes contradictory, ways of interpreting the Torah are a positive feature, not a flaw, of Torah mi-Sinai.

Trust in a Process not Belief in a Dogma

Torah from Sinai thus encompasses everything that Rabbinic Judaism claims as Torah: not only the Five Books of Moses, but the Prophets, the Writings, and, most importantly, all of Midrash and Halacha, can be traced back to Sinai. God shows, tells, and teaches Moses everything on Sinai in these various aggadic portrayals.

These aggadot do not aim to portray history, but rather theology: the idea that Sinaitic revelation is a unique experience in human history, and all else derives from it. To believe in Torah mi-Sinai is to believe in a millennia-long process of revelation. This development demands that the court devote its soul to the matter, considering, weighing and debating all possible interpretations. The verdict of the majority, de facto, becomes the true application and realization of God's word.

This concept would have been invaluable to the Rabbis in establishing the reliability of Rabbinic traditions, especially in a world in which the Oral Torah could be challenged, as it was by the Sadducees (and later in history by the Karaites). This is the function Torah mi-Sinai serves in Rabbinic Literature and Rabbinic Judaism.

The Modern Misunderstanding of Torah Mi-Sinai

As we just saw, Torah mi-Sinai expresses a continuum of revelation upon which Moses, Amos, Antigonus of Socoh, and Rabbi Ammi all reside. It has nothing to do with the question of Mosaic authorship of the Torah, which the Rabbis took for granted, give or take a few verses. On the contrary, m. Sanhedrin 10:1 lists among those who have no portion in the world to come, "one who says... that the Torah is not from heaven (האומר...אין תורה מן השמים)." A baraita in b. Sanhedrin 99a uses this same phrase, in the same way:

כי דבר ה' בזה - זה האומר אין תורה מן השמים. ואפילו אמר: כל התורה כולה מן השמים, חוץ מפסוק זה שלא אמרו הקדוש ברוך הוא אלא משה מפי עצמו - זהו כי דבר ה' בזה. ואפילו אמר: כל התורה כולה מן השמים, חוץ מדקדוק זה, מקל וחומר זה, מגזרה שוה זו - זה הוא כי דבר ה' בזה.

"Because he has despised the LORD's word" (Num. 15:31) - this is one who says that the Torah is not from Heaven, and even if he says that the entire Torah is from Heaven, except for that verse which was not spoken by the Holy One, Blessed be He, but by Moses independently, this is "Because he has despised the LORD's word." Even if he says the entire Torah is from Heaven except for that minutia, that inference, that analogy, this is "Because he has despised the LORD's word."[11]

The Rabbis' fear is that people will claim that Moses (or a later sage) invented a given verse or halacha. In other words, the concern is not giving too little credit to Moses, but too much. Presumably, this is why the Tannaitic view that Joshua wrote the final verses of the Torah (b. Bava Batra 14b-15a) is uncontroversial, since it does not deny that the Torah is God's literal word.

In the classical rabbinic idiom, Torah mi-Sinai does not refer to the doctrine of Mosaic authorship, though it is often used this way in the modern vernacular. Perhaps the term seemed especially fitting as a response to critical Bible scholarship, which doesn't directly challenge Torah from Heaven as much as it challenges Torah from Moses. Whether this is how the popular usage came about or not, we must be very circumspect about re-appropriating rabbinic principles with specific meanings for modern polemical purposes. Instead, Torah mi-Sinai may serve the opposite function, as it gives us the framework for an inclusive narrative of continuous rediscovery and ongoing revelation. The attempt to understand the Torah's origins in light of contemporary academic scholarship can be framed as part of that narrative.

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Trusting in the Process of Torah Mi-Sinai - TheTorah.com

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Contemporary Jewish polemics uses the term "Torah mi-Sinai" to mean a doctrinal belief in the Mosaic authorship of the Torah. The Sages, however, use the term differently, to claim that all of Torah, written and oral, including their very own words, come from Sinai. But is this claim meant to be taken literally?

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murder of Jews at prayer in Djerba Tunisia

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murder of Jews at prayer in Djerba Tunisia

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while they were celebrating Lag BaOmer a gathering of Jews were fired upon by a security guard. Two were killed. Zikhronam l'vrakha, may their memory be a blessing.

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This Too Is Torah and I Need to Learn It (Rabbi Akiva, BT Berakhot 62a)￼A Congregation Shir Tikvah Journey

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Nov 8-18 2023: visit Israel and Palestine on a dual narrative tour with Rabbi Ariel Stone

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Nov 8-18 2023: visit Israel and Palestine on a dual narrative tour with Rabbi Ariel Stone

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This tour is limited to 20 people and requires advance learning. Jews who have not taken the Torah of Israel and Palestine class with Rabbi Ariel can do independent study; inquire with the Rabbi directly at rabbi@shirtikvahpdx.org

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This Too Is Torah and I Need to Learn It (Rabbi Akiva, BT Berakhot 62a)￼A Congregation Shir Tikvah Journey

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https://mejditours.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/logo-green.svg 0 0 Danielle DiVerdi https://mejditours.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/logo-green.svg Danielle DiVerdi 2023-03-01 16:04:48 2023-03-22 04:43:12 This Too Is Torah and I Need to Learn It (Rabbi Akiva, BT Berakhot 62a)￼A Congregation Shir Tikvah Journey

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or, in Hebrew, the Shomronim. This is a recording of the chanting of the Song of the Sea.

Samaritan tradition claims the group descends from the northern Israelite tribes who were not deported by the Neo-Assyrian Empire after the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel. They consider Samaritanism to be the true religion of the ancient Israelites and regard Judaism as a closely related but altered religion. Samaritans also regard Mount Gerizim (near both Nablus and biblical Shechem), and not the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, to be the holiest place on Earth. They attribute the schism between Samaritanism and Judaism to have been caused by Eli creating an alternate shrine at Shiloh, in opposition to Mount Gerizim.

Once a large community, the Samaritan population shrank significantly in the wake of the brutal suppression of the Samaritan revolts against the Byzantine Empire. Mass conversion to Christianityunder the Byzantines and later to Islam following the Muslim conquest of the Levant further reduced their numbers. In the 12th century, the Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudela estimated that only around 1,900 Samaritans remained in the regions of Palestine and Syria.

As of 2022, the community stood at around 874 individuals, divided between Kiryat Luza on Mount Gerizim and the Samaritan compound in Holon.

read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans

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Samaritan Chanting
"Song of the Sea"

שירת הים (אז ישר) | By Samaritan Museum | Facebook

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1.2K views, 28 likes, 9 loves, 1 comments, 17 shares, Facebook Watch Videos from Samaritan Museum: Samaritan Chanting
"Song of the Sea"

שירת הים (אז ישר)

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In central and eastern Europe after the Reformation, Christmas Eve was popularly thought of as a time of heightened supernaturalism. The dead walked the earth as ghosts, witches, and werewolves. It was best to eat a lot of garlic, avoid sacred activities, and abstain from sexual relations, since any child conceived that night was sure to be cursed and grow up to be a tool of the devil. Churches wouldn't help, since maleficent forces made them special targets during Christmas.

Thus, according to Judaic studies scholar Rebecca Scharbach, Christmas Eve meant staying up all night with family and friends-singing, dancing, playing games-all to avoid a visitation from the dead. The rowdiness and lights would repel evil. "Faced with troops of the returning dead," she writes, "the savvy practitioner discourages uncanny visitors by creating spaces that belong unambiguously to the living-spaces filled to bursting with waking bodies, light, noise and celebration."

On Nittel Nacht, "religious sparks are diverted to feed the power of evil."

This was a Christian tradition. But it was also a Jewish one, called Nittel Nacht (Nativity Night). Jews refrained from reading the Torah, abstained from sex, and ate lots of garlic as they played cards all night long. The parallels are so striking because Nittel Nacht is actually a "Jewish adaptation of the [Christian] tradition."

The difference was that instead of an army of the dead walking the earth, as Christians believed, there was only one: Jesus, born Jewish but now a sort of sorcerer. Christ walking on Christmas Eve was potent dark magic: On Nittel Nacht, "religious sparks are diverted to feed the power of evil; children conceived under his influence are spiritually corrupted; and the community of his birth cowers indoors."

Scharbach calls this Jewish variation on Christmas Eve "a mystical calculus that speaks volumes about European Jewish anxiety regarding the Christian majority," who could unleash murderous pogroms at a moment's notice. Staying inside on Christmas Eve amid rowdy anti-Semites who believed Jews were responsible for killing Christ would seem a reasonable response to terror.

Nittel Nacht, argues Scharbach, was "not such a radical departure" from the Christian tradition at all, but this isn't to suggest that it "is somehow less Jewish[.]" It spread quickly, suggesting that this "customary system fulfilled some widespread and urgent need within the early modern Jewish communities of central and eastern Europe."

This history is "a tale of two unequal communities buffeted between social conditions that drew them together and distinctive communal needs that pushed them apart." It also suggests why Nittel Nacht has been observed less often in the aftermath of the creation of the state of Israel: The violently anti-Semitic conditions that created the tradition don't exist there. And over the last century, rabbinical authorities have spoken in favor of abandoning or limiting Nittel Nacht. As Scharbach writes, "Modern practitioners have found the Nittel Nacht observances increasingly irksome and meaningless, though many continue to observe them for the sake of tradition."
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Nittel Nacht: The Jewish Christmas Eve - JSTOR Daily

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In central and eastern Europe after the Reformation, Christmas Eve was popularly thought of as a time of heightened supernaturalism. The dead walked the earth as ghosts, witches, and werewolves. It was best to eat a lot of garlic, avoid sacred activities, and abstain from sexual relations, since any child conceived that night was sure to be cursed and grow up to be a tool of the devil.

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How Queer Jews Reclaimed Yiddish - JSTOR Daily

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After World War II, Jews across the world adopted new customs and made art across different media to express their cultural and religious identities. Queer Jews have been no exception, using Yiddish to make films and other art to express what it is like to be both Jewish and a member of the LGBTQ+ community. Collectively referred to as Queer Yiddishkeit, these works of literature, film-making, and performance art capture both a resonance and a dissonance between queerness and Yiddish culture.

"Queer Yiddishkeit epitomizes how, a half-century since the Holocaust, cultural engagements with the language have been reconceiving the possibilities of Yiddish," Jewish studies professor Jeffrey Shandler explains.

Queer Yiddishkeit challenges the notion that Yiddish and other Jewish practices and cultural signifiers are inherently heteronormative or conservative. Yiddish can be used in drag performances, in film dialogues between queer characters, and so much more. While Queer Yiddishkeit gained more prominence after the end of World War II, there has historically been a relationship between Yiddish and LGBTQ+ culture.

Even for intentional practictioners of Queer Yiddishkeit "the combining of Yiddish and queerness is widely thought of as provocative," an act that creates "parallel systems of alterity."

"There were queer elements of vernacular Yiddish culture, including Jewish drag artists who performed amid a wide array of popular entertainers in interwar Poland, catering especially to Yiddish-speaking audiences in large cities." Shandler writes. Yet, even for intentional practictioners of Queer Yiddishkeit "the combining of Yiddish and queerness is widely thought of as provocative," an act that creates "parallel systems of alterity."

Shandler meditates on the scholarship framing Susan Sontag's 1964 "Notes on Camp" as a Queer Yiddishkeit document. A Queer Jew herself, Sontag argues that Camp, with its "love of the unnatural," operates as "something of a private code, a badge of identity even." Queer Yiddishkeit embraces it as a possible example of the "post-modern marriage" between queerness and Jewishness. In Sontag's fragmented essay, the two identities remain in tension, but it is a "productive tension" that draws attention to how Jewish and queer bodies live in the world. While Sontag's Camp sensibility may almost seem part of mainstream culture today (Camp was the theme of the 2019 Met Gala, after all), it was originally steeped in otherness.

Queer Yiddishkeit has continued to come to life on stage and in film into the twenty-first century. For example, filmmaker Diane Nerwen's 2002 short film Die grosse jiddische Liebe, which translates as "The Great Yiddish Love," juxtaposed material cut from existing films to create a tragic love story between two women under Nazism.

"As a mock 'recovery' of a 'lost' film that in fact never existed, Die grosse jiddische Liebe subverts rather than restores the cinema history it evokes," Shandler explains. "Nerwen draws on the power of montage to generate provocative new meanings out of juxtapositions among disparate elements."

In recent years, more young Jews have started to learn and practice Yiddish; it's even on Duolingo. As with many parts of North American and European Jewish culture, Queer Yiddishkeit could be appropriately criticized for being fairly ​​Ashkenormative. But Queer Yiddishkeit highlights Yiddish as an important part of queer Jewish culture and that queer Jewish people also consider Jewishness an important part of their lives.

Queer Yiddishkeit works confront both notions of queer Jewish history and what queer Jewish history looks like right now. It "challenges enduring notions of the role of Yiddish in Jewish life at a moment when those possibilities seem both imperiled and desirable," Shandler writes. In other words, Queer Yiddishkeit captures the fragility and the potential that queer Jews see in Yiddish today.
Support JSTOR Daily! Join our new membership program on Patreon today.
Resources

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How Queer Jews Reclaimed Yiddish - JSTOR Daily

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After World War II, Jews across the world adopted new customs and made art across different media to express their cultural and religious identities. Queer Jews have been no exception, using Yiddish to make films and other art to express what it is like to be both Jewish and a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

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How an elite Israeli commando built a protest movement to save his country

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How an elite Israeli commando built a protest movement to save his country

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These 8 Jewish Short Films are Challenging, Hopeful and Necessary

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From Streisand to Spielberg, Jewish artists have made undeniable contributions to the world of American cinema. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Jewish trailblazers - many of them immigrants to the U.S. - became some of the most prolific vaudeville actors and Hollywood stars. Entertainment was one of the few American industries in which Jewish creatives could establish themselves at a time when antisemitism and xenophobia raged in the United States. Jews were often barred from working in fields deemed more "respectable" - so they flocked to Hollywood. Despite facing discrimination and persecution, these pioneers managed to establish a strong presence in movies, helping to forge the entertainment industry we know today.

So why does it feel like diverse Jewish representation in media, in Hollywood and beyond, is hard to find even in 2023? From casting non-Jewish actors in Jewish roles to Ashkenormativity and stereotypical portrayals, unsavory representations of Jewish life have crossed all of our screens - and that's when we're included onscreen at all.

The following collection gathers contemporary short films that center Jewish voices and issues that spoke to me - and that I hope will speak to you. Some stories are told in English and some in Hebrew; they are told from different points of view and through different visual styles. Some might make you laugh, and some might make you cry. Some might make your stomach turn - and they're supposed to. Some you might love, and some you might hate. For me, each film on this list made me think a little more deeply about my own identity and the ties that bind us.

dir. Davina Pardo (2018)

"116 Cameras" haunts me. Is this documentary on the preservation of a Holocaust survivor's story through AI intimate or invasive? It is undeniably heart-wrenching, unexpected and necessary. We are introduced to survivor Eva Schloss through an enveloping maze of cameras and lights. An offscreen voice directs Eva to repeat after her: "Why don't you ask me a question about Auschwitz?".

If this technological process seems impersonal, it is. However, Eva has dedicated decades of her life to telling her story; preparing a hologram of herself to teach Holocaust education to future generations as if she were still alive is an enlightening - or dystopian - evolution of her resolve.

dir. Shira Haimovici (2020)

Addressing girlhood, ritual, sexism and culture clash in a heterogeneous society, all through a decadent summertime haze, this Israeli coming-of-age film challenged my preconceptions of Orthodox communities. The characters of "Summer Shade" are selfish, immature, masterfully authentic and complex. Bear in mind that this tale unfolds through the eyes of a biased narrator.

dir. Rose Knopper (2021)

A quick watch at only a minute long, this animated menagerie of emotions still manages to make me cry. "Kaia's Misheberach" tackles themes of relationships, grief and the beauty that grows from the traditions that change us, even when they're rooted in pain. A misheberach - an ancient prayer for the ill - is recited to request a blessing from God. One word I'd use to describe this film would be "magical." The short is a vibrant visual treat with a nostalgic, deeply calming soundscape to match. I'd be content to stay within the walls of this film for hours.

dir. Billy Lumby (2014)

Shmilu is a young Londonite and Hasidic Jew struggling to balance the draw of an unknown, enticing secular life with his obligations to his family and community. Stomach-turning and thought-provoking, this fiction film poses uncomfortable questions about the nature of faith and the tension between tradition and individualism, all through an unmistakably Jewish lens. The movie employs the enveloping appeal of a close-up camera in perpetual motion to great effect. It seems rare in media to find an honest, good-faith depiction of the Hasidic community; I can't speak as a member of the community myself, but I believe "samuel-613," the first fiction film developed with the participation of the Hasidic community in London's Stamford Hill neighborhood, fits the bill. Jewish people are not a monolith, the film shouts at us, and identity is never static.

"Noch Am Leben" (Still Alive)

dir. Anita Lester (2017)

"Noch Am Leben" approaches questions of the nature of survival and the lasting impact of our scars through a tender lens. The film, which shares the story of a Holocaust survivor through a secondary narrator, doesn't sugar-coat or romanticize the trauma it portrays, but rather allows it to exist in all its grisly and intimate truth. The commanding presence of the narrator, ephemeral animation and a haunting score kept me transfixed.

dir. Jacque Pche (2022)

Ready for a change? Here's a film that's pure Jewish joy. I'm a sucker both for stop-motion animation and for a Purim story that's simple, universal and full of familial love. This film leaps into action when a child's Purim costume rips with no time to spare before celebrations are set to begin. The characters, set design and attention to detail in this film are remarkable.

dir. Simon Dymond (2013)

"Happy New Year " makes me uncomfortable. It makes me flinch, it makes me squirm and it makes me contemplate hitting pause, but I just have to find out how it ends - and that's all the more reason to watch it. Tackling imposter syndrome and the urge to belong through a child's eyes, this film is unlike any Rosh Hashanah story you've seen before.

dir. Susan Shulman (2018)

How do we learn to share our love? Told through the recitation of a letter written by a Russian emigré to Montreal at the turn into the twentieth century, "Adieu My Beloved" is poignant and elegiac; the film confronts its audience through its intimate dealings with love and loss, fragility and hope. It's also visually gorgeous in a way I haven't seen before; rather than adhering to the kind of familiar buttoned-up, sepia representation that tends to distance us from depictions of the past, "Adieu My Beloved" turns a transatlantic journey into a vivid kaleidoscope of collage with an impressionistic tinge.

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These 8 Jewish Short Films are Challenging, Hopeful and Necessary

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From Streisand to Spielberg, Jewish artists have made undeniable contributions to the world of American cinema. Throughout the first half of the 20th century, Jewish trailblazers - many of them immigrants to the U.S. - became some of the most prolific vaudeville actors and Hollywood stars. Entertain

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Antisemitism as a cultural phenomenon that often seems to be cloaked as something almost dismissible 

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A very distressing article but seemed appropriate to post. 

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A very distressing article but seemed appropriate to post. 

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The Vanishing

The erasure of Jews from American life

Quote: It’s gauche to count but you can’t help yourself: In academia, Hollywood, Washington, even in New York City—anywhere American Jews once made their mark—our influence is in steep decline.

By Jacob SavageRead Article: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/the-vanishing

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The protest group both Netanyahu and his opponents never saw coming

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Israelis who don't get involved in protesting are protesting

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Israelis who don't get involved in protesting are protesting

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This article from the Israeli "paper of record," HaAretz, helps to parse the current Israeli public anger against the new government by giving some historical and political context.

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Among the many creative homemade signs on display at Monday's massive pro-democracy rally in Jerusalem was one that genuinely surprised me.

It was written in English and the person holding it was an employee from one of Israel's largest venture capital firms, whose management and staff had joined the protest.

The sign said "Jews of the world, this is your stock that is crashing!" alongside a drawing of a downward-trending line graph.

What struck me about this was the incongruity of someone in a business that is based on broadcasting bullish optimism to potential investors sending a message that is basically saying the opposite.

It reminded me of long-past interviews with the earliest pioneers of Israel's tech and investment industries, and how they fought for years to overcome the old stigma of doing business in Israel.

We have become so used to Israel having a prosperous, export-oriented and tech-driven economy that we now take it for granted. But up until the mid-1990s, at the earliest, a successful private sector was the last thing most people associated with Israel.

Instead, we has such terms as "the Israel tax." This meant that the price of investing and doing business here was so prohibitive that most investors were Diaspora Jews who had little hope of seeing any return on their money and regarded the investment as an act of charity, helping Jews build their state.

It was an attitude encapsulated in that old joke: "How do you make a small fortune in Israel? Arrive with a large fortune."

Sure, Israel had a strong academic and research community long before there were Israeli companies on NASDAQ or billion dollar exits. But the idea of innovative Israeli research and development actually leading to Israeli companies selling their wares in a global marketplace was, with rare exceptions, almost unfathomable.

High-tech workers protesting in Tel Aviv last month. Credit: JACK GUEZ - AFP

When an Israeli invention looked like having any commercial potential, the first step a foreign investor would take would be to relocate the developers to the United States. Israelis lacked managerial know-how and marketing experience, and few expected that to ever change.

The early pioneers of Israel's venture capital industry started trying to change that in late '80s. But the real boost came in 1993, when Yitzhak Rabin's government dedicated what seemed at the time the astronomical sum of $100 million to found Yozma - the fund of funds. This offered to match venture capital money from abroad, but with one condition: any successful companies they invested in would have to remain in Israel.

Yet for years, every time there was a headline of another young Israeli high-tech company being acquired by a foreign corporation, the first question would always be: Will they allow the company to stay in Israel?

Three decades later, you hear it much less. There are hundreds of research centers in Israel, tens of thousands of tech companies with hundreds of thousands of employees. A record-breaking 10 percent of the Israeli workforce is now employed in tech or tech-related fields, which account for over half of Israel's exports. Overseas investors arrive not because they're Jews who want to support the Zionist enterprise, but simply to make money. There is no need for charity anymore.

Yet none of this is a given. Many, if not most, of these workers could with relative ease relocate and make more money in less stressful surroundings abroad.

Which brings me back to that sign. It remains a conscious choice of those who work in the tech companies and investment funds to do so here in Israel. Most other Israelis nowadays take them for granted, and naturally envy their high salaries and stock options. But they don't have to stay.

Much has been said in recent weeks about how Benjamin Netanyahu has been surprised by the way in which the business community and high-tech sector joined the protest movement against his government's plans to weaken the Supreme Court.

But it wasn't just him who failed to see it coming. The protest organizers and opposition leaders weren't expecting it either.

Just six weeks ago, when the first protests took place in Tel Aviv, most of the participants were either from the hard-core of the anti-Netanyahu "Balfour protests" that had taken place in 2020-21, or left-wing groups whose main focus in opposing the plans was solidarity with the Palestinians.

The protests have not only broadened since then, but been totally transformed into an organic grassroots movements where centrists and many right-wingers feel comfortable (though not Arab Israelis, which is a matter for another column).

The fact that the " hytekistim " joined in was less a numerical boost than recognition that it isn't just the habitual hard-left crowd taking to the streets. It made it much harder for Netanyahu's media proxies to dismiss the protesters as a bunch of anti-Zionist anarchists (though of course they're still rather forlornly trying to do so). It also highlighted the role of this new, globalized upper middle class in Israeli society.

It is important not to idealize this class. There are plenty of dark sides to the Israeli tech sector. The companies specializing in feeding online gambling addictions, those selling binary option rip-offs and, of course, those offering spyware to the world's worst regimes. This does not bring any glory to Startup Nation.

A face-off between a police officer and high-tech workers in Tel Aviv last month. Credit: JACK GUEZ - AFP

And let's not forget that activists in Israel have been waiting for many years for the tech community to show some social responsibility or political consciousness. (Some, of course, have been active for years, but they remain a minority.) This is why their emergence as political actors is so surprising.

Sociologists are only starting to research them as a distinct group in society. But what we're seeing now, in real time, is the wider effect of having for the first time in Israel a large group of influential and highly educated citizens whose main characteristic is not religious, ethnic or political, but their dual Israeli and global identities (and comfort in combining them).

The fact they have an easy alternative to get up and leave is what defines them.

Their choice to stay here, build their businesses, pay taxes and raise their children in Israel - and their desire to continue doing so in a country they still feel is their own - has made them one of the most surprising and powerful features of what has become the largest protest movement in Israel's history.

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The protest group both Netanyahu and his opponents never saw coming

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Among the many creative homemade signs on display at Monday's massive pro-democracy rally in Jerusalem was one that genuinely surprised me. It was written in English and the person holding it was an employee from one of Israel's largest venture capital firms, whose management and staff had joined the protest.

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Discussions about Israel and Zionism can shift from an historical investigation or geopolitical discussion to ones that traffic in antisemitic messages, tropes, and/or motivations, which consequently can affect the treatment-and sense of safety-of Jewish and non-Jewish students alike. As writer Shane Burley writes, "Anti-Zionism is not inherently antisemitic...but the way in which anti-Zionism often plays out, the types of strategies it utilizes, the language it is comprised of, and the way it can place double standards on Jews, can certainly be." How can we understand and navigate the overlaps–and distinctions–between antisemitism and critical discussions about Israel? When is “Israel'' or “Zionist” a modern replacement for the word “Jew”? It is imperative that educators and students have support and tools to navigate this distinction so that important world events can be unpacked thoughtfully in the classroom without incorporating antisemitic ideas or behaviors.

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Discussions about Israel and Zionism can shift from an historical investigation or geopolitical discussion to one that traffics in antisemitic messages, tropes, and/or motivations, which consequently can affect the treatment-and sense of safety-of Jewish and non-Jewish students alike. As writer Shane Burley writes, "Anti-Zionism is not inherently antisemitic...but the way in which anti-Zionism often plays out, the types of strategies it utilizes, the language it is comprised of, and the way it can place double standards on Jews, can certainly be."

How can we understand and navigate the overlaps-and distinctions-between antisemitism and critical discussions about Israel? When is "Israel'' or "Zionist" a modern replacement for the word "Jew"?

It is imperative that educators and students have support and tools to navigate this distinction so that important world events can be unpacked thoughtfully in the classroom without incorporating antisemitic ideas or behaviors.
During the webinar, we will:

Identify when anti-Zionism crosses into the realm of antisemitism

Examine when criticism of the State of Israel and its policies actually mask antisemitic messages and tropes

Explore how antisemitism shows up in conversations about Israel and the impact it has on young people and Jewish communities

Strategize how to have thoughtful and critical classroom conversations about the Israeli/Palestinian conflict without perpetuating antisemitic ideas and behaviors

Captioning will be provided during this webinar, which takes place from 7-8 PM ET/6-7 PM CT/ 5-6 PM MT/4-5 PM PT. If this time doesn't work for your schedule, be sure to register and we'll notify you once the recording is available on our On-Demand Learning Center.

You will be eligible to receive one-hour of professional development credit for participation if you actively watch the webinar. At the conclusion of the webinar, you will be able to download a certificate of completion from the webinar console. Check with your school or district in advance of the webinar to ensure that the professional development credit is accepted.

About the Panelists:
Dimitry Anselme, Facilitator
Facing History and Ourselves
Dimitry Anselme is the Executive Program Director at Facing History and Ourselves. In this role, he is responsible for ensuring the coherence of all program delivery activities, and managing the intersection between content production and program staff development.

Prior to joining Facing History in 1999 as a program associate, Dimitry was a high school History teacher. He taught world and American history in public schools in Worcester and in Brookline, Massachusetts and served on the Teacher Leadership Network for Facing History's New England office. In 2004, Dimitry briefly left the organization to become the high school principal at the Academy of the Pacific Rim, a high-performing public charter high school in the Boston area. He returned to Facing History in 2007.

Dimitry is a graduate of Clark University and holds a Master in Administration and Social Policy Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Dimitry was born in Haiti and grew up in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo).
Dov Waxman, Presenter
The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair in Israel Studies
University of California Los Angeles
Dov Waxman is the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair of Israel Studies and the director of the Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his Ph.D. and M.A. degrees from Johns Hopkins University, and his B.A. from Oxford University. He is the author of four books: The Pursuit of Peace and The Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending / Defining the Nation (2006), Israel's Palestinians: The Conflict Within (2011), Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel (2016), and most recently, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2019). His writing has also been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times and The Atlantic.
Haras Rafiq, Presenter
Counter Extremism Expert
The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy
Haras Rafiq is the Managing Director for the Institute for The Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP) and has been a counter extremism/terrorism expert and practitioner since 2004. Prior to this, he was the CEO of Quilliam International based in London and USA for seven years and has been part of numerous international Governmental task forces, including the UK government task force looking to counter extremism/terrorism in response to the 2005 terrorist bombings in London. He is a Trustee of the UK charity, Muslims Against Antisemitism (MAAS) and he was also a member of the Advisory Group on Online Terrorist Propaganda at Europol's European Counter-terrorism Centre (ECTC). In addition to this, Haras has been a trustee of the UK and French Government Securities Think Tank - The Franco British Council. Haras is regularly featured in the media as a commentator and has been a cultural ambassador through the UK Government's "Projecting British Islam" initiative.

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Confronting Hate: When Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism Overlap

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Discussions about Israel and Zionism can shift from an historical investigation or geopolitical discussion to one that traffics in antisemitic messages, tropes, and/or motivations, which consequently can affect the treatment-and sense of safety-of Jewish and non-Jewish students alike.

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The American linguist and political commentator John McWhorter coined the term "Woke Racism" to refer to the latest wave of elite, radical, "anti-racist" campaigners who posit that racism is so deeply embedded in the fabric of American life that it's impervious to traditional civil rights and anti-racist legislation.

In order to level the playing field, liberal democratic systems of government - which aren't up to the Utopian task of achieving perfect racial parity - must be radically re-constituted to allow for what Ibram X. Kendi, author of "How To Be An Anti-Racist," refers to un-ironically as "anti-racist discrimination" against groups who are "disproportionately successful."

The only thing that matters to such campaigners is the racial disparity in economic and social outcomes, which is viewed as sufficient evidence to demonstrate racism. Not only are all other possible factors for unequal results ignored, but it's considered racist to even consider other explanations.

Thus, "privileged" whites and those labeled as "white adjacent" must accept a future where they will face "progressive bigotry" until there's complete racial parity in all areas of life.

Though the proponents of this "Woke Racism" typically focus only on the Black-White paradigm, the question of where Jews (and other successful, yet historically disadvantaged minorities) stand within this racial binary is rarely prominent within the public discourse.

In a chapter in his masterful and urgent book, David L. Bernstein recounts a story about a Jewish friend who grew up poor, lost his father as a young child, was the target of antisemitic abuse in school and struggled with dyslexia. However, after working his way through college, he managed to earn his MBA and land a job a at a major consulting firm, where he worked diligently and received several promotions.

After the murder of George Floyd, his company decided, in order to advance the values of "equity and inclusion" (DEI), to make major staff changes. One of the changes involved the CEO's decision to lay off over-represented, white staff and to hire more people from "marginalized communities."

One of the employees fired as the result of this racial restructuring was David's friend, who, despite his under-privileged background, had become - in the eyes of the dominant DEI orthodoxy - a privileged white man. As Bernstein observed, "taken to its logical conclusion, the woke ideologue's approach to equity" will, in the workplace, university and elsewhere, inevitably have this kind of impact on Jews.

The problem with Woke orthodoxy, Bernstein explains, in his thorough analysis - which includes his first-hand experience as a Jewish communal leader dealing with its growing acceptance by Jewish day schools and organisations, and his work as director of the Jewish Institute for Liberal Values (JILV) - is a racial essentialism which reduces people to oppressed people of colour and privileged white oppressors.

Within this Manichean framing, Jews, despite being an historically oppressed minority and framed as non-white or even enemies of the the "white race" by neo-Nazis and other far-right anti-Semites, are typically categorized as "white" or "white adjacent."

The role to which the Woke left has assigned Jews is to acknowledge their privilege and their contribution to white supremacy, and become "white allies" for the truly oppressed racial minorities. As Bernstein writes: "If someone is kept down because of white supremacy, someone else must have been propped up by it." It follows, he adds, that "Jews will be seen as profiting at the expense of Black people." Merit, in the eyes of the Woke left, is an illusion designed to legitimize the racist system.

This Oppressor v. Oppressed" racial paradigm, which equates power with depravity and powerlessness with virtue, Bernstein writes, is also increasingly the default orientation by which the Woke left sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Through this bifurcated lens, he writes, "Israelis are the perennial victimizers, with no room for nuance of any kind" - a rigid framing by which, we consistently show, many media outlets cover the events in the region.

Another frightening element of the new Woke ideology that's been adopted by many Jewish communal leaders, Bernstein observes, is that it refuses to subject its ideas to critical scrutiny. Jewish programs which advance such approaches - under the guise of diversity programs - typically present their view of racism not as a debatable theory, but as received wisdom.

Bernstein is rightfully incredulous that more Jews and Jewish leaders aren't suspicious of such a dogmatic approach in light of the fact that passionate debate is so central to Jewish life and tradition.

But, perhaps the most shocking fact presented in Woke Antisemitism is the result of a poll commissioned by JILV demonstrating how the new Woke views on race, racism and Jews have penetrated the public consciousness. The poll, which included roughly equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans, asked the following question:
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

"America is a structurally racist country in which white Americans, and white adjacent groups who emulate white culture (like Asian Americans and Jewish Americans), have unfair advantages over which must be addressed to achieve equity".

The results show that a plurality of all respondents agreed with the statement, including an overwhelming majority of self-described progressives.

However, Bernstein book is not even remotely all 'gloom and doom'. It offers well-reasoned rebuttals to the Woke left's orthodoxy on Jews and race, and ends by providing important and practical advice on how the Jewish community - particularly Jewish institutions - can fight this new scourge of antisemitism operating under the guise of anti-racism.

Bernstein's book is an immensely important contribution not only to the fight against the new Woke antisemitism, but to the broader battle against the dangerous encroachment of illiberalism penetrating our culture, education and civic life.

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Woke Antisemitism: How a Progressive Ideology Harms Jews

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The American linguist and political commentator John McWhorter coined the term "Woke Racism" to refer to the latest wave of elite, radical, "anti-racist" campaigners who posit that racism is so deeply embedded in the fabric of American life that it's impervious to traditional civil rights and anti-racist legislation.

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A moshav is a type of cooperative housing developed in Israel alongside the kibbutz. People live not quite together and not quite separately.

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When Berkley Moshav breaks ground next year it will be the realization of a vision that began 8 years ago in a living room in California. But, for Berkeley Moshav's founder, Roger Studley, the dream goes back even further.

"This idea of Jewish communal living has been with me for as long as I can remember. As Jews, it's so innate in us to want to live communally and multi-generationally. We want Berkeley Moshav to be a place where families with kids, people without kids, and folks of all ages can all really enjoy the benefits of living in a shared environment." Studley said.

Members Mike Gast and Rachel Dodson are excited to raise their son in this shared Jewish environment. For members like Ellen Reier who are already familiar with communal living, the benefits are clear.

"I miss the spontaneous opportunities for socializing that were available to me when I lived communally, and that's what I'm most looking forward to when I move into Berkeley Moshav." Reier said.

The project is well underway and will consist of 36 homes in a single building with ample shared space. Fourteen of the homes have already been reserved, with many more prospective residents currently considering joining.

Besides owning their own private, fully appointed residence, members of the Moshav will share access to a kosher communal kitchen, a rooftop terrace, a 5,000-square-foot outdoor courtyard, and 3,000 square feet of indoor space for amenities such as a kids' play area and art/exercise space.

It is in this shared space where the magic of the moshav will happen.

"We all know how hard it is to raise kids on your own. Imagine having a whole village instead. You'll have people to sit with your kids if you need to run out, to be mentors for them, to act as extra grandparents and aunts and uncles." Studley said.

The draw of a multi-generational environment appeals to many families with young children. Future resident Noah Brod is particularly excited about the idea of his children growing up surrounded by a village, "We are looking for a place to raise a family, with other parents around," Brod said. His experience living in a home with 14 people of different ages in the Peace Corps introduced him to the joys of communal living. "It's a rich way to live your life," Brod added.

While people of all faiths are welcome at the Moshav, residents will experience the benefits of living Jewish lives together.

"Part of our mission is to create a place where Judaism can be integrated into our daily lives. Let's have neighbors that we can connect with in a Jewish context, whether it's learning Hebrew together, or helping to educate our kids, or sharing a holiday or Shabbat meal." Studley added.

Living sustainably is another of the core values that will be reflected in Berkeley Moshav. Studley notes that having 36 households in one modern building will naturally reduce consumption of resources and energy, while increasing connections and relationships. Solar energy, shared transportation options, and communal meals will all be integral to sustainable living at the Moshav.

These shared meals will also be an important part of strengthening community ties. Two or three times a week, residents will collaborate to prepare meals for the entire building, with each member only required to join a cooking team once a month.

"Imagine coming home from work and having dinner ready for you and your neighbors and all the kids can just run around and play with each other in a safe, confined area while you enjoy good food and company." Studley noted.

While each member owns their own home, decisions regarding communal spaces, activities, and logistics will be made using a non-hierarchical decision-making structure - designed for equivalence of voice, transparency, and efficiency - in which all residents can participate.

While Studley was inspired by the democratic and communal nature of intentional communities in Israel, his dream of communal living began in Berkeley.

"It was always going to start in Berkeley. Berkeley's probably got more innovative Jewish infrastructure per capita than anywhere else in the country. We've got great public schools, a Jewish day school, outdoor Jewish education, the Jewish Studio project, a prestigious kosher winery, interaction between the different streams of Jewish life, the list just goes on and on. There are people from the full Jewish spectrum all coming together in one area." Studley said.

Studley envisions the Moshav reflecting that same diversity and vibrancy of Jewish life in Berkeley, in a more intimate setting.

Once he gets this off the ground in Berkeley, Studley intends to use his nonprofit (Urban Moshav) to create similar communities in other places. "We've had these amazing innovations over the last hundred years in communication and transportation.... Meaning that we can live anywhere and work anywhere and stay connected. But somehow we've actually become less connected. The goal here is to recreate a Jewish neighborhood feel where people hang out together and are invested in each other so we all feel less alone."

Future residents have been working together with their architect to design Berkeley Moshav's homes and building. Construction is planned to begin in Spring 2024. Homes will be purchased at cost - there's no markup - and prices, currently projected from 880,000 for a one-bedroom to $1.6 million for three-bedroom, are in line with the Berkeley market. Anyone interested in living in the community is invited to attend an information session (via Zoom) and spend 1-3 months as an "explorer," getting to know the project and the current members.
For more information, visit Berkeley Moshav's website.
To learn more about membership, check out their upcoming information sessions

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The First Jewish Urban Cohousing Community Opens to Families - Sponsored Content | The Times of Israel

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When Berkley Moshav breaks ground next year it will be the realization of a vision that began 8 years ago in a living room in California. But, for Berkeley Moshav's founder, Roger Studley, the dream goes back even further. "This idea of Jewish communal living has been with me for as long as I can remember.

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In Exodus chapter 6, after Moses complains about how Pharaoh has increased Israel's workload and refused to set them free, God appears to Moses and reiterates his promise to take Israel out of Egypt and bring them to the Promised Land.[1] As part of this message, God tells Moses that his name is YHWH, even though he never shared this name with the patriarchs, and only appeared to them as El Shaddai:

שמות ו:ב וַיְדַבֵּר אֱלֹהִים אֶל מֹשֶׁה וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלָיו אֲנִי יְ־הוָה. ו:ג וָאֵרָא אֶל אַבְרָהָם אֶל יִצְחָק וְאֶל יַעֲקֹב בְּאֵל שַׁדָּי וּשְׁמִי יְ־הוָה לֹא נוֹדַעְתִּי לָהֶם.

Exod 6:2 God spoke to Moses and said to him, "I am YHWH. 6:3 I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name YHWH.

The text makes it clear that the name YHWH-known in scholarship as the Tetragrammaton (Greek for "four letters")-is of great significance, marking a new era in ancient Israelite history, but it offers no explanation for its meaning.

YHWH as Being

In contrast, God's earlier revelation at the burning bush, in which Moses is introduced to this special name for the first time,[2] explains or at least hints at its meaning:

שמות ג:יג וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אֶל הָאֱלֹהִים הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי בָא אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְאָמַרְתִּי לָהֶם אֱלֹהֵי אֲבוֹתֵיכֶם שְׁלָחַנִי אֲלֵיכֶם וְאָמְרוּ לִי מַה שְּׁמוֹ מָה אֹמַר אֲלֵהֶם.

Exod 3:13 Moses said to God, "When I come to the Israelites and say to them 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is His name?' what shall I say to them?"

ג:יד וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים אֶל מֹשֶׁה אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה. וַיֹּאמֶר כֹּה תֹאמַר לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֶהְיֶה שְׁלָחַנִי אֲלֵיכֶם.

3:14 And God said to Moses, "I am what I am." And He said, "Thus shall you say to the Israelites, 'Ehyeh (I-Am) sent me to you.'"

When Moses asks God his name, God first answers by saying "I am what I am" and even follows this up with "tell them Ehyeh (I-Am) sent you." The word ehyeh ("I am") sounds very much like YHWH, and is meant as a play on words, explaining that YHWH's name means "he will be" or "being."[3] Thus, God follows up this implied etymology with the Tetragrammaton:

ג:טו וַיֹּאמֶר עוֹד אֱלֹהִים אֶל מֹשֶׁה כֹּה תֹאמַר אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל יְ־הוָה אֱלֹהֵי אֲבֹתֵיכֶם אֱלֹהֵי אַבְרָהָם אֱלֹהֵי יִצְחָק וֵאלֹהֵי יַעֲקֹב שְׁלָחַנִי אֲלֵיכֶם זֶה שְּׁמִי לְעֹלָם וְזֶה זִכְרִי לְדֹר דֹּר.

3:15 And God said further to Moses, "Thus shall you speak to the Israelites: 'YHWH, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.' This shall be My name forever, this My appellation for all eternity."

Nevertheless, this interpretation does not reflect the original meaning of YHWH. The word "he is" would not be written with a vav as its third letter, but with a yod, as יהיה, just as the word "I am" is אהיה. Second, note how awkwardly the verses read, trying to force the meaning ehyeh on the word YHWH, by having God first tell Moses to use the name Ehyeh, and then to use the name YHWH, without explaining the switch.[4] Thus, I would argue that the explanation here is a popular etymology, and we need to look elsewhere for the etymology of this name.

Moses' Midianite Backstory

The first clue to understanding the name comes from the context of the story of the burning bush in the book of Exodus. After Moses kills an Egyptian and flees from Pharaoh (2:12-15), he ends up in Midian, where he meets the priest of Midian, Reuel (or Jethro), and marries his daughter, Zipporah (2:15-22). While shepherding his father-in-law's flocks, he sees the burning bush and receives a revelation from God at God's own mountain:

שמות ג:א וּמֹשֶׁה הָיָה רֹעֶה אֶת צֹאן יִתְרוֹ חֹתְנוֹ כֹּהֵן מִדְיָן וַיִּנְהַג אֶת הַצֹּאן אַחַר הַמִּדְבָּר וַיָּבֹא אֶל הַר הָאֱלֹהִים חֹרֵבָה.

Exod 3:1 Moses was tending the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he drove the flock into the wilderness, and came to the mountain of God, to Horeb.

This context suggests that God's mountain is not in Israel or in Egypt, but it is in the Horeb wilderness, not far from Midian. Where is Midian and what do we know about it historically?

Midian and the Qurayyah Culture of North Arabia

Assuming the area described by Ptolemy as Midiana is the same area as biblical Midian, an assumption that can be supported by the biblical connection between Midian and Ishmael (see below), we can know quite a bit about its material culture in the Late Bronze and early Iron Ages (13 th-12 th cent. B.C.E.).

A group of semi-nomads, who produced a very distinct, colorful and attractive, decorated pottery with images of ostriches or other birds, lived a little northeast of the area Ptolemy calls Midian, in an area known as the Oasis of Qurayyah. This pottery style is known in scholarship as Qurayyah Painted Ware (QPW).

The Qurayyah people were also experts in metallurgy, specifically the smelting of copper and the production of bronze. The area of Qurayyah itself has no copper veins, but such veins are found further south in the Arabian Peninsula, and the copper ore was sent north to Qurayyah for smelting because the people of Qurayyah (Midianites) were experts in metal work.[5]

Evidence of this culture's fingerprints is also found in other areas of copper smelting in this period, specifically the sites of Faynan and Timna in the southern Levant (in modern day Jordan and Israel respectively).[6] Uzi Avner, an archaeologist working at the Dead-Sea and Arava Science Center, has argued that the Midianites were brought in as specialists or contractors, working with the local nomadic (Shasu) tribes or with Egyptians, who had a presence in this area during this period, producing pure copper from ore for their customers (or employers).[7]

An Arabian Tribe

The Midianites were a Proto-Arabian tribe;[8] their home base was in Arabia and they are related to Ishmaelites. The book of Judges states this explicitly in the story of Gideon, who makes the following request of the Israelites after defeating the Midianites:

שופטים ח:כד וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם גִּדְעוֹן אֶשְׁאֲלָה מִכֶּם שְׁאֵלָה וּתְנוּ לִי אִישׁ נֶזֶם שְׁלָלוֹ כִּי נִזְמֵי זָהָב לָהֶם כִּי יִשְׁמְעֵאלִים הֵם. ח:כהוַיֹּאמְרוּ נָתוֹן נִתֵּן וַיִּפְרְשׂוּ אֶת הַשִּׂמְלָה וַיַּשְׁלִיכוּ שָׁמָּה אִישׁ נֶזֶם שְׁלָלוֹ.

Judg 8:24 And Gideon said to them, "I have a request to make of you: Each of you give me the earring he received as booty." (They had golden earrings, for they were Ishmaelites.) 8:25 "Certainly!" they replied. And they spread out a cloth, and everyone threw onto it the earring he had received as booty.

ח:כו וַיְהִי מִשְׁקַל נִזְמֵי הַזָּהָב אֲשֶׁר שָׁאָל אֶלֶף וּשְׁבַע מֵאוֹת זָהָב לְבַד מִן הַשַּׂהֲרֹנִים וְהַנְּטִפוֹת וּבִגְדֵי הָאַרְגָּמָן שֶׁעַל מַלְכֵי מִדְיָן וּלְבַד מִן הָעֲנָקוֹת אֲשֶׁר בְּצַוְּארֵי גְמַלֵּיהֶם. ח:כז וַיַּעַשׂ אוֹתוֹ גִדְעוֹן לְאֵפוֹד...

8:26 The weight of the golden earrings that he had requested came to 1700 shekels of gold; this was in addition to the crescents and the pendants and the purple robes worn by the kings of Midian and in addition to the collars on the necks of their camels. 8:27 Gideon made an ephod of this gold...

We see evidence of the connection between Midianites and Ishmaelites as well when it comes to names. For instance, Moses' father-in-law Jethro or Jether (Exod 4:17) has the same name as David's brother-in-law (husband of David's sister Abigail), Jether the Ishmaelite (1 Chron 2:17).

The Spice Trade

During the Iron Age and afterwards, the Midianites, as an Arabian tribe, were part of the spice trade. They would travel from Arabia and pass through Israel on their way to the Mediterranean coast and/or Egypt. This is reflected in the biblical story of Joseph, which describes Midianite and Ishmaelite traders heading to Egypt with spices and slaves:

בראשית לז:כה ...וַיִּשְׂאוּ עֵינֵיהֶם וַיִּרְאוּ וְהִנֵּה אֹרְחַת יִשְׁמְעֵאלִים בָּאָה מִגִּלְעָד וּגְמַלֵּיהֶם נֹשְׂאִים נְכֹאת וּצְרִי וָלֹט הוֹלְכִים לְהוֹרִיד מִצְרָיְמָה... לז:כח וַיַּעַבְרוּ אֲנָשִׁים מִדְיָנִים סֹחֲרִים וַיִּמְשְׁכוּ וַיַּעֲלוּ אֶת יוֹסֵף מִן הַבּוֹר וַיִּמְכְּרוּ אֶת יוֹסֵף לַיִּשְׁמְעֵאלִים בְּעֶשְׂרִים כָּסֶף וַיָּבִיאוּ אֶת יוֹסֵף מִצְרָיְמָה.

Gen 37:25 ...Looking up, they (=Joseph's brothers) saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, their camels bearing gum, balm, and ladanum to be taken to Egypt.... 37:28 When Midianite traders passed by, they pulled Joseph up out of the pit. They sold Joseph for twenty pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites, who brought Joseph to Egypt.[9]

In this story, the traders had first headed north, perhaps to trade with the Arameans, and were moving south through the Jezreel valley to the Via Maris, which would take them into Egypt. Although the story is set in the second millennium B.C.E., anachronistic features such as camels show that it was written in the first millennium B.C.E.

The strong connection between these eastern Arabian tribes and the spice route is reflected in the name the Bible (Gen 25:1-2) gives their eponymous mother, Qeturah (קטורה), a name related to the Hebrew word for incense, qetoret (קטורת).

In short, the Midianites were an Arabian tribe involved in metallurgy and the spice trade, whose base was in the northeast of the Arabian Peninsula, but whose reach of settlement was much wider, with pockets living in the southwest Sinai Peninsula, the southern Transjordan, and the Aravah (the desert area of the southeastern Negev), probably because of the copper veins there.

The Shaswe-Land YHWA

Based on Egyptian records dating to the 14 th century B.C.E., we know that the Midianites were not the only ethnic groups living this these areas.[10] In the geographical list in Amunhotep III's Soleb Nubian temple, the people of the Aravah and the southern Transjordan are called Shaswe (or Shasu), a generic term meaning something like "nomadic tribes."

The word shaswe, š ꜣ sw ( )[11] is written after the Egyptian determinative for "land" t ꜣ ( ), showing that the Egyptian text is describing different geographical areas inhabited by various shaswe. One area listed is called Nomad-land Seir, which is identical with the Mount Seir region in Edom. The following name in the list, and thus nearby or contiguous with Seir, was Nomad-land Yehwa, yhw ꜣ(w) ( ).[12] The pronunciation of this name is uncertain, since like Hebrew, hieroglyphics do not include vowels, but the term seems to be related to the name of the Israelite deity, YHWH, whose precise ancient pronunciation is also unknown.

A Deity and a Land

In the list, Yehwa is the name of a land. Just as one nomadic group lived in a land called Seir, another lived in a land called Yehwa. But in antiquity, a name could sometimes be both a toponym and a theonym. The name Assyria (Aššur) illustrates this clearly: it is both the name of Assyria's chief deity and of their ancient capital city. Eventually, it also became the name of their empire. Another example would be the Greek goddess of wisdom, Athena, who began as the patron goddess of Athens.[13]

YHWH Comes from the Edomite South

Biblical evidence suggests that YHWH comes from the southeast, either from the hills of Edom or even further south in Midian or beyond. This is particularly clear in three very ancient biblical poems:

Song of Moses (Deut 33:2)

יְ־הוָה מִסִּינַי בָּא וְזָרַח מִשֵּׂעִיר לָמוֹ הוֹפִיעַ מֵהַר פָּארָן וְאָתָה מֵרִבְבֹת קֹדֶשׁ...

YHWH came from Sinai; He shone upon them from Seir; He appeared from Mount Paran, and approached from Ribeboth-kodesh...

Song of Deborah (Judg 5:4)

יְ־הוָה בְּצֵאתְךָ מִשֵּׂעִיר בְּצַעְדְּךָ מִשְּׂדֵה אֱדוֹם אֶרֶץ רָעָשָׁה...

YHWH, when You came forth from Seir, advanced from the country of Edom, the earth trembled...

Song of Habakkuk (Hab 3:3)

אֱלוֹהַ מִתֵּימָן יָבוֹא וְקָדוֹשׁ מֵהַר פָּארָן סֶלָה...

God is coming from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah....

Each of these poems opens with the image of YHWH coming from his home in the south. In fact, Habakkuk's song (v. 7) even goes on to describe how the tents of the Midianites (יְרִיעוֹת אֶרֶץ מִדְיָן) shake as YHWH stomps on the ground near them on his way to his people.

God's Mountain

This conception fits with what the story of Moses and the burning bush, where Moses goes to the Mountain of God while tending the flocks of his Midianite father-in-law. Moses is wandering in Midianite territory, though not in Arabia but in the vicinity of modern-day Petra, biblical Kadesh (Reqem in Aramaic), where we have evidence of a Qurrayah-culture group living not far from Edom.

An Arabic Name

If YHWH's origins are in the Nomad-land of Yehwa among the Midianites, then the meaning of the name should be from the Arabic language family rather than the Hebrew language family. This further calls into question the etymology in Exodus 3 of the Tetragrammaton from ה.ו.י, "to be," since, unlike Hebrew and Aramaic, Proto-Arabic does not have the root ה.ו.י for the word "to be."[15]

The Jealous God

In 1956, Shelomo Dov Goitein (1900-1985), a scholar of both Jewish and Arabic studies,[16] suggested that the name derives from the Arabic root h.w.y (هوى), and the word hawaya (هوايا), which means "love, affection, passion, desire."[17] He connected this suggestion with the passage in Exodus 34, in a set of laws known by scholars as the Ritual Decalogue. One of the laws, which forbids Israel to worship other gods, reads:

שמות לד:יד כִּי לֹא תִשְׁתַּחֲוֶה לְאֵל אַחֵר כִּי יְ־הוָה קַנָּא שְׁמוֹ אֵל קַנָּא הוּא.

Exod 34:14 For you must not worship any other god, because YHWH, whose name is Impassioned, is an impassioned God.

Goitein suggests that "YHWH whose name is Impassioned" refers to the deity's personal name YHWH, which means "the Impassioned One," and that this name derives from that (proto)Arabic term for passion. This reflects the idea that YHWH's bond with his worshipers is one of passionate love, and YHWH is upset if the worshipers "cheat" by worshipping other gods.

In other words, the worshippers' relationship with YHWH must be exclusive. Moreover, according to Goitein, this exclusivity demanded by YHWH goes back to his appearance as a god among nomadic, Arabian tribes.

Monolatry

Scholars call such exclusive worship of one god "monolatry." While monotheism claims that no other gods exist, monolatry assumes loyalty and exclusive connection to one god, while allowing for the existence of other deities. In fact, many biblical passages that we read nowadays as monotheistic are really monolatrous. A classic example is in the Decalogue itself:

דברים ה:ז-ט לֹא יִהְיֶה לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים עַל פָּנָיַ... ה:ט לֹא תִשְׁתַּחְוֶה לָהֶם וְלֹא תָעָבְדֵם כִּי אָנֹכִי יְ־הוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֵל קַנָּא....

Deut 5:7 You shall have no other gods besides Me... 5:9 You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I YHWH your God am an impassioned God....

The text does not say that no other gods exist, only that they should not be worshipped in addition to YHWH, because YHWH is an impassioned God who would naturally become jealous and agitated at such behavior. YHWH's relationship with his followers is like that of a husband to a wife; he loves his worshipers but is dangerously jealous of any "worshipping around." As the book of Proverbs states about husbands:

משלי ו:לד כִּי קִנְאָה חֲמַת גָּבֶר וְלֹא יַחְמוֹל בְּיוֹם נָקָם.

Prov 6:34 The fury of the husband will be passionate; He will show no pity on his day of vengeance.

YHWH is just such an impassioned husband to his espoused people and just as vengeful if his people are disloyal.

Iconoclasm

In addition to being exclusive, YHWH worship was aniconic, i.e., it did not include images of the deity. This is evident from the absence of human images in the Israelites settlements of the 12 th-11 th centuries (Iron Age I, biblically, the period of the judges).[18] In addition, the followers of YHWH were apparently iconoclastic, and they would destroy images of other gods. We can see this in the Israelite conquest of Hazor in the late 13 th century, where we find that the conquerors systematically destroyed all the cultic statues and images.[19]

Iconoclasm also characterized the Qurayyah culture (Midianites), as seen from the excavations at Timna. The Egyptians built a small temple to the goddess Hathor in Timna, which was excavated by Tel Aviv University and University of London archaeologist, Beno Rothenberg (1914-2012). At the same time, the Midianites had their own worship place there, characterized by a collection of pillars (מצבות) in a tent. (Because of the extreme aridity of the area, pieces of the tent survived and were discovered by the excavators.)

Unlike the Egyptian Hathor Temple, the Midianite worship area had no images, whether painted or carved, reflecting their aniconism. When the Egyptians left this area, the Midianites took control of the entire area including the Hathor Temple. In so doing, they made the area religiously acceptable by erasing Hathor's face from the rock paintings, and reused these rocks in their own area as another pillar. Rothenberg's argument of was reconfirmed by the recent excavation by Uzi Avner.[20] This iconoclasm is also reflected in another related group, the Kenites (see appendix).

Authentic Tradition about YHWH, Midian, and Moses

The tradition about Moses' marriage to a Midianite woman has the mark of authenticity: Why would the Israelites invent a story about their primary religious leader's marriage to a non-Israelite woman?

More problematically, Moses not only finds his wife among the Midianites, but finds his God there as well. As I have argued in other contexts, such as my, "Hovav the Midianite: Why Was the End of the Story Cut? ( TheTorah, 2016)," the biblical texts try to soften or even hide this, but the full force of the Moses-in-Midian tradition is one that explains the emergence of the Midianite/proto-Arabian god YHWH-a passionate deity expecting exclusive love-as Israel's god.

Appendix

Aniconic Kenites: Another Midianite-like Yahwistic Tribe

One further piece of evidence for Midianite aniconism comes from the Kenites. The relationship between Midianites and Kenites is unclear, but the biblical text sometimes conflates the two, since Moses' father-in-law is sometimes described as having been one, and sometimes the other.[21]

In Judges 1:16, we are told that the Kenites settled in the Arad Valley, and scholars have long suggested that the city of Horvat Uza is biblical Kina, since the stream in its vicinity is called Wadi-el-Keni, i.e., the Kenite Stream. Excavations of the Iron II (monarchic period) city there show that whereas the neighboring (Israelite!) towns had small carvings of people, Horvat Uza had none. Nadav Na'aman, a historian of the biblical period from Tel Aviv University, suggested that this was because the Kenites were especially connected to their ancient, aniconic tradition.[22]

Similarly, one Kenite figure from a later period, Jehonadab ben Rechab (1 Chron 2:55),[23] is described as having joined Jehu's anti-Baal movement (2 Kgs 10:15-16). In Jeremiah we hear that this group-the Rechabites, a Kenite subclan-lived a nomadic tent-dwelling life, without building houses or planting fields, and eschewed wine consumption. This lifestyle is reminiscent of what we see in later times with yet another Arabic tribe, the Nabateans, who were also aniconic.[24]

Even if the exact relationship between Midianites, Kenites, and Rechabites remains hazy-except that the latter two small groups became part of Israel and the former large group did not-all of these groups were part of an aniconic, YHWH worshipping tradition, which was adopted and reshaped by the Israelites in an early period.

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YHWH: The Original Arabic Meaning of the Name - TheTorah.com

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In Exodus chapter 6, after Moses complains about how Pharaoh has increased Israel's workload and refused to set them free, God appears to Moses and reiterates his promise to take Israel out of Egypt and bring them to the Promised Land.[1] As part of this message, God tells Moses that his name is YHWH, even though he never shared this name with the patriarchs, and only appeared to them as El Shaddai: שמות ו:ב וַיְדַבֵּר אֱלֹהִים אֶל מֹשֶׁה וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלָיו אֲנִי יְ־הוָה.

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Judaism and Cancel Culture | My Jewish Learning

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ideas too dangerous for the community?

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Jewish tradition prizes a multiplicity of voices, but it also considers some ideas too dangerous to circulate freely.

Barring someone from participating in communal life through social ostracism or, in some cases, excommunication - what we today often call cancellation - has a long history in Jewish life. From biblical times until the present day, these tools of social opprobrium have been used to declare certain ideas or people outside communal norms, though they have generally been deployed rarely and typically with the endorsement of recognized communal authorities. While technically someone could suffer this punishment for a range of misdeeds, including some as innocuous as being disrespectful, it has mostly been used to punish those guilty of heresy.

What Is Cancel Culture?

Cancel culture is the idea that certain actions or ideas are so completely beyond the pale that their purveyors merit exclusion from polite society. The exact parameters of cancellation can vary. Most would agree that efforts to have an offender deplatformed, kicked off of a particular social media site, removed from some position of honor or influence, or even fired from their job qualifies as cancellation. But the term has also been used to refer to attempts to exact a financial price for some perceived cultural transgression, as when advertisers pull their support from a talk show whose host has uttered something inappropriate. Targets of cancel culture can and sometimes do rehabilitate themselves, but as the term itself suggests, cancellation implies an attempt to eliminate offenders and their views from social discourse.

To defenders of this practice, cancellation is a legitimate mechanism for keeping public debate within certain boundaries. But critics see it as a form of totalitarianism, exacting such a heavy price for deviation that many people will feel compelled to toe the line. Though the phenomenon feels like a distinctly modern one - the term itself only entered the mainstream lexicon in the 2010s and is often fueled by outraged reaction on the internet - the practice of deeming certain ideas, actions or even people beyond the pale is well-established in Jewish tradition.

When God Canceled Amalek

Arguably the closest correlate to cancel culture in the Torah is God's command to eliminate the tribe of Amalek. The injunction is specified in Deuteronomy 25:19, which instructs the Israelites to "blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven."The Hebrew word for blot out - timcheh - shares a root with an expression commonly used in some Jewish communities today in connection with Nazis: y'mach sh'mam, which literally means "may their names be erased."

The precise nature of the sin that merited such a unique punishment for Amalek - the tribe is not the only one to have made war on the Israelites, but it is the only one to be designated for complete eradication - is subject to debate. Some authorities have suggested their offense was targeting the vulnerable, attacking a weak Israelite nation recently freed from Egyptian slavery from the rear. Others suggest that because they attacked the Israelites just after the miracles of the Exodus, they demonstrated a brazen lack of fear of God. So while it's clear that in at least one instance, the Torah is unambiguous that cancellation is deserved - and indeed, obligatory - it's not clear what precise circumstances demand it.

The section of Deuteronomy containing the three commandments concerning Amalek - to eradicate it, remember what it did, and not to forget it - is publicly recounted in a supplemental Torah reading on the Shabbat prior to Purim, the holiday whose major villain, Haman, is said to be a descendant of Amalek. (When Haman's name is read aloud during the public recitation of the Scroll of Esther, it's traditional to make noise to render it unhearable - in effect, to cancel it.) But later rabbis were clearly discomfited by what appears to be an obligation to commit genocide. The Talmud (Yoma 22b) includes a teaching suggesting that King Saul - who failed to heed God's command in the Book of Samuel to wipe out Amalek, including their women, children and animals - argued with God, asking why he should not take pity on the guiltless children and animals.

Excommunication

The other biblical concept that bears on cancel culture is . Commonly translated as "excommunication," in the Bible it equated to a punishment of death for a handful of serious sins. By talmudic times, herem was essentially a form of severe social ostracism. The most famous herem in history was of the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Benedict Spinoza, who was excommunicated by the Amsterdam Jewish community for unspecified "abominable heresies which he practiced and taught and about his monstrous deeds."

Herem could be imposed for merely rhetorical offenses, as was later done to Spinoza. Maimonides, in his enumeration of the 24 offenses for which excommunication was warranted, included a number of violations that could be grouped under the general heading of disrespect: insulting a learned man, calling a fellow Jew a slave, or insulting a messenger of the rabbinic court. Most of the items on the list, however, relate to ritual violations. None are merely holding or expressing an unpopular opinion.

However, herem was imposed in Maimonides' time for just those sorts of reasons. Scholars in France banned his books on the grounds of heresy, taking general issue with Maimonides' attempt to synthesize Jewish thought and philosophy and for several specific claims, including that God has no physical form. Maimonides in turn placed a ban of excommunication on a fellow leader of the Egyptian Jewish community, Sar Shalom ben Moses, for tax-related offenses.

In modern times, herem has been instituted only rarely and generally for reasons of ideological deviance. In the 18th century, the Vilna Gaon endorsed a decree of excommunication against the nascent hasidic movement, declaring them heretics who engaged in a host of objectionable practices. In 1945, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, founder of the Reconstructionist movement, was formally excommunicated by a group of Orthodox rabbis who also publicly burned a prayer book he had authored, declaring that he "demonstrated total heresy and a complete disbelief in the God of Israel and in the principles of the law of the Torah of Israel." In 2006, the chief rabbi of Israel issued a call to excommunicate members of the Neturei Karta hasidic sect, several of whose members had attended a conference in Iran purporting to demonstrate that the Holocaust had not taken place.

In a highly unusual case, a South African rabbinical court excommunicated a businessman for failing to make child support payments, declaring that he could not become a member of a synagogue, be counted in a prayer quorum or be buried in a Jewish cemetery. The man appealed the case to a secular court, which ruled against him in 2014. Excommunication as a means to pressure husbands in divorce proceedings has generally not been done, though less formal public ostracism has been attempted.

The Talmud on Cancellation

In general, the rabbis of the Talmud were clearly comfortable with a diversity of opinion and went to great lengths to ensure that minority opinions are preserved in the text as worthy subjects of study. Indeed, the Talmud is often held up as the paradigmatic example of Judaism's embrace of multiple viewpoints and its refusal to write unpopular opinions out of the tradition. Nonetheless, the rabbis did uphold a form of social cancellation.

A well-known passage on the subject of ostracism from Tractate Moed Katan illustrates some key features of rabbinic thinking on the subject:

The Gemara relates that a certain butcher behaved disrespectfully toward Rav Tuvi bar Mattana. Abaye and Rava were appointed to the case and ostracized him. In the end the butcher went and appeased his disputant, Rav Tuvi. Abaye said: What should we do in this case? Shall he be released from his decree of ostracism? His decree of ostracism has not yet been in effect for the usual 30 days. On the other hand, shall he not be released from ostracism? But the sages wish to enter his shop and purchase meat, and they are presently unable to do so.(Moed Katan 16a)

It's worth noting that the talmudic rabbis condoned ostracism for something as seemingly minor as disrespect. It's also worth noting that the punishment was not imposed by the mob, but by two learned rabbis who sat in judgment and determined ostracism was an appropriate penalty. Finally, the text implies that ostracism is not a permanent state. It has a time limit, after which the offender can re-enter the community.

The Talmud does include one famous instance of permanent cancellation: Elisha ben Abuyah, a once-esteemed scholar who became an apostate and was almost completely excised from the Talmud, referred to only as aher, meaning "other." The details are limited, but it's clear from the talmudic account that Elisha, once a leading scholar and member of the Sanhedrin, abandoned Jewish observance and became a heretic, apparently after an encounter with God described in the famous allegory of the four who entered the pardes (orchard). So while the Talmud most certainly respected a diversity of opinion, it certainly did not countenance every opinion.

Conclusion

So does Judaism condone cancellation? Jewish tradition undeniably prizes a multiplicity of voices and disagreement for noble purposes, but it certainly does not endorse the idea that every idea is worthy of consideration. And some ideas (and their purveyors) are considered too dangerous or detrimental to be allowed to circulate freely. Jewish leaders, both ancient and modern, have availed themselves of various tools to ensure that certain boundaries were maintained on behaviors, religious and otherwise, and ideas. The challenge, then as now, is determining where those lines ought to be drawn.

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Judaism and Cancel Culture | My Jewish Learning

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Jewish tradition prizes a multiplicity of voices, but it also considers some ideas too dangerous to circulate freely. Barring someone from participating in communal life through social ostracism or, in some cases, excommunication - what we today often call cancellation - has a long history in Jewish life.

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From Washington To Jerusalem - with special guest Thomas Friedman

The judicial reform announced last week in Israel sparked a protest this week - as it continues to draw international attention. Yonit and Jonathan are joined by three-time Pulitzer winner, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, to discuss US reception to the law revolution, why he eulogized the Israel he once knew, and what peace prospects might come out of the new government.

And on a lighter note - a certain author wonders about the sales of a ghost-written royal memoir and we ask ourselves: what things - or people - seem Jewish, but aren't?

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From Washington To Jerusalem - with special guest Thomas Friedman

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The judicial reform announced last week in Israel sparked a protest this week - as it continues to draw international attention. Yonit and Jonathan are joined by three-time Pulitzer winner, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, to discuss US reception to the law revolution, why he eulogized the Israel he once knew, and what peace prospects might come out of the new government.

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Letting people speak for themselves is the best way to learn about their lives.

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Leichtag Foundation | San Diego Jewish Non-Profit Organization

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Black. White. Jewish. Christian. Male. Female. Curly hair. Straight hair. Every day, in every way, people make assumptions about others based on gender, affect, physical attributes, gestures, and accents. Shoshannah and Cedric Hart know a thing or two about this, as they have spent many years listening to what others think they know about them.

When the Arizona natives began dating more than 10 years ago-she was about to begin college at Arizona State University, he was finishing up there-they faced a barrage of questions from Cedric's parents, devout Christians, about Shoshannah's belief system.

"They asked me, 'How do you celebrate Christmas? Why don't you believe in Jesus?"' recalled Shoshannah, 28, who grew up in a strongly identified Reform Jewish home in Phoenix and attended a local Chabad synagogue, where she observed her Bat Mitzvah.

Jump ahead five years to their move to California, where Shoshannah, now a practicing attorney, went to law school, and Cedric, 32, found himself in the hot seat. The couple would be at a synagogue service or another Jewish gathering, and people would question whether Cedric was Jewish, since he is African American.

"It is kind of annoying," Cedric, an elementary school physical education teacher, said, speaking in the present because questions of his Jewish identity still persist. "But I try to brush it off."

Nevertheless, he conceded, the effect is alienating. "It kind of makes me feel pushed out."

What both Harts would like people to know is that Cedric is every bit as Jewish as Shoshannah. He underwent conversion more than two years ago, after several years of serious study. He did so not because his then -fiancee asked him to-in fact, like traditional rabbis, she discouraged him until she was certain he was doing it for himself-but because he wanted to be Jewish like the children they planned to raise together.

"There are many Jews of Color"

Now the parents of a five-month-old son, Ezra, and three-year residents of San Diego, Shoshannah and Cedric find that living in North County affords them multiple opportunities to express themselves as Jews. Members of Congregation B'nai Tikvah in Carlsbad, they also participate in family programs at Cardiff's Temple Solel, as well as many activities at The Hive and Coastal Roots Farm, including Great Outdoors Shabbat; Tu B'Av, a Jewish version of Valentine's Day; and the Sukkot Harvest Festival. They said that they appreciate Leichtag Commons' ability to attract San Diego Jews of all ages, colors, levels of observance, genders, and sexual orientations.

It is also why Shoshannah is drawn to Shalom Baby, a program run by San Diego's Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center, which enables new parents and babies to meet each other. Through the group, she has become friendly with an LGBTQ mom and another participant married to a black man from Israel-a reminder, she said, that "there are Jews of many colors."

Cedric added that he, too, is feeling the warm embrace of the San Diego Jewish community. For him, he said, it's all about "joining in and talking to each other and learning."

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Voices of Jerusalem | Leichtag Foundation

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Black. White. Jewish. Christian. Male. Female. Curly hair. Straight hair. Every day, in every way, people make assumptions about others based on gender, affect, physical attributes, gestures, and accents. Shoshannah and Cedric Hart know a thing or two about this, as they have spent many years listening to what others think they know about them.

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Falsely accused of murdering a girl, a Jewish man was killed by a white mob in Georgia in 1915.

In 1913, Leo Frank was convicted of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old employee of the Atlanta pencil factory that Frank managed. After Georgia's governor commuted his death sentence, a mob stormed the prison where Frank was being held and lynched him. Leo Frank thus became the only known Jew lynched in American history.

The case still spurs debate and controversy - it even inspired a Broadway play. What are the facts of the Frank case?

The Case Against Frank

"Little Mary Phagan," as she became known, left home on the morning of April 26 to pick up her wages at the pencil factory and view Atlanta's Confederate Day parade. She never returned home.

The next day, the factory night watchman found her bloody, sawdust-covered body in the factory basement. When the police asked Leo Frank, who had just completed a term as president of the Atlanta chapter of B'nai B'rith (a Jewish fraternal organization), to view her body, Frank became agitated. He confirmed personally paying Mary her wages but could not say where she went next. Frank, the last to admit seeing Mary alive, became the prime suspect.

Georgia's solicitor general, Hugh Dorsey, sought a grand jury indictment against Frank. Rumor circulated that Mary had been sexually assaulted. Factory employees offered apparently false testimony that Frank had made sexual advances toward them. The madam of a house of ill repute claimed that Frank had phoned her several times, seeking a room for himself and a young girl.

In this era, the cult of Southern chivalry made it a "hanging crime" for African-American males to have sexual contact with the "flower of white womanhood." The accusations against Frank, a Northern-born, college-educated Jew, proved equally inflammatory.

The Exonerating Evidence

For the grand jury, Hugh Dorsey painted Leo Frank as a sexual pervert who was both homosexual and who preyed on young girls. What he did not tell the grand jury was that a janitor at the factory, Jim Conley, had been arrested two days after Frank when he was seen washing blood off his shirt. Conley then admitted writing two notes that had been found by Mary Phagan's body. The police assumed that, as author of these notes, Conley was the murderer, but Conley claimed, after apparent coaching from Dorsey, that Leo Frank had confessed to murdering Mary in the lathe room and then paid Conley to pen the notes and help him move Mary's body to the basement.

Even after Frank's housekeeper placed him at home, having lunch at the time of the murder and despite gross inconsistencies in Conley's story, both the grand and trial jury chose to believe Conley. This was perhaps the first instance of a Southern black man's testimony being used to convict a white man. In August of 1913, the jury found Frank guilty in less than four hours. Crowds outside the courthouse shouted, "Hang the Jew."

Historian Leonard Dinnerstein reports that one juror had been overheard to say before his selection for the jury, "I am glad they indicted the God damn Jew. They ought to take him out and lynch him. And if I get on that jury, I'll hang that Jew for sure."

Facing intimidation and mob rule, the trial judge sentenced Frank to death. He barred Frank from the courtroom on the grounds that, had he been acquitted, Frank might have been lynched by the crowd outside.

Frank Is Saved, Briefly

Despite these breaches of due process, Georgia's higher courts rejected Frank's appeals and the U. S. Supreme Court voted, 7-2, against reopening the case, with Justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Charles Evans Hughes dissenting. Frank's survival depended on Georgia Governor Frank Slaton. After a 12-day review of the evidence and letters recommending commutation from the trial judge (who must have had second thoughts) and from a private investigator who had worked for Hugh Dorsey, Slaton commuted Frank's sentence to life imprisonment.

That night, state police kept a protesting crowd of 5,000 from the governor's mansion. Wary Jewish families fled Atlanta. Slaton held firm. "Two thousand years ago," he wrote a few days later, "another Governor washed his hands and turned over a Jew to a mob. For two thousand years that governor's name has been accursed. If today another Jew [Leo Frank] were lying in his grave because I had failed to do my duty, I would all through life find his blood on my hands and would consider myself an assassin through cowardice."

On August 17, 1915, a group of 25 men - described by peers as "sober, intelligent, of established good name and character"- stormed the prison hospital where Leo Frank was recovering from having his throat slashed by a fellow inmate. They kidnapped Frank, drove him more than 100 miles to Mary Phagan's hometown of Marietta, Georgia, and hanged him from a tree.

Frank conducted himself with dignity, calmly proclaiming his innocence.

Townsfolk were proudly photographed beneath Frank's swinging corpse, pictures still valued today by their descendants. When his term expired a year later, Slaton did not run for reelection and Dorsey easily won election to the governor's office.

In 1986, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles finally granted Leo Frank a posthumous pardon, not because they thought him innocent, but because his lynching deprived him of his right to further appeal. Mary Phagan's descendants and their supporters still insist on his guilt.
Reprinted with permission of the American Jewish Historical Society from "Chapters in American History."

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The Lynching of Leo Frank | My Jewish Learning

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Falsely accused of murdering a girl, a Jewish man was killed by a white mob in Georgia in 1915. In 1913, Leo Frank was convicted of murdering Mary Phagan, a 13-year-old employee of the Atlanta pencil factory that Frank managed. After Georgia's governor commuted his death sentence, a mob stormed the prison where Frank was being held and lynched him.

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onions under the mattress! yes, if you want to keep the ghosties away!

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Not so long ago I was having a discussion about traditional Jewish folk customs with my uncle, who is a lawyer. Like me, he's always been interested in this aspect of Jewish culture, and we chatted about things such as the supposed curative power of matzo ball soup, as well as other well-known Jewish clichés. But then our discussion shifted, and he told me about an estate he once managed. On the death of one of his former clients, my uncle was charged with the responsibility of clearing their house. While he was at the property the removers discovered that there were a bunch of old onions hidden under the mattress in the master bedroom. The removers were completely confused by this discovery and asked my uncle about it. He laughed and explained to the removers that it was an old Jewish custom to keep onions under your mattress to ward off evil spirits. Some readers may think that this estate closure likely happened a long time ago because these kinds of folk traditions are more typical of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Jewish people. However, the discovery of the onions occurred only a few years ago and is a testament to Jewish folklore's legacy today.

Jewish folk traditions, and the superstitions they carry with them, are ever-present in our culture, but most of the time we are not aware of them. There are lots of reasons for this lack of awareness, but I tend to think that a key driver behind this incognizance has to do with how Jewish identity has self-fashioned itself as deeply rationalistic in nature. Such a cultural perception is to our detriment, and there is a risk that as the older generations slowly pass away much of our customary folk beliefs will be lost with them. That is why Marek Tuszewicki's recent book A Frog Under the Tongue: Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europeis a welcomed addition to Jewish literature. More than anything it is a wonderful archive of the broad range of folkloric medical traditions practised amongst the Ashkenazim of Eastern Europe, especially during the opening decade of the twentieth century.

The book is divided into four thematic parts, each containing smaller case studies that are arranged as chapters. Part 1 titled 'Health and Sickness in the Culture of Ashkenazi Jews' covers the better-known areas of Jewish folk medicine, such as the Talmudic and Biblical traditions. The section also introduces important conceptual notions about wellness in Jewish society. Tuszewicki takes the reader through the steps a sick Ashkenazi Jewish person would have gone through as they sought help for their illness. This included not only familial consultation but also interactions with official and unofficial health professionals and agencies in Jewish society.

Part 2 titled 'A World of Similarities and Signs' explores the microcosm-macrocosm analogy. That is, the relationship between the human body and the cosmos, or, human-nature relations put more simply. This was an important aspect of Jewish folk medicine, and Tuszewicki introduces the reader to topics ranging from humourism, i.e., a kind of pathological system dating back to ancient times that sought to understand the body through types of fluid, e.g., blood and bile, to more familiar esoteric pursuits such as astrology. In both instances, it was about learning to interpret different sorts of 'codes' in order to treat sickness, whether these were anthropomorphic or cosmological.

After introducing readers to the interpretive frameworks of Jewish medical diagnostics, the analysis shifts to issues of morality and ethics. Part 3 is titled 'Redemption and Festivals.' Here, Tuszewicki defines important concepts in Jewish medical folk practice, including notions of sin, judgement, and evilness. For example, one way in which illness was understood morally, related to issues of consequence. Disobedience to the Creator and the commandments potentially resulted in ill health. At least that is how many rabbis rationalised sickness. But there were ways to reverse or stop illness through greater adherence to Jewish custom. Thus, Tuszewicki discusses at length examples of daily rites and rituals that were performed to maintain good health.

In the final section, Part 4 titled 'Unclean Forces,' the more magical and esoteric elements of Jewish medical folk practices come to the fore. The reader learns about Jewish conceptions of demons and evil forces, and the impact these entities can have on the body. There is also some interesting discussion on illness caused by spells and incantations. Not all magic, even when it is evil in nature, necessarily led to illness, and Tuszewicki also explores those instances where evil powers can benefit one's health. It is a fascinating section to the book that covers areas of scholarship that remain relatively understudied in the secondary literature.

Overall, Tuszewicki's A Frog Under the Tongue provides important new insights into Jewish folk traditions and medicine that have typically been absent from most studies of modern Jewish history. However, the value of his work goes well beyond Jewish studies. For historians of medicine, researchers of esotericism, and cultural anthropologists more broadly, there is much to be gained through a careful reading of Tuszewicki's book. As I have written previously for JewThink, what I believe is especially important about studies of Jewish folk culture is that they offer little vignettes into the traditional practices and beliefs of Jewish people that are so often forgotten or overlooked. These stories tend to be marginalised, in part because of the way Jewish identity tends to position itself as rationalistic. However, these aspects of Jewish culture are also important and reflect a core esoteric dimension of Jewish historical experience. A dimension that we should celebrate and not shun. It is time for the Jewish community to embrace its folkloric past and reading Tuszewicki's book is a good starting point.

A Frog Under the Tongue: Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe by Marek Tuszewicki Is published by Liverpool University Press, priced at £45.

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Efram Sera-Shriar reviews a new book about Jewish Folk Medicine in Eastern Europe. Not so long ago I was having a discussion about traditional Jewish folk customs with my uncle, who is a lawyer.

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Citron: The exquisite fruit that brings rabbis

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Every summer, in preparation for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, Hasidic rabbis from all over the world travel to the northern part of Italy's Calabria region to handpick the best citron fruits for their lulav, the bundle of four plants used to bless the small, temporary huts built every autumn by Jews to celebrate the holiday. For about two weeks, the orchards around the town of Santa Maria del Cedro fill up with English, Russian, Hebrew and Yiddish-speaking rabbis and their families. With the help of local farmers, they inspect the trees and analyse the fruits, sometimes with magnifying glasses, in their quest for citron perfection.

The most ancient and aromatic of all citrus fruits, citrons are far less known than their renowned yellow and orange cousins. They resemble large, green lemons, have more peel than pulp, and with a sour-bitter flavour, they are not considered desirable for home consumption. This means that, outside of Calabria, you won't typically find them at the supermarket.

But according to the Torah, the etrog (Hebrew for "citron") is the "fruit of the most beautiful tree", possibly even the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden. And although there are multiple citron varieties around the world, one Jewish community believes that the Calabrian one, known as Liscio Diamante, is the purest and most perfect of all.

The citron plant ( Citrus medica) arrived in this region around 2,000 years ago, following Jewish migrations. According to Helena Attlee, author of The Land Where Lemons Grow: The Story of Italy and Its Citrus Fruit, citron was the only citrus species to grow in Europe until oranges arrived 900 years later, brought across North Africa to Spain by the Moors. The Jews were expelled from Calabria (and all of southern Italy) in 1541, but their connection with Calabrian citron farmers lives on to this day and remains crucial to the fruit's survival.

"It is only thanks to Chabad Jews if this plant still grows here," Attlee wrote.

Chabad Jews are one of the largest Hasidic Jewish groups in the world, and their link to Calabrian citrons dates to the mid-1800s, when the group's founder, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, told his followers to prefer Calabrian citrons over all the others. In a story he once told, the founder explained that when God instructed Moses to go look for citrons to commemorate the 40 years in the desert that had just passed, he sent messengers around the world and they came back with Calabrian fruits. Since the 1960s, Rabbi Moshe Lazar, who is based in Milan, personally oversees the process of choosing them.

With more peel than pulp and with a sour-bitter flavour, citrons are far less known than other citrus fruits (Credit: Aldo Pavan/Getty Images)

"Summer has been a special time for as long as I can remember, as that's when the rabbis come to visit," said Angelo Adduci, who grew up in a family of citron farmers in Santa Maria del Cedro. "These visits are familiar memories not just for me, but for everyone in town, and Rabbi Lazar is like an uncle to me. It's a part of our childhood, and a happy one."

Today, Adduci is president of the Calabrian citron farmers' union ( Consorzio del Cedro di Calabria), which promotes the fruit and connects it to the region's many natural attractions. The contrast of mountains and sea is one of the area's most distinctive features.

When I drove to Calabria from northern Italy, I was struck by the fact that in some places, such as the town of San Nicola Arcella, the mountains on my left extended all the way to the sea on my right to form scenic cliffs, sea caves and arches. These imposing mountains, which are part of the Pollino National Park, are a popular destination for hikers and rafters and are home to rare animal and plant species. But squeezed between those mountains and the sea is a strip of farmland where the citron plants grow. This area is called the Riviera dei Cedri (Citron Riviera), and for good reason.

"[Here] the warm breeze from the sea meets the cold wind from the mountains, and these two winds balance out in the middle, creating the perfect climate for citrons," Adduci explained.

In general, citrons are mostly used to make candied fruits, confectionery, marmalades, sauces for meat and fish dishes, as well as cedrata, a popular Italian soft drink. In Santa Maria del Cedro, the hub of citron growing, visitors will find specialised citron ice cream shops, bars serving citron cocktails, a citron festival, stores selling citron oil, and even a citron museum, the Museo del Cedro, which recounts the fruit's history through sensory and olfactory activities. The fruit's sweet-yet-lemony scent also lends itself to citron perfumes.

When she first visited Calabria, Noemi Disegni, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, found all of this very surprising: "As a Jew, I've always associated citron solely with the Sukkot festival, but there's a whole universe around this mysterious fruit. It has its own cuisine and recipe books, and it comes as the sole ingredient in a range of food products, and even cosmetics. I had absolutely no idea," she said.

Despite the large-scale production of soft drinks and candied fruits, which end up on supermarket shelves around Italy, citron growing remains extremely niche and is mainly carried out on small family farms or gardens. "That's because the trees are very vulnerable, and they need lots of care and experience. A wind stronger than average, or a sudden temperature change can destroy the year's harvest," Adduci explained. "And even if the climate here is ideal for citron farming, these plants would not stand a chance without the knowledge of the farmers."

The Citron Experience

After a visit to the Museo del Cedro and a tour of the orchards, head to Opificio Calabria in Santa Maria del Cedro for chocolate-covered citron treats or panicelli (raisins and candied citron wrapped in citron leaves.

Stock up on citron liquor at Liquoreria Italiana in Praia a Mare, while at the Terre del Lao oil mill you'll find citron-scented olive oil, made by pressing olives and citron peel together.

For a citron-inspired meal in the countryside, check out agriturismo Bonicose in Orso Marso (you can stay the night here, too)

Taking care of citrons is a labour of love. The delicate trees need regular pruning and protection with nets when necessary. Farmers must always make sure the leaves get enough light and air, but also that the fruits are not exposed to direct sun, which might stain their skin, and that the tree doesn't damage its own fruits with its growing branches, leaves or thorns. Also, Adduci explained, "since the plants are small, farmers have to kneel on the ground in order to take care of them. This also adds a Catholic dimension to it all, because it's a bit like praying. As we say, it's a desperate fruit with an incomparable scent."

If citron growing seems like intensive work, the production of kosher citrons adds an extra layer of complexity. To be certified as kosher, or pure, the etrog needs to come from an ungrafted plant. Cultivating ungrafted plants means giving them lots of extra attention and time as they are more vulnerable to disease, but it also keeps the variety pure throughout generations because there's no genetic mixing with other plants, which scientists say may happen when plants are grafted.

Once a citron tree is declared kosher, the rabbinical inspection continues on each fruit, following precise rules. The perfect fruit should weigh about 80g, have perfectly smooth skin (no spots or bumps or parasites) and must be neither too round nor too long. The chosen etrogs are then placed in boxes and packed for shipping to Israel, Europe, Russia and the US.

Last October, on the first day of Sukkot, when I opened the white etrog box I'd bought in Berlin from a Chabad rabbi, the citron inside was still perfect. After three months, it hadn't lost any of its marvellous scent. By autumn, the Calabrian farmers are already preparing for the next season, but, Adduci said, "we feel incredibly proud to know that our fruits have reached the homes of hundreds of families around the world."

Today the Riviera dei Cedri continues to live up to its name, with many small businesses offering the fruit in creative ways. Visitors to the region can even go on citron tours called La Via del Cedro, which include visits to the orchards, nature walks, tastings and strolls around the ancient Jewish quarters.

"Although there are no Jewish communities left in Calabria today, Italy's Jewish world is proud of this cultural connection," said Disegni. These towns' Jewish past, just like citron, runs deep through the cultural identity of north-western Calabria.

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Citron: The exquisite fruit that brings rabbis

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Every summer, in preparation for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, Hasidic rabbis from all over the world travel to the northern part of Italy's Calabria region to handpick the best citron fruits for their lulav, the bundle of four plants used to bless the small, temporary huts built every autumn by Jews to celebrate the holiday.

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Israeli archaeologists excavate ancient cave

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Israeli archaeologists excavate ancient cave

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STORY: Location: Near the Dead Sea, West Bank Israeli archaeologists were allowed rare access to excavate this desert cliff cave The Muraba‘at Cave is only accessible via a steep trail through the rocky terrain Volunteers helped sift through buckets of dirt during the week-long excavation[Amir Ganor…

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Chanukah, celebrated on the 25 th of Kislev, commemorates the re-dedication of the Jerusalem temple by Judah Maccabee in 164 B.C.E. In the popular imagination this festival marks the Jewish victory over the Seleucid Empire (or "the Greeks"), the regaining of religious freedoms, and the rise of a new independent state in Judea-the Hasmonean kingdom.

However, the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees, our main historical sources for the Maccabean revolt and its aftermath, make it clear that the rededication of the temple did not end the conflicts between Seleucid forces and the Maccabean brothers, and was not the starting point of Hasmonean rule. Instead, the beginning of the Hasmonean era can be dated to 142 B.C.E.-twenty-two years after Chanukah-with the appointment by the Seleucid King Demetrius II[1] of Simon, Judah Maccabee's last surviving brother, as High Priest. This was not only a sociopolitical turning point but also a conceptual one-from that moment on, time was kept according to the Simon's rise.

Politics and Calendars

Changes in political structures have always had a deep impact on how contemporaries perceived and accounted for the passing of time. One can just think of the Muslim Hijri year count that starts with Muhamad's migration from Mecca to Medinah or the French revolutionary calendar.

Perhaps the earliest example is the consecutive Seleucid period which began its count from the time of Seleucus I's entry into Babylon in 312 B.C.E. This was part of the dynasty's effort to simultaneously distinguish itself from previous or competing kingdoms (e.g., Alexander's and the Ptolemies) and at the same time embed itself in local cultures, who had their own, deeply entrenched practices of time keeping.

Before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, Judah apparently used the regnal years of its kings. Afterwards, we find Judeans dating events by foreign kings or following the destruction of the Temple, or other systems, such as counting Jubilees. As subjects of the Seleucid kings, the Judeans made use of the Seleucid dating system, which symbolized Judea's integration into the Seleucid empire. Therefore, starting a dating system based on the tenure of a high priest carried with it heavy implications.[2]

142 B.C.E: Year 1 of Simon's Rule

1 Maccabees, the historical account of the rise of the Hasmoneans, probably written during the reign of Simon's son, John (Yoḥanan) Hyrcanus (r. 134-104 B.C.E.), includes a letter sent by Demetrius II to Simon:[3]

1 Macc 13:36 King Demetrius to Simon, high priest and friend of kings, and to the elders and the nation of the Judeans, greeting. 13:37 We received the golden crown and palm branch that you sent, and are ready to make great peace with you and to write to those over the properties to release to you the remission of tribute.[4]

In other words, the Judean polity no longer needed to pay tribute as vassals to the Seleucid king. The letter is followed by the author's statement that in the 170 th Seleucid year the Judeans started their own count:

1 Macc 13:41 In the one hundred and seventieth year the yoke of the nations was lifted from Israel, 13:42 and the people started to write in their documents and contracts "In the first year of Simon, great high priest, general, and leader of the Judeans."

While the people started to date their documents according to Simon's tenure as "great high priest, general, and leader of the Judeans," this does not replace the continuous Seleucid era, but runs as a local, parallel system to it. When the Simonide era appears in 1 Maccabees-the only place where we find a direct use of this kind of dating system-it is always coupled with the Seleucid era, which continued to be used. Even so, having Simon's name appear on documents for dating purposes indicates that Simon, rather than the Seleucid king, is now the supreme authoritative figure in the land.

The use of this new dating system is underscored by a decree dated to "the 3 rd year of Simon" by an assembly of Jewish authorities that confirms that Simon must "be obeyed by everyone, and that all the writings in the land would be written in his name, and that he would be clothed in purple and wear gold" (1 Macc 14:43). For the author of 1 Maccabees', then, Demetrius's recognition of Simon's authority as high priest, and his concessions to the Jews, marked a new era. Starting from 142 B.C.E, the yoke of foreign rule was lifted, and the Jews were given their autonomy.[5]

A Festival for the New Dating System?

One indication of how significant this event was is found in Megillat Taanit, "The Scroll of Fasting," a, early first millennium C.E. list of joyous days when fasting was forbidden.[6] This list notes:

בתלתא בתשרי אתנטלת אדכרתא מן שטרא.

On the 3rd of Tishri the mention was removed from the deeds.[7]

The scroll's commentaries (the scholion), one version of which is quoted in the Babylonian Talmud,[8] explains:

בבלי ראש השנה יח: שגזרו מלכות יוון הרשעה שמד על ישר' שלא להזכיר שם שמים על פיהם

b. Rosh Hashanah 18b When the wicked Greek government declared destruction upon Israel, forbidding them to even mention the name of God.

This attempt to force the Judeans to ignore their God was solved with the success of the Hasmoneans who, according to this gloss, pushed in the polar opposite direction, requiring God to be mentioned as part of the dating of documents:

וכשגברה מלכות בית חשמונאי ונצחום התקינו שיהו מזכירין שם שמים ואפילו בשטרות וכך היו כותבין בשנת כך וכך ליוחנן כהן גדול שהוא כהן לאל עליון

When the Hasmonean kingdom rose up and defeated them, they established a decree that the name of God was to be mentioned, even on official documents. Thus they would write: "In the year such-and-such of Yoḥanan Hyrcanus the high priest, and he was priest to the Most High God."

And yet, the scholion (as quoted in the Talmud) notes, this solution was itself a problem, since it led to disrespecting the divine name:

וכששמעו חכמ' בדבר אמרו למחר פורע זה את חובו ונמצא שטר מוטל באישפה וביטלו ואותו היום עשאוהו יום טוב.

When the sages heard this, they said: "tomorrow, someone will pay back their debt and this document [with God's name on it] will be thrown in the trash. So they cancelled [this policy]. That day was made into a celebration.

This interpretation contains a suspicious double solution. First the Hasmoneans cancel the decree of the wicked Greeks not to mention God's name, only to have their own decree canceled by the sages, who removed the reference to the "Most High God" from the documents.

Thus, many scholars suggest that the description of the holiday as celebrating the removal of the reference to God from Jewish documents is a later reworking of the original celebration, which marked the removal of the name of foreign authorities from local documents.[9] It thus seems that the Third of Tishrei once celebrated the beginning of the Hasmonean period, alongside other celebrations of Maccabean triumphs such as Chanukah and Yom Nicanor.[10]

Eponymous Dating

The idea of using a dating system based on the "regnal years" of a given ruler-Simon in this case-or even based on the tenure of a local but subservient power, was not new. Dating documents and calculating time based on rulers/officials-called eponymous dating-was common in the ancient Mediterranean and Near East, including in the Bible. For example:

מלכים ב יח:ט וַיְהִי בַּשָּׁנָה הָרְבִיעִית לַמֶּלֶךְ חִזְקִיָּהוּ הִיא הַשָּׁנָה הַשְּׁבִיעִית לְהוֹשֵׁעַ בֶּן אֵלָה מֶלֶךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל...

2 Kgs 18:9 In the sixth year of Hezekiah, which was the ninth year of king Hoshea of Israel...

ירמיה נב:כט בִּשְׁנַת שְׁמוֹנֶה עֶשְׂרֵה לִנְבוּכַדְרֶאצַּר...

Jer 52:29 In the eighteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar...

The Jewish community in Elephantine, Egypt also used this type of dating. For example, in a document of manumission (freeing a slave), the date, corresponding to June 12, 427 B.C.E., is given as (TAD B 3.6):

ב20 סיון הו יום 7 לפמנחתף שנת 38 ארתחשסש מלכא...

On the 2oth of Sivan, that is day 7 of Phamenoth,[11] year 38 of Artaxerxes the King...[12]

Periods of time were thus embedded in the figures that represented them-"the time of Solomon" in 1 Kings is a good example of a time embedded in a leading figure-and followed each other in succession.[13] Most often kings or local officials were the basis of the dating system, but sometimes priests served this function, as was the case for the Hasmoneans.

The High Priest's Tenure in Numbers

The dated coins of Alexander Janneus suggest that the Hasmonean dating system was not continuous like the Seleucid system, which, as noted above, counted years consecutively from 312 B.C.E., but began again with the accession of each new high priest.[14]

This system may have been inspired by the biblical description of the high priest's tenure.[15] In the Torah, the term הכהן הגדול "the High Priest" appears only in the laws of unintentional manslaughter,[16] in the context of determining how long the killer must remain in the city of refuge:

במדבר לה:כה ...וְיָשַׁב בָּהּ עַד מוֹת הַכֹּהֵן הַגָּדֹל אֲשֶׁר מָשַׁח אֹתוֹ בְּשֶׁמֶן הַקֹּדֶשׁ... לה:כח כִּי בְעִיר מִקְלָטוֹ יֵשֵׁב עַד מוֹת הַכֹּהֵן הַגָּדֹל וְאַחֲרֵי מוֹת הַכֹּהֵן הַגָּדֹל יָשׁוּב הָרֹצֵחַ אֶל אֶרֶץ אֲחֻזָּתוֹ.

Num 35:25 ...and there he shall remain until the death of the high priest who was anointed with the sacred oil.... 35:28 For he must remain inside his city of refuge until the death of the high priest; after the death of the high priest, the slayer may return to his land holding.[17]

This description suggests that the high priesthood has been institutionalized, and that it is continuous and successional, with one high priest "ruling" after the other, like kings.[18] If so, then in a world without (Davidic) kings, the names of the high priests could function as the eponyms. Indeed, for this law, the tenure of high priests serves as apt cyclical time markers, as each high priest is quite literally associated with the crimes committed during his term and his death inaugurates a new era.

In other words, Simon's institution of dating based on the reign of the high priest is not simply an invention or a way of hijacking kingship, but perhaps takes Numbers 35 as precedent, extending the concept of "the time of a given high priest" to all contracts.

Phinehas: A Precedent For Mattathias

Indeed, what was important for the early Hasmonean rulers was not to establish themselves as kings-this does happen later-but to legitimize their claim to the role of high priest. This is clear from the story of Simon's father, the Hasmonean patriarch, Mattathias.

According to 1 Maccabees 2, the Maccabean revolt begins when Mattathias sees a fellow Judean participate in a pagan sacrifice after Mattathias himself refused to do so. In his zealous anger, Mattathias slaughters the man:

1 Macc 2:26 And he became zealous for the law as Phinehas had done against Zambri (=Zimri) son of Salom (=Salu).

The reference here is to the story in Numbers, in which a Simeonite named Zimri has sex with a Midianite woman outside the Tabernacle, and Phinehas, son of Elazar son of Aaron, witnesses the act and kills him (Num 25:7-8).

Thus, Mattathias follows in his priestly predecessor Phinehas' footsteps. This modeling of Mattathias after Phinehas is especially important given that Phinehas is awarded the priesthood by YHWH as a result of his action:

במדבר כה:יג וְהָיְתָה לּוֹ וּלְזַרְעוֹ אַחֲרָיו בְּרִית כְּהֻנַּת עוֹלָם תַּחַת אֲשֶׁר קִנֵּא לֵאלֹהָיו וַיְכַפֵּר עַל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל.

Num 25:13 "It shall be for him and his descendants after him a pact of priesthood for all time, because he took impassioned action for his God, thus making expiation for the Israelites."

Later, on his deathbed, when giving his final testament, Mattathias calls Phinehas "our father" and reminds his sons of their forefather's zeal for which he was rewarded:

1 Macc 2:54 Phinehas, our father, by becoming zealous with zeal, received a treaty of priesthood for all time.

The claim is clear: Aaron is the first to inherit the priesthood, but his grandson Phinehas inherits the exclusive mantel of priesthood because of his zeal. Similarly, before the Maccabean revolt, the Hasmoneans were one of several priestly families, and the high priest was from a different branch. Now that Mattathias reenacted the pious zealotry of Phinehas, the Hasmonean line has a natural claim to the high priesthood. Simon, as the only living son of Mattathias at the end of the war, is the natural person to continue the line of this new high priestly family.[19]

These appeals to past priestly figures do not mean the Hasmoneans necessarily used "biblical models" of behavior. The presentation in 1 Maccabees was a literary and discursive means in which the court author of the book sought to legitimize his patrons. Priestly descent was necessary, but insufficient to defend Hasmonean hegemony. Therefore, it had to be combined with other priestly leadership roles in the Torah, such as Phinehas's reward for his zealotry. Simon's decision to reckon time based on the rule of the high priest, possibly employing the precedent found in Numbers 35, further solidified the Hasmonean claim to be the legitimate high priestly family.[20]

Old Models for New Times

Whether any form of time reckoning system based on high priests was ever employed in pre-Hasmonean Judea is hard to determine. Nevertheless, it seems to be a local literary (and perhaps utopian) response to imperial practices, replacing the imperial ruler with the Jerusalem high priest, reflecting that office's essential cosmic role.

Demetrius' decree appointing Simon as high priest (1 Macc 14:27-45)-which the Judeans write down upon bronze tablets, and then place upon Mount Zion in Simon's honor-speaks of the high priesthood's everlasting character, calling it "great," i.e., superior to other priestly offices, and gives it authority vis-à-vis the assembly. After quoting the decree, 1 Maccabees continues:

1 Macc 14:46 And the entire people approved that Simon be appointed to act according to these words. 14:47 And Simon took it upon himself and approved of serving as high priest and of being a general and ethnarch of the Judeans and the priests and to be in charge over all of them.[21]

Like Numbers 35, Simon's appointment in 1 Maccabees 14 assumes an institutional high priesthood. Simon's authority, then, like that of the high priest in the laws of asylum, exceeds the cultic sphere with the assembly's consent. Establishing Simon and his line as (permanent) high priests served as a middle ground for the Judeans' establishing their political relations with the Seleucid imperial rulers as well as restoring proper social order to Judea by marking time based on the tenure of Hasmonean high priests.[22]

The author of 1 Maccabees sought to construct the Hasmonean period as being simultaneously a new beginning with Simon and a return to older traditions. It is imperial and local at the same time. Contemporaries could interpret (and perhaps celebrate) the inauguration of a new era, with the dating of deeds to the "regnal" year of a high priest, as both an innovation and the resurrection of local tradition, thus cementing the role of the Hasmonean dynasty, headed by Simon, and followed by his son Yoḥanan Hyrcanus, as a leading force in Jewish history.

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The Hasmonean Calendar Begins with the Rule of Simon the High Priest, 142 B.C.E. - TheTorah.com

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Chanukah, celebrated on the 25 th of Kislev, commemorates the re-dedication of the Jerusalem temple by Judah Maccabee in 164 B.C.E. In the popular imagination this festival marks the Jewish victory over the Seleucid Empire (or "the Greeks"), the regaining of religious freedoms, and the rise of a new independent state in Judea-the Hasmonean kingdom.

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Dec 22 Hanukkah comedy show livestreamed!

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this ASOR website is full of fascinating stories describing research into the ancient past, including the Near East (today's Middle East)

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American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR)

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American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR); we support the study of the history, archaeology, and cultural heritage of wider Mediterranean

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the (complicated) true story of Hanukkah

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the (complicated) true story of Hanukkah

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The part we don't tell the children....but that we dare not forget

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The Maccabean Victory Explained: Between 1 and 2 Maccabees - TheTorah.com

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1 and 2 Maccabees have different understandings of why the Maccabean revolt succeeded. 1 Maccabees emphasizes the zealous killing of sinners as the element that wins God’s favor, while 2 Maccabees emphasizes the tragic death of righteous Jewish martyrs as bringing about God’s mercy and compassion. |…

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"This Too Is Torah and I Need To Learn It" Lots of streaming possibilities for YOU Dec 11-16

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"This Too Is Torah and I Need To Learn It" Lots of streaming possibilities for YOU Dec 11-16

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Streaming Jewish Programs

December 11-16, 2022

All times are Eastern Standard

Sunday, December 11

1 pm  Peter Kupfer and Jack Fried, "Stories that Survive, Jewish Culture and Holocaust Remembrance Group," https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEsdu-hpjotHdd7pmHwmjTgTz0V01TonRHN

2pm  Tamar Zeffren, "Genealogical Resources at the Jewish Historical Society," Jewish Genealogical Society of NY & American Jewish Historical Society, Upcoming Events at the Center for Jewish History (cjh.org)

2pm  Sonia Kramer, YIVO Yiddish Club, YIVO Institute, yivo.org/YiddishClub15

Monday, December 12

12pm  Walter Francis, "Building Memory: Jewish Communal Reconstruction in Postwar Tunisia, 1945-1967," RSVP

1pm  Chana Shacham-Rosby, "Elijah the Prophet’s Varied Eschatological Roles in Jewish and Christian Discourse," Oxford Interfaith Forum, https://www.oxfordinterfaithforum.org/programs/thematic-international-interfaith-reading-g...

7pm  Lisa Leff, Andrea Low, Elizabeth Anthony, "German and Austrian Jews after Deportation to the East," US Holocaust Memorial Museum,

“We are far, very far from our former home”: German and Austrian Jews after Deportation to “the East” (ushmm.org)

Tuesday, December 13

12pm  Peter Beinart, Jill Jacobs, Lila Corwin Berman, "Antisemitism in the United States," Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies at UMass Amherst, Register in advance here.

1pm  Hindy Najman, "Rethinking Nature in Ancient Judaism: Entanglement as a Mode of Vitality," University of Oxford, https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/478135364747

1pm   Lieve Teugels, "Early Jewish Parables from the New Testament and Rabbinic Literature," Parkes Institute,

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/early-jewish-parables-from-the-new-testament-and-rabbinic-literature

7pm Anita Norich, "Fear and Other Stories,," Yiddish Book Center, Register

Wednesday, December 14

9pm  Jeffery Giesener, "Into the Light: Managing Intergenerational Trauma, Jewish Culture and Holocaust Remembrance Group," Meeting Registration - Zoom

6:30pm  Zachary Baker, Michelle Margolis, Maurice Samuels, Lyudmila Sholokhova, Magda Teter, Building Jewish Libraries into the Future: The Dorot Jewish Division at 125, Center for Jewish History, https://www.showclix.com/event/Dorot125/tag/nypleventsenewsletter?utm_source=eNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NYPLEvents_20221204&utm_campaign=NYPLEventsNewsletter

Thursday, December 15

12pm  Neta Ziv, Yaffa Tegene, Jonathan Goodman, "Walk in Their Shoes: A Journey to Promote Equity and Access to Higher Education for Israelis of Ethiopian Descent," American Friends of Tel Aviv University, Click here to RSVP for this event

1pm,  Jessica Auchter & Marta Havryshko and Mira Sucharov, "Online Plenary: Memory in the Time of War," Online Plenary (associationforjewishstudies.org)

4:30pm, Andrew Rehfeld, Shuly Schwartz, Deborah Waxman, Shirley Idelson, "Zionism in Seminary Education," HUC Connect, Webinar Registration - Zoom

Friday, December 16

4am  "The Holocaust in Belarus: Historical perspectives and methodological innovations," University of Caen, Caen Memorial Museum and University of Southampton Parkes Institute, https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_JpJvMRpdSemQOJAGW2yxug

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defy the darkness with Jewish learning in community

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Learning through the darkest nights, 5783 edition

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Learning through the darkest nights, 5783 edition

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Join Rabbi Ariel Sundays through Fridays, December 11 through December 23 2022, every day (except Motza'ey Shabbat Saturday night) at 4pm for an hour's learning. During Hanukkah we will conclude each evening with the lighting of the Hanukkah menorah. All are welcome!
Topics:
1. antisemitism
2. Jewish history on one foot
3. what is Talmud?
4. jewish mysticism
5. death and dying in Judaism
6. the state of Israel
7. Kashrut
8. the Holocaust
9. Jewish prayer
10. One hundred blessings a day
11. the Jewish take on social justice
12. the Jewish take on environmental justice

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Shir Tikvah erev Shabbat Candle lighting: Light in the Darkest Nights 5783 / 2022-23

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Shir Tikvah erev Shabbat Candle lighting: Light in the Darkest Nights 5783 / 2022-23

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All winter, every Erev Shabbat as long as the days are short and the nights are long, grab your candle sticks and join us for a group candle lighting by zoom at 4pm here: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89008627824?pwd=UGdyV3NlbG5CdWhJWWZXRDAvbk1Bdz09
(The time will update when the days start getting longer.)

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Hanukkah is coming! Learn here

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Hanukkah, or the Festival of Rededication, celebrates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after its defilement by the Syrian Greeks in 164 BCE. Although it is a late addition to the Jewish liturgical calendar, the eight-day festival of Hanukkah has become a beloved and joyous holiday. It is also known as the Festival of Lights and usually takes place in December, at the time of year when the days are shortest in the northern hemisphere.
When is Hanukkah 2018? Click here to find out!
Beginning in 167 BCE, the Jews of Judea rose up in revolt against the oppression of King Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Seleucid Empire. The military leader of the first phase of the revolt was Judah the Maccabee, the eldest son of the priest Mattityahu (Mattathias). In the autumn of 164, Judah and his followers were able to capture the Temple in Jerusalem, which had been turned into a pagan shrine. They cleansed it and rededicated it to Israel's God. This event was observed in an eight-day celebration, which was patterned on Sukkot, the autumn festival of huts. Much later rabbinic tradition ascribes the length of the festival to a miraculous small amount of oil that burned for eight days.

Much of the activity of Hanukkah takes place at home. Central to the holiday is the lighting of the or menorah, an eight-branched candelabrum to which one candle is added on each night of the holiday until it is ablaze with light on the eighth night. In commemoration of the legendary cruse of oil, it is traditional to eat foods fried in oil. The most familiar Hanukkah foods are the European (Ashkenazi) potato pancakes, or latkes, and the Israeli favorite, jelly donuts, or sufganiyot. The tradition developed in Europe to give small amounts of money as well as nuts and raisins to children at this time. Under the influence of Christmas, which takes place around the same time of year, Hanukkah has evolved into the central gift-giving holiday in the Jewish calendar in the Western world.

Since Hanukkah is not biblically ordained, the liturgy for the holiday is not well developed. It is actually a quite minor festival. However, it has become one of the most beloved of Jewish holidays. In an act of defiance against those in the past and in the present who would root out Jewish practice, the observance of Hanukkah has assumed a visible community aspect. Jews will often gather for communal celebrations and public candle lighting. At such celebrations, Hanukkah songs are sung and traditional games such as dreidel are played.

Like Passover, Hanukkah is a holiday that celebrates the liberation from oppression. It also provides a strong argument in favor of freedom of worship and religion. In spite of the human action that is commemorated, never far from the surface is the theology that the liberation was possible only thanks to the miraculous support of the Divine.

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Hanukkah, or the Festival of Rededication, celebrates the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after its defilement by the Syrian Greeks in 164 BCE. It is also known as the Festival of Lights and takes place in December, at the time of year when the da

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Herbal Rabbinic Tea: Hormones and Contraception as Plant Magic in Jewish Sacred Text

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Herbal Rabbinic Tea: Hormones and Contraception as Plant Magic in Jewish Sacred Text

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"Turn it over and over for everything is in it." This Talmudic encouragement is true then as now.
H erbal R abbinic T ea is a five-week, Svara-style class going through the Talmud and study of modern Jewish herbalism to spill the HRTea and uncover how the Rabbis wielded the magic of the natural world to change their bodies, and what that means for us as queer & trans Jews, Jewish women, and Jewish radicals today. The chief-witch-bitch and maestra of this class is the illustrious Ayelet HaShachar Adelman! Shel Maala is proud to once-again welcome a teacher as brilliant as she is beautiful. If you love herbs, Jewish tradition and/or earth-based bodily autonomy, this class is truly can't-miss

You can find a full description, and all the other information you need, at the sign up page. Just click on the image above.

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What if, hidden within the labyrinth of Jewish sacred text, there were hints of herbal magic, endocrine autonomy and ancient recipes for birth control?

Together with superstar teacher Ayelet HaShachar Adelman, let's spill the Herbal Rabbinic T ea and uncover how the Rabbis wielded the magic of the natural world to change bodies, and what that means for us as queer & trans Jews, Jewish women, and Jewish radicals today.

T﻿exts include passages from the Talmud, modern Jewish herbalism, and more.

~﻿~~

Five S﻿undays

J﻿anuary 8 -> February 5

4-6pm ET/1-3pm PT

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T﻿his is a text study class, where most text will be learned in the Svara method of Talmud. Previous knowledge of this method is not necessary, as we will provide pre-class introductory materials for this method for those who need it.

K﻿nowing your alef-bet (Jewish alphabet) is a pre-requisite. If you would like to learn your alef-bet for this class, we can help you do so.

~﻿~~

Learning will be a mix of full group and xevruta/pair study. You will be matched with a xevruta after registration.

Two of our classes will require an hour of xevruta prep beforehand. These classes are:

- Jan 15 (the second class)

- Jan 22 (the third class)

This hour of prep can happen during the week between classes, or during a guided hour right before class. The guided hour will be from 3-4ET/12-1PT on Jan 15 and Jan 22. It will include a 10 minute break before class starts. You and your xevruta will decide which option works best for yall.

More info and instruction will be sent after registration.

~﻿~~

T﻿his class is $90 ($18/class), NOTAFLOF. Full sliding scale will be shown at checkout.

~~~

Accessibility notes:

- Live captioning

- 5-10 minute break

- Recordings available

- Slides & materials sent out before class

~﻿~~

I﻿f you have any questions please email: shelmaalayeshiva@gmail.com

N﻿OTE: For this class, there is an option to audit. This would meant that you would not get paired with a xevruta, but could come to classes/watch recordings. This is optimal for people who cannot make several of the class times, but still want access to the learning/materials.

T﻿o sign up to audit, please fill out the form and send payment here according to the instructions provided here: https://forms.gle/xKg9yNuy4niAuQpY8

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herbal rabbinic tea: hormones & contraception as plant magic in jewish text

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herbal rabbinic tea: hormones & contraception as plant magic in jewish text tickets

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Herbal Rabbinic Tea: Hormones & Contraception as Plant Magic in Jewish Text

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What if, hidden within the labyrinth of Jewish sacred text, there were hints of herbal magic, endocrine autonomy and ancient recipes for birth control? Together with superstar teacher Ayelet HaShachar Adelman, let's spill the Herbal Rabbinic T ea and uncover how the Rabbis wielded the magic of the natural world to change bodies, and what that means for us as queer & trans Jews, Jewish women, and Jewish radicals today.

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Free Webinar: 8 Ways to boost your resilience during the holidays

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Free Webinar: 8 Ways to boost your resilience during the holidays

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TischPDX alum Amanda Davidowitz offers you support and centering during the most intense season of the year

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Free Webinar: 8 Ways to Boost Your Resilience this Holiday Season

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Thursday, December 15 at 5pm PT / 8pm ET Registration Required: Register Now! In this light and fun FREE webinar, I will highlight eight different ways to cultivate resilience during the winter holiday season. These Positive Psychology strategies are inspired by the story of Hanukkah and the enduring resilience of the Jewish people.

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[UPDATE} WARNING: THIS ORGANIZATION DOES NOT CONSIDER A WOMAN SCRIBE'S MEZUZAH TO BE KOSHER. 

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[UPDATE} WARNING: THIS ORGANIZATION DOES NOT CONSIDER A WOMAN SCRIBE'S MEZUZAH TO BE KOSHER. 

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it's a free mezuzah but not kosher for those of us who do not believe that HaShem discriminates on the basis of gender. Kosher, after all, means "fit" to use/eat.

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Request Your MyZuzah Today

Sign up to see if you can get yours.

MyZuzah believes in connecting and protecting all Jews by putting a mezuzah on the front door of every Jewish home. A touchpoint that unites all Jews, the mezuzah’s mystical power has connected and protected the Jewish people since the exodus.

MyZuzah's goal is to put a mezuzah on the front door of every Jewish home in the world.

Fair Trade Standards

We implement Fair Trade Standards in the sourcing and production of each mezuzah. A kosher mezuzah takes time, energy and resources to create. Each mezuzah scroll must be hand-written by an expert scribe under specific conditions. MyZuzah puts people first by only working with partner organizations that pay scribes fairly and decently for such important work. Our Standards ensure that every step and worker in the process of creating your mezuzah is ethical and kosher, beautifying this unique touchpoint that unites us.

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Request Your MyZuzah Today Sign up to see if you can get yours. MyZuzah believes in connecting and protecting all Jews by putting a mezuzah on the front door of every Jewish home. A touchpoint that unites all Jews, the mezuzah's mystical power has connected and protected the Jewish people since the exodus.

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View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Jewish Museum (@thejewishmuseum)

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Brings the young girl to life in short videos based upon her famous diary.

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Transportation | Episode 1 | Anne Frank - After the arrest | English version | Anne Frank House

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Being Jewish: what do you have to know? do? believe? reject? 

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Being Jewish: what do you have to know? do? believe? reject? 

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I didn't grow up with a bubbe who baked kugel and muttered Yiddish under her breath.

I am an incessant worrier by nature, but I didn't pick it up from a loving Jewish mother.

I didn't even meet a Jew until I was 19, and I didn't know what it meant to Jewish until much, much later.

But today I am a Jew - one who had to build an entire Jewish identity from scratch.

Raised a relaxed Lutheran, my first real glimpse into Judaism was when I met my partner, David, when I was 29. David is a Jewish dad of two who grew up on the north side of Chicago. He was the first of many Jews I would come to meet who were not religious, per se, but firmly grounded in their Jewish cultural identity and dedicated to raising their kids Jewishly. Hebrew school, Jewish camps, bar/ bat mitzvahs, boxes - with David I got my first taste of the Jewish holiday cycle and an intimate look into what it's like to run a Jewish home.

When people ask, and they ask often, if I converted David, my answer is a resounding no, but it's because David opened his life and his heart to me that I was able to experience Judaism first hand. The deeper our connection got, the more I knew his cultural home matched my lifelong desire to find a spiritual home. I found a rabbi and began the conversion process. The rest is history.

For two years, in between meetings with the rabbi, I started wading slowly into the Jewish waters, so to speak. I googled the hell out of Shabbat until I felt confident enough to start doing a makeshift dinner at home. I hung a mezuzah outside my front door. My friends started giving me their discarded books on Judaism, which slowly built into my own little Jewish library. I started attending the High Holiday services, sometimes with David and sometimes alone. I fasted on Yom Kippur and kept kosher for Passover. I taught myself the so I could read along in services and downloaded a Hebrew keyboard so I could impress my friends with an occasional "Shabbat Shalom." I jumped at the opportunity to share my conversion story with every Jewish person I met and to learn as much as I could from them. For two years I lived as Jewishly as possible. And then there I was: sitting in front of the beit din to officially become a Jew.

As intimidating as it was to work with the spiritual leaders and go through the conversion process, building a Jewish life outside that process is even harder. There isn't this big physical change that happens after you've immersed in the . I was still the same. I left that morning equipped with a certificate and a mikveh Hebrew name, but no real direction on what to do once I walked out the door.

Since converting, I've built and strengthened my identity upon things that make me feel Jewish. I feel Jewish wearing a hamsa around my neck every day and a Star of David on special occasions. I feel Jewish when I'm in a deli, stuffing my face with corned beef, potato pancakes, and pickles. I feel Jewish drinking wine with my Jewish mom friends while plotting our kids' way through the 7th grade, knowing that they see me as another Jewish mom like them. I feel Jewish when I watch shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend , and Curb your Enthusiasm, and I get them - like, really get them! I feel Jewish when I cook Jewish food, like brisket or kugel, especially when the born-Jews I'm feeding actually like it and want seconds. I feel Jewish when Jewish news stories show up in my news app and they feel personal. I feel Jewish doing things that many of my born-Jewish friends haven't done, like make tzitzit and study Talmud. Most importantly, I feel Jewish when I see another Jew and feel connected to them, deeply, in a way I have never felt with another group of people.

Without the history and cultural identity that comes with being a born Jew, my Jewish identity is built up of everyday actions, moments of understanding and recognition, and a growing sense of solidarity. I seek out ways to make me feel Jewish as a way to strengthen my identity, knowing that soon enough, I will not need anything to feel Jewish. Because truth be told, whether I'm doing something Jewish or not, I immersed in the mikveh and I am a Jew, through and through.
Header image via Nadia Bormotova/Stock/Getty Images Plus

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How to Build a Jewish Identity From Scratch

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I didn't go to Jewish summer camp or have a bat mitzvah. I didn't grow up with a bubbe who baked kugel and muttered Yiddish under her breath. I am an incessant worrier by nature, but I didn't pick it up from a loving Jewish mother.

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learn before you speak

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This video took 6 years to make.

It's about a cause that's very deep to me and probably to you. 

It's the story of "My Israel and Palestine" and it's a complicated one.... 

Thank you to the Nas Daily team for putting hundreds of hours into this video. It was not easy to make.

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This video took 6 years to make.

It's about a cause that's very deep to me and probably to you. 

It's the story of "My Israel and Palestine" and it's a complicated one.... 

Thank you to the Nas Daily team for putting hundreds of hours into this video. It was not easy to make. https://t.co/DWXJOVyNLt

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This video took 6 years to make.

It's about a cause that's very deep to me and probably to you.

It's the story of "My Israel and Palestine" and it's a complicated one....

Thank you to the Nas Daily team for putting hundreds of hours into this video. It was not easy to make. pic.twitter.com/DWXJOVyNLt
— Nuseir Yassin (@nasdaily) October 4, 2022

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This video took 6 years to make.

It's about a cause that's very deep to me and probably to you. 

It's the story of "My Israel and Palestine" and it's a complicated one.... 

Thank you to the Nas Daily team for putting hundreds of hours into this video. It was not easy to make. https://t.co/DWXJOVyNLt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
This video took 6 years to make.

It's about a cause that's very deep to me and probably to you. 

It's the story of "My Israel and Palestine" and it's a complicated one.... 

Thank you to the Nas Daily team for putting hundreds of hours into this video. It was not easy to make. https://t.co/DWXJOVyNLt

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
This video took 6 years to make.

It's about a cause that's very deep to me and probably to you. 

It's the story of "My Israel and Palestine" and it's a complicated one.... 

Thank you to the Nas Daily team for putting hundreds of hours into this video. It was not easy to make.

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from Rabbi Ariel: virtual tour of shuls in Eastern Europe

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from Rabbi Ariel: virtual tour of shuls in Eastern Europe

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look for seating arrangements, the Ark, the type of decor, Jewish symbols...

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BUCHAREST ( JTA) - Stepping inside Romania's Fabric Synagogue in real life would be a dangerous proposition: Closed since 1986, the ornate 1899 structure in the heart of the city of Timisoara is crumbling inside.

Online is a different story. There, visitors to the Fabric Synagogue can look up at the domed cupola, its stained glass still intact even as holes dot the ceiling, and approach the ark, its closed doors leaving the illusion that a Torah might be contained inside. They can climb to the balcony and look out over the Hebrew letters still affixed to walls, then turn their gaze to the massive graffiti tag that occupies one whole wall of the second floor. They can even check out the synagogue's dust-laden organ before walking into the Timisoara sunshine and strolling to the municipal parks along the Bega River just a block away.

The virtual tour is one of eight launched recently to give Jews - and non-Jews - the chance to immerse themselves in a world that is no more: that of the non-Orthodox Jewish communities that developed under the Habsburg Empire in the western part of today's Romania.

Launched by Romanian NGO Pantograf in collaboration with Jewish local communities and activists, the website Povestile Sinagogilor, or Stories of the Synagogues, invites visitors to a virtual tour of eight historic sites in Romania, including Timisoara's main synagogue, which has been recently renovated.

The website includes interviews with current Jewish leaders of each community, as well as the English and Romanian transcriptions of oral testimonies collected throughout the decades. In them, Jews who were born in the area recount the prewar era of interethnic coexistence, the years of fascist persecution, and the mass emigration, mostly to Israel, during and after communism.

"It is a unique opportunity for the descendants of these communities to finally visualize what their grandparents left behind," said Ivan Bloch, a mathematician and IT entrepreneur who is also the president of the Jewish community of Lugoj, in western Romania.

Advances in virtual tourism have opened new frontiers for people interested in sites of Jewish significance. An initiative is underway to recreate online the destroyed Jewish cemeteries of Libya, and this summer, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem opened an exhibit that allows visitors to explore the Great Synagogue of Aleppo through virtual reality. Both of those efforts aim to capture the experience of being Jewish in a place where no Jews now live.

Romania, in contrast, does have a small Jewish population, but it is mostly centered in Bucharest, the capital and largest city.

The virtual tours focus on a different part of Romania, more than 300 miles to the west, called the Banat region. Previously under Ottoman rule, the region was incorporated in 1716 into the Habsburg empire, to which it belonged until its dissolution in 1918, when its territory was split among Romania, Serbia and Hungary. The Jews living in the portion that became Romania were mostly Hungarian-speaking and thrived until antisemitism became Romanian government policy starting in 1934.

Starting then, successive Romanian governments enacted increasingly aggressive legislation depriving Jews of their rights, and between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews living under Romanian rule were murdered during World War II, mostly in the Romanian-controlled territories in today's Ukraine. (Some 150,000 Jews living in Hungarian-occupied Northern Transylvania were also killed.) Most of those who survived left the country afterwards.

In Lugoj, the third-largest city in Romania's Banat region, Bloch said, the Jewish community once numbered more than 1,500 but is now well below 100. The synagogue there is in good repair, according to the website, but few Jews are present to see it.

"The project virtually rebuilds a connection that was severed in 1950, when half of the community emigrated to Israel together with its rabbi," Bloch said.

Besides opening a window to history for Jews abroad, the new website aims to educate local audiences.

"It is also directed to the residents of these cities who pass by the synagogues daily and don't know anything about their role and that of their Jewish communities in the broader Romanian society," project coordinator Raluca-Elena Doroftei told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Most of the synagogues featured in the website were part of Neolog Judaism, the reformist and liberal religious current that emerged in the 19th century in Hungary and extended across the Austro-Hungarian empire. Music played a central part in the religious services they held.

"Being of the Neolog rite they could sing and had a cantor, a choir and an organ," said Bloch, who points out that some of the organs of these synagogues "are still functional."

In 1948, the nascent Romanian communist regime forced Jewish communities to unify in a single structure.

"The communists told Jewish leaders: We want you to have one single community that we can control, it is your problem how you organize it internally," said Felicia Waldman, a scholar whose studies have included postwar Jewish life in her native Romania. As a result, she said, the Neolog community disappeared "as a separate structure and was forced to integrate in the majority Orthodox community." The same happened with the Sephardic community, which became a section of that same Ashkenazi official Jewish congregation.

"Today, we continue to pray and practice religion in an Orthodox format, in accordance with the rabbinate and the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania," said Bloch, the Jewish leader in the town of Lugoj, about the current situation.

In some cases, community leaders are hoping that the Stories of the Synagogues project could generate support to refurbish their historic buildings. The Fabric Synagogue, for example, was given to the local theater company with the assurance that the company would pay to repair it; when the company could not raise the funds, the building returned to the Jewish community's control. Now, the new website says, the community is again "looking for solutions" to pay for a renovation.

"A perfect architectural work, a synagogue built to last hundreds of years," the website says, "is in danger of becoming a ruin."

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Romania's ornate and sometimes crumbling synagogues get new access via virtual tours - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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BUCHAREST ( JTA) - Stepping inside Romania's Fabric Synagogue in real life would be a dangerous proposition: Closed since 1986, the ornate 1899 structure in the heart of the city of Timisoara is crumbling inside. Online is a different story.

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Five days after Yom Kippur the great fall harvest festival of Sukkot begins. It's a time to make a flimsy wooden structure, decorate it and live in it as much as possible.

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Beginning five days after Yom Kippur, Sukkot is named after the booths or huts (Sukkot in Hebrew) in which Jews are supposed to dwell during this week-long celebration. The festival of Sukkot is one of the three great pilgrimage festivals (chaggim or rega

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Torah is "our Life and the Length of our Days"

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Torah is "our Life and the Length of our Days"

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Torah Study continues even during the High Holy days, because it is our lifeline. We will celebrate reading the end, and immediately begin again with the beginning, on the holy day of Simkhat Torah. It's the favorite holiday of all Torah Study regulars!

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The Origins of Torah Study - TheTorah.com

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40 days from now we will be in the Presence of Eternity in all our ways. It takes time to get used to the idea. Start now.

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Elul is the last month of the Jewish year and the final month prior to Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new ...

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What does an angel look like, according to Jewish tradition? Ezekiel 1.4-20

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What does an angel look like, according to Jewish tradition? Ezekiel 1.4-20

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(4) I looked, and lo, a stormy wind came sweeping out of the north—a huge cloud and flashing fire, surrounded by a radiance; and in the center of it, in the center of the fire, a gleam as of amber. (5) In the center of it were also the figures of four creatures. And this was their appearance:
They had the figures of human beings. (6) However, each had four faces, and each of them had four wings; (7) the legs of each were [fused into] a single rigid leg, and the feet of each were like a single calf’s hoof; and their sparkle was like the luster of burnished bronze. (8) They had human hands below their wings. The four of them had their faces and their wings on their four sides. (9) Each one’s wings touched those of the other. They did not turn when they moved; each could move in the direction of any of its faces. (10) Each of them had a human face [at the front]; each of the four had the face of a lion on the right; each of the four had the face of an ox on the left; and each of the four had the face of an eagle [at the back].(11) Such were their faces. As for their wings, they were separated: above, each had two touching those of the others, while the other two covered its body. (12) And each could move in the direction of any of its faces; they went wherever the spirit impelled them to go, without turning when they moved. (13) Such then was the appearance of the creatures. With them was something that looked like burning coals of fire. This fire, suggestive of torches, kept moving about among the creatures; the fire had a radiance, and lightning issued from the fire. (14) Dashing to and fro [among] the creatures was something that looked like flares.-d (15) As I gazed on the creatures, I saw one wheel on the ground next to each of the four-faced creatures. (16) As for the appearance and structure of the wheels, they gleamed like beryl. All four had the same form; the appearance and structure of each was as of two wheels cutting through each other. (17) And when they moved, each could move in the direction of any of its four quarters; they did not veer when they moved. (18) Their rims were tall and frightening, for the rims of all four were covered all over with eyes. (19) And when the creatures moved forward, the wheels moved at their sides; and when the creatures were borne above the earth, the wheels were borne too. (20) Wherever the spirit impelled them to go, they went—wherever the spirit impelled them—and the wheels were borne alongside them; for the spirit of the creatures was in the wheels.

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Preparing for the High Holy Days at Shir Tikvah: Read This Book

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Preparing for the High Holy Days at Shir Tikvah: Read This Book

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Every year Rabbi Ariel recommends a book for us to read together during the month of Elul. This year the book is by Rabbi Alan Lew: This Is Real And You Are Completely Unprepared. The link provided is to indie bookstore Broadway Books of Portland OR - please support local bookstores! Also available at your local library.

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This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation (Paperback)

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There are times in life when we are caught utterly unprepared: a death in the family, the end of a relationship, a health crisis. These are the times when the solid ground we thought we stood on disappears beneath our feet, leaving us reeling and heartbroken, as we stumble back to our faith.

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Spiritual preparation for the High Holy Days begins with the first day of Elul. This year the month of Elul begins on Shabbat August 27 and Sunday August 28 (yes, some months have two first days🤷🏽‍♀️)

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This Jewish month marks the period of soul-searching leading up to the High Holidays.

Although the month of Elul - the sixth month of the Jewish year, which immediately precedes Rosh Hashanah - has no special importance in the Bible or in early rabbinic writings, various customs arose sometime during the first millennium that designated Elul as the time to prepare for the High Holy Days. Because these days are filled with so much meaning and potency, they require a special measure of readiness. We are called upon to enter them thoughtfully and to consider what they mean. As the Maharal of Prague said, "All the month of Elul, before eating and sleeping, a person should look into his soul and search his deeds, that he may make confession."
When is Rosh Hashanah 2018? Find out here. Or wondering when is Yom Kippur 2018? Click here to find out!
Jewish tradition points to the name of the month as symbolically appropriate - the letters of Elul form an acronym for the words in the verse Ani le‑dodi ve‑dodi li-"I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine" ( Song of Songs 6:3). Believing that the "beloved" refers to God, the sages take this verse to describe the particularly loving and close relationship between God and Israel. Elul, then, is our time to establish this closeness so that we can approach the Yamim Noraim, or Days of Awe, in trusting acceptance of God's judgment. We approach the trial not out of fear, but out of love.
Excerpted with permission from Entering the High Holy Days, published by the Jewish Publication Society.

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This Jewish month marks the period of soul-searching leading up to the High Holidays. Although the month of Elul - the sixth month of the Jewish year, which immediately precedes Rosh Hashanah - has no special importance in the Bible or in early rabbinic writings, various customs arose sometime during the first millennium that designated Elul as the time to prepare for the High Holy Days.

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A Hebrew calendar to keep you oriented on the date and various holidays major and minor.   (This is Kate.  I cannot put my name as poster)

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(There's an app for that:
https://www.hebcal.com
Download Jewish holidays and Hebrew dates for iPhone, iPad, Android (via Google Calendar), Outlook, macOS Desktop Calendar, or to any app that supports iCalendar (.ics) feeds.

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Jewish Calendar, Hebrew Date Converter, Holidays - hebcal.com

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Hebcal makes calendars of Jewish holidays. Convert Hebrew and Gregorian dates, get Shabbat candle-lighting times, Torah readings for Diaspora + Israel, Yahrzeit dates and more.

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“Judaism has at its heart a great secret,” he writes. “It endlessly lavishes praise on the written Torah, exalting its role as a divinely given guidebook and probing lovingly the tiniest details of its wording and even spelling…Yet upon inspection Judaism turns out to be quite the opposite of fundamentalism. The written text alone is not all-powerful; in fact, it rarely stands on its own. Its true significance usually lies not in the plain sense of its words but in what the Oral Torah has made of those words.”

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When I was a teenager, there was a legend repeated in the Jewish schools of my hometown. If you somehow manage to get into godless Harvard, don't go. But if, against your rosh yeshiva and rebbe's advice, you actually go, whatever you do, don't take biblical scholar James Kugel's class. If you do, you'll walk into Introduction to the Bible, see that the professor is wearing a yarmulke and assume the course is kosher. And, the story goes, you'll walk out a heretic.

These days, Kugel, a professor emeritus of classical and modern Hebrew literature at Harvard University, lives on a quiet street off one of the main thoroughfares in the religious Baka neighborhood in Jerusalem. The front door of his apartment building displays his English last name and his family's original Sephardic name, Kaduri. When we met late one Friday morning, the 68-year-old wore a rumpled blue shirt and light-colored khakis. In person, Kugel-who has called the Jewish food of his namesake "stomach-churning"-looks every bit the absent-minded professor, gray hair flopping down over a craggy forehead. On his left arm, I could make out the indentations of the leather tefillin straps that he had put on earlier for shacharit, the morning prayers. He welcomed me with a wan smile.

I had come with a specific purpose. After an unremarkable career at a private Modern Orthodox high school on Long Island, I spent a gap year at a very Orthodox yeshiva on an Israeli mountaintop and then attended another yeshiva not far from my parents' house. Things didn't turn out the way I thought they would. My yeshiva closed down and became a vacuum repair shop; I moved to a far more religious yeshiva that I left over philosophical differences. Eventually, my faith eroded. For me, the term "losing one's faith" is a misnomer. My faith slipped away-as if I were holding on to a precipice and lost my grip, finger by finger. I couldn't hold on, no matter how much I tried.

Kugel had an ancillary role in this drama. His mammoth 2007 book, How to Read the Bible, an encyclopedic study of the Bible from both a traditional and academic perspective, seemed a confirmation of what I had come to think but was afraid to say aloud: that the Torah was written by man and that all the laws and regulations that we, as Orthodox Jews, followed were simply constructions based around that. For someone who was raised to believe that the Written Torah and the Oral Torah that accompanied it were divine, the realization was devastating.

I was intrigued that Kugel could be both an Orthodox Jew and one of the most impressive biblical scholars of our time. Seemingly this means reconciling the irreconcilable: Orthodox Jews believe, as Maimonides articulated in his "Thirteen Principles of Faith," that the "Torah came from God." Modern biblical scholars, on the other hand, have spent the past century deconstructing it, putting forth various theories of the historical origins of the sacred text. According to one of the most widely accepted views, the Five Books of Moses were not written by the prophet himself, but are a compilation of four independent, parallel narratives assembled over several centuries. While non-Orthodox denominations have absorbed this scholarship into their theology, there remain Orthodox circles where this kind of analysis is considered heresy.

Kugel, however, seems underwhelmed when I ask him how he remains an Orthodox Jew. "The only way to square this circle is the traditional way," he explains while furrowing bushy eyebrows. Kugel speaks in a congenial, self-effacing manner and has a habit of cocking his head while you speak, as if you were saying something particularly important. "Our rabbis didn't say that understanding the Torah and interpreting the Torah was something that was up in the air. They established how to read the Bible in an Orthodox-I should say, Jewish-way, through the lens of rabbinic interpretation, and that in a sense is a whole new text."

Or, as he wrote in the closing pages of How to Read the Bible: "My own view... is that modern biblical scholarship and traditional Judaism are, and must always remain, completely irreconcilable. The whole attitude underlying such speculation is altogether alien to the spirit of Judaism and the role of scripture."

was born in New York in 1945, the son of a religious businessman on Wall Street, and grew up in the suburban enclave of Stamford, Connecticut. He attended public school-but studied Jewish subjects under a private tutor-and in 1963, went on to Yale as an undergraduate when the university's Jewish quota was about 10 percent of the student body. Becoming a Hebrew Bible scholar wasn't something Kugel had initially planned. His first love was literature, and his debut book, The Techniques of Strangeness in Symbolist Poetry, which was published when he was an undergraduate, delved into the symbolist poetry movement. "I don't really put it on my bibliography," Kugel says. "It was a good book."

After graduating, he struggled to figure out what to do with his life while receiving support from what he jokingly calls his "fathership." In 1972, he was working as poetry editor for Harper's magazine when he was selected to the prestigious Harvard Society of Fellows. For four years, the university funded his research into medieval Jewish poetry, without the constraints of a formal degree program.

From there, he went on to City University of New York, where he earned his doctorate in 1977 and, shortly after, published another book, The Idea of Biblical Poetry, which argued against the prevailing notion that biblical poetry was formulaic. Instead, Kugel put forth, its purposeful repetitiveness was meant to elicit an emotional response from readers. "A lot of people hated it," he recalls. "People are always distressed when you tell them what they think-the way they've been thinking about it-was wrong."

Kugel always began his courses by saying, "If you come from a religious tradition upholding the literal truth of the Bible, you could find this course disturbing."

After completing his graduate studies, Kugel taught at CUNY and Yale before returning to Harvard in 1982 to teach Hebrew literature. It was at Harvard that he began to make his mark on the world of biblical scholarship. Prior to Kugel's work, the discipline generally focused on the nuts and bolts of the Bible: how it was written, when it was conceived and what early historical periods it reflected. Kugel offered a different approach in two of his early books, In Potiphar's House: The Interpretive Life of Biblical Texts in Early Judaism and Christianity (1990) and The Bible As It Was (1997), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. (Kugel published two versions of this book, one for a popular audience and another, re-titled Traditions of the Bible, for an academic one.) In them he argues that much of what is considered the Bible today is based on interpretations developed between 200 BCE and 100 CE. These interpretations came primarily from the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha-or as Kugel calls them in Hebrew, sefarim achi kitzonim, the Outside Books-texts preserved by the Christian tradition and not considered part of the Jewish canon, such as the Book of Jubilees, the Book of Judith and the Book of Enoch.

"Even more importantly, Kugel demonstrates that those early interpreters are the real authors of the Bible as it came to function in Judaism and Christianity," says Benjamin Sommer, a Hebrew Bible professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary. By dint of his encyclopedic knowledge, Kugel was able to put pieces together from sources as diverse as obscure midrashim and the writings of early Church fathers. "There's a gap between the last pages of the Tanakh [Bible] and the first texts of our rabbis," Kugel explains. "So much of what we think about the Bible is really dependent not on the Bible but what these ancient interpreters said. I tried to highlight that they were as important to Jews as they were to Christians."

His emphasis on the importance of scripture to early Christians and Jews was well received by Jewish and Christian scholars alike. "It's hard to overstate what Kugel's work has brought about," says Gary Anderson, the Hesburgh professor of Catholic theology at Notre Dame. "His deeper point is not always appreciated but bears repeating: The very notion of sacred scripture arises in this environment of early interpretation." Anderson continues, "This is an argument that will wear well over time; it constitutes a lasting legacy to Kugel's oeuvre."

Kugel's ideas cast a long shadow over academia and the public-even reaching into my relatively sheltered Orthodox world. This was due, in part, to the fact that Kugel is one of the rare academics who is accessible to a popular audience. At Harvard, he was wildly popular among students and even ran a friendly competition with an economics professor to see who could bring the most students into the classroom. One semester, when Kugel's class had 975 students, compared to the economics class with 950, the student newspaper, The Harvard Crimson, ran the headline, "God Beats Mammon"-a reference to the New Testament's false god of material wealth. (A 2004 profile in Harvard Magazine described his teaching style as "Woody Allen in a state of grace.") Kugel always began his courses by saying, "If you come from a religious tradition upholding the literal truth of the Bible, you could find this course disturbing." This is why the heavily trafficked religious Jewish news site, VosIzNeias.com, dubbed him "perhaps the most famous living controversial Apikores [heretic] in the world."

Kugel and his wife Rachel, a Frenchsocial worker (they met at Hebrew University in 1972), long wanted to make aliyah. In 1991, he received a phone call from Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv offering him a full professorship. When Kugel told his dean at Harvard about the news, the dean, unfamiliar with how little Israeli academics are paid, offered to match the salary. "I said, 'Please don't do that,'" Kugel recalls, laughing. So for the next 12 years, he taught a semester at Bar-Ilan and a semester at Harvard before leaving Cambridge for good in 2003.

At Bar-Ilan, Kugel authored several books in rapid succession, including The God of Old (2003), The Ladder of Jacob (2006) and How to Read the Bible, which won the National Jewish Book Award. The last received public acclaim, with The New York Times calling it an "awesome, thrilling and deeply strange book." Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker used it as a key source for his 2011 bestseller The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. "I found Kugel's book invaluable," says Pinker. "It reported both traditional interpretations and the latest scholarship on provenance and historical fidelity of biblical narratives, and it was written with an appealing voice-respectful of the scholarship, but with frequent touches of irreverence and wit."

Scholarly consensus on How to Read the Bible has been less forgiving, especially on the chapters that focus on Kugel's approach to reconciling Orthodox Judaism and biblical scholarship. "James Kugel has written a stunning number of spectacular books and How to Read the Bible is not one of them," Sommer, the JTS professor, wrote in The Jewish Quarterly Review. Sommer equates Kugel's view on the irreconcilability of traditional Judaism and biblical scholarship to sticking one's head in the sand: "A Jew whose intellect believes that biblical criticism makes valid claims, but whose religious self pretends otherwise...is rendering God service that is fragmented and defective."

Despite his harsh review, Sommer stipulated that I could only quote him if I also included the aftermath of his article: Three days after the review was published, Kugel sent him a complimentary email. When Kugel responded in a post on his own website, he sent it to Sommer in advance to make sure he thought it was fair. Later, when Sommer spent the year in Israel, the two scholars met with their families several times and even went out for drinks. "He is truly a gentleman and scholar in spite of very serious critiques," says Sommer. "He's quite friendly to his critics, and especially to a younger scholar who has criticized him. He's the real thing. He's really a mensch."

If the Torah truly is the work of some anonymous collection of authors whose names we don't even know-shouldn't that have some effect on Judaism, on what Jews think and do?

Kugel is not the first religious Jew to grapple with the concept of "Torah from Sinai." Eleventh-century scholar Ibn Ezra, who posited that Joshua, not Moses, wrote the last 12 verses of Deuteronomy, is sometimes considered the first biblical critic. In the 13th century, Rabbi Yehuda ha-Hasid went further, claiming that entire passages of the Pentateuch were inserted later on by different writers. Nor is Kugel the only religious Jew in the field today, although most others are attempting to find ways of bridging Orthodox belief and academic scholarship.

One such recent effort is thetorah.com, led by an Orthodox Bible professor at Brandeis, Marc Brettler, and Zev Farber, a graduate of the rabbinic seminary Chovevei Torah in New York. Every week, the site publishes essays on the weekly Torah portion in an attempt to create "an observant and knowledgeable Jewish community empowered by an understanding of Torah integrated with scientific approaches and scholarly knowledge." Even Yeshiva University (YU), the flagship institute of Modern Orthodoxy, teaches biblical criticism -although not without contention. Several months ago, in an article in Kol Hamevaser, a student journal at YU, entitled "Shut Down the Bible Department," a student wrote: "I can think of no other class in YU that is as potentially damaging to one's faith as Intro to Bible." The professor, the student continued, "destroyed my core beliefs without replacing it with anything. He tore down my foundation and left me staring at the rubble."

Jon Levenson, a Jewish studies professor at Harvard and a former colleague of Kugel, sees a way to cross the theological chasm: Just because the Bible has a human history, it does not logically follow that it has only a human history or that it lacks a transcendent source, namely God, says Levenson, who describes himself as a "somewhat unorthodox Orthodox Jew." "What is needed is a more sophisticated model of divine revelation, one that can take account of the modern discoveries, for example, the complex pattern of composition in antiquity, without losing sight of the theological dimension."

Kugel calls this "Biblical Criticism Lite." Writing on his website, he explains: "Apologetics are a sign of an underlying anxiety....The anxiety in this case derives from the inescapable fact that, in the light of all that modern scholarship has discovered, the Bible necessarily looks very different from the way it looked only a century or so ago. Yet these commentators still want it to be the Bible in the old sense-divinely inspired (at least in some attenuated way), a guide to proper conduct and proper beliefs, a book of truth and not falsehood, as free of error and internal contradiction as possible, in short, despite everything they know, a book still worthy of being called the Word of God...Most of them are simply doing the best they can to have it both ways, to have their Bible and criticize it too."

Kugel's views on faith are evident inhis 1990 book Being a Jew, a modern-day adaptation of the Kuzari, the fictional dialogue between a Khazar prince and a Jew, written in 1140 by Yehuda Halevi. In Kugel's version, the Jewish scholar is a religious Syrian banker named Albert Abbadi and the Khazar prince is Judd Lewis, an assimilated American Jew about to marry a Presbyterian.

In the book, Kugel argues that Orthodox Judaism is a holistic experience and can only be understood from within the culture. "You want to understand everything before learning anything," Abbadi lectures Lewis in one memorable passage. "It is somewhat analogous to passing suddenly from a very dark place, a sealed-off closet to which one's eyes have become accustomed, into a brightly illuminated room. One is, of course, aware of the change in lighting, but to the room itself and what it contains one is temporarily blinded."

This parallels Kugel's thoughts about learning Torah: "It really is a way of entering a different understanding of the world, in which different things are important," he says, "and even upon leaving it and returning to the humdrum world, we for a while take some of it with us, and everyday life is changed for it."

In January, Kugel published a sequel to Being a Jew, entitled The Kingly Sanctuary: An Exploration of Some Underlying Principles of Judaism, for a Jewish Student who has Become Disillusioned, where he revisits the two characters of Being a Jew. In the second book, Lewis is disillusioned after spending several years in a yeshiva in Israel. In a surprising endnote to the book, Kugel states that while people have mistaken him for Abbadi, he based Abbadi on an old Egyptian Jew that he once knew. The character of Judd Lewis, Kugel explains, is himself at a younger age.

is a patient teacher, and as we talk he takes the time to offer two different responses to the dilemma I raise: how to reconcile being Orthodox and knowing too much about the history of the Bible. First is the one he points out in How to Read the Bible -that Orthodoxy, almost despite itself, isn't really about the Bible. "Judaism has at its heart a great secret," he writes. "It endlessly lavishes praise on the written Torah, exalting its role as a divinely given guidebook and probing lovingly the tiniest details of its wording and even spelling...Yet upon inspection Judaism turns out to be quite the opposite of fundamentalism. The written text alone is not all-powerful; in fact, it rarely stands on its own. Its true significance usually lies not in the plain sense of its words but in what the Oral Torah has made of those words."

In other words, the Bible is not, and has never been, the last word in Judaism. Kugel can study the Bible and propose as many authors as he wants, because ultimately, it doesn't matter. The rabbis have given their explanation of the text, and he abides by it; it's a bifurcation between the historical reality of the Bible and the rabbis' interpretation of it. "I consider the Torah as the first volume of a multivolume work about serving God," he says-in his case the Jewish God.

I don't find these answers particularly satisfactory-if the Torah isn't the Word of God, then why bother? Or as Lewis asks in one early passage of The Kingly Sanctuary "Doesn't the truth count for something?" Adding, "I mean, if the Torah truly is the work of some anonymous collection of authors whose names we don't even know-shouldn't that have some effect on Judaism, on what Jews think and do?"

To that, Kugel has another answer, something far deeper and more basic. He alludes to it in his 2008 book, In the Valley of the Shadow, his haunting meditation on his battle with aggressive cancer: His faith stems from something else, a way of seeing the world as being a small part of a larger world that includes God. "I wouldn't call it belief," he tells me more than once. "I would call it a way of fitting into the world."

I wished that there was something he could tell me that would restore my faith. Kugel picked up on that, and he appeared to be sorry for what he had unleashed. I'm not the only former yeshiva student who has sought him out. Kugel explains that he gets emails from yeshiva guys around the world asking him about faith. When I ask him what they are like, he says, "like you."

As brilliant as he is, Kugel has no answer for me. It takes a particular mindset to be able to believe in the words of the sages and, at the same time, know that they might be fiction. At first, Kugel's position reminded me of pragmatism, the school of philosophical thought created by William James, which holds that a person can believe in something even if it's not true, so long as that belief has real-world applications. But I found that Kugel's belief isn't like that; he's a genuine believer, with a faith no different from that of a shtetl Hasid-though since he's Sephardic, more like a shopkeeper in Aleppo, rushing home before the Sabbath begins.

As we shook hands and he escorted me down the path of his tree-lined garden, a quote from James's The Varieties of Religious Experience came to mind. It's from a section of the book in which he describes people who've had visions and sentiments of great religious commitments. James was mystified by the phenomenon. "The only sound plan," James wrote, "if we ourselves are outside the pale of such emotions, is to observe as well as we are able those who feel them, and to record faithfully what we observe."

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When I was a teenager, there was a legend repeated in the Jewish schools of my hometown. If you somehow manage to get into godless Harvard, don't go. But if, against your rosh yeshiva and rebbe's advice, you actually go, whatever you do, don't take biblical scholar James Kugel's class.

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Central to our commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem is the lament known as Eikha, the Book of Lamentations, attributed to Jeremiah. Here is a teaching about it and a new translation of it offered for your learning.

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Some recent writings by R' David Seidenberg:
"The Third Promise: Can Judaism's indigenous core help us rise above the damaging politics of our time?"
"Will We Pursue Justice in Sheikh Jarrah?"

Laments ~ zoom-ready PowerPoint, half-page per slide:

for more Tisha B'Av resources click here

You can fast, sit on the ground, etc., but you can't really observe Tish'a B'Av without feeling it. A good translation of Eikhah, "Lamentations" or "Laments", makes a huge difference. If you want to get what makes Tish'a B'Av real or relevant, try this translation. The current version can be downloaded in handout and booklet format. Copy it for your synagogue, havurah, minyan.

Tish'a B'Av תשעה באב is not primarily about mourning, but about becoming refugees, being thrown into a hostile world without shelter or protection. Part of this experience is mourning for what has been lost, but what we think of as mourning customs -- not wearing fresh clothes, not washing, eating or drinking, not being able to sit down -- more closely resembles the experience of a refugee than a mourner sitting shiva. Tish'a B'Av is not primarily about the end of sacrifices or the Temple - Chaza"l, the rabbis, figured out how to live without the Temple long ago. Rather, it's about homelessness, fleeing from war into famine, about things that are all too present in our world. It's also an opportunity to confront the ways in which we as individuals (and as a people) use our power to make others (people and species) into refugees. In an era when refugees are mistreated, when children are separated from families in order to punish parents for seeking asylum in the U.S., when countries across eastern Europe as well as Italy have come out to meet people fleeing war with armed opposition, like Edom rising up to repel the Israelites, we need to read Laments as the story of what is happening right now.

Reb David Seidenberg's articles on Tisha B'Av:

"To Prey or to Pray? The Lessons of Famine" - on cannibalism in Eikhah

The meaning of Tish'a B'Av after the state of Israel

"Breaking Open the Abyss" - on Tisha B'Av and environmental destruction

"Why I'm fasting for Tisha B'Av" - on refugees

"How Tisha B'Av can help us understand the refugee experience" - interview with Rabbi David by JTA

For all other Tish'a B'Av material on Neohasid (songs, prayers, texts), click here

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Eikhah Booklet:

The following file of neohasid's translation of Eikhah can be printed back-to-back and folded in half to make a 28-page booklet (seven sheets double-sided, folded in half).When you click to download, a window will open to make a donation if you choose to. Below is a handout pdf you can print at home that does not require folding and can be stapled in the corner

Download the PDF in booklet format

Please support neohasid with a donation!
Versions you can use on zoom: PPT or PDF half page per slide, PPT or PDF whole page per slide. Also available on ISSUU in book format that animates page-turning. The handout format will also work as a zoom pdf, two pages per sheet.

Laments-Eikhah
A Visceral Translation

The translation offered here is one of the best you'll find for liturgical use. Ten years in the making (and first conceived in 1993), Laments was finally completed in 2017, with chapter 3 fully retranslated, new artwork, and an expanded afterward. I always have at least one chapter read phrase by phrase in Hebrew and English when I lead a Tish'a B'Av reading, and it's a very powerful experience. For 2018 and 2019, minor tweaks to the translation were made. For 2020, several versions of a zoom-ready Power Point or PDF were created. Laments uses the Buber-Rosenzweig principles of concordant translation, which means it's closer to the Hebrew syntax and sense than the JPS. It strives to connect us on a gut-level to what Laments and Tisha B'Av are all about: a national cataclysm that turned the entire people into refugees, treated with hostility by neighboring countries and persecuted by ruling powers.

Image below links to booklet format (best for printing multiple copies):

Laments also includes an afterword on theology and theodicy in Eikhah and on ecological meanings of Tisha B'Av.

Versions of Laments for zoom:

PowerPoint or ODP or PDF, half page (3-6 verses) per slide.

PowerPoint or PDF, whole page per slide.

Above versions are black-on-tan, for people reading computer screens in a darkened room with candlelight. The following versions are black-on-white, whole page per slide:
PowerPoint or ODP or PDF
Versions for printing:

Handout format ~ staples in the upper left-hand corner (read each sheet right-to-left).

Booklet format ~ folds in the middle.

When you click to download a window will open to make a donation. You can download Laments whether or not you donate.

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Hi David...
thanks for this. much love. good luck in Mass. SL

Posted by: SaraLeya at July 22, 2007 3:45 PM

Playing a solea or siguiriya does it for me.

Posted by: Solea at July 22, 2007 11:54 PM

Thank you so much, David. Having a good translation is really important to connect to this very difficult holiday. Thanks too for the linear layout (What software did you use to create it?)
b'Ahavah, Chaim

Posted by: Norman Weingart at July 30, 2008 9:38 PM

David;
Super Great Job! I love the layout and translation.

Posted by: Felipe at July 31, 2008 11:58 AM

Thanks. I've just added a post to my site with your Fresh Translation.

Posted by: Victorino at July 26, 2009 11:56 AM

Thanks to Kay Magilavy for inserting page numbers into the 2008 edition!

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Some recent writings by R' David Seidenberg: "The Third Promise: Can Judaism's indigenous core help us rise above the damaging politics of our time?" "Will We Pursue Justice in Sheikh Jarrah?" Laments ~ zoom-ready PowerPoint, half-page per slide: for more Tisha B'Av resources click here You can fast, sit on the ground, etc., but you can't really observe Tish'a B'Av without feeling it.

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One of the best parts of being Jewish is that you're part of a multigenerational conversation with many brilliant souls all fascinated by Torah.

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TheTorah.com - Torah and Academic Biblical Scholarship

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Scholarship on the Torah portion, Jewish holidays, and questions of faith: Torah from Sinai, Torah from Heaven, Biblical criticism and Documentary Hypothesis.

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All Jews Are Israelites, but not all Israelites are Jews

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All Jews Are Israelites, but not all Israelites are Jews

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What happened to the Ten Tribes?
How does a people without a J in its language become known as Jews?
Who are the Samaritans?

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American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR)

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The Relationship Between "Jews" and "Israelites" After the Babylonian Exile

By Jason Staples

In his review of Karl Georg Kuhn's Achtzehngebet und Vaterunser und der Reim, the Dutch Biblical scholar M.A. Beek fondly recalls studying Rabbinic texts with Kuhn before World War II as "an idyllic time in the summer semester of 1934 when Dr. Kuhn was still a private dozent at the University of Tübingen. At that time, he wore a [Nazi] Sturmabteilung uniform with an "Honorary Dagger with Dedication" clinking at his side because he was among the first thousand people in the SA."

In addition to lecturing on Rabbinic Judaism while wearing a Nazi paramilitary uniform, Kuhn (1906-1976) was, together with his mentor Gerhard Kittel, one of fifteen appointees to the "Institute for the Study of the Jewish Problem" established in 1936. He contributed several scholarly articles on the so-called "Jewish Problem" in the service of the institute, putting forth anti-Semitic scholarship with remarkable subtlety and scholarly sophistication.

But Kuhn is also the author of the entry in Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament on the terms Israel, Ioudaios (Jew/Judaean), and Hebrew in early Jewish literature, an entry that established the paradigm for how these terms and their relationships to each other have been understood for nearly a century-a paradigm now so dominant as to be regularly assumed without argument or citation across a broad range of scholarly literature.

Like most modern scholars, Kuhn presumed that the terms "Israelite," "Jew," and "Hebrew" were essentially synonymous or coextensive in early Jewish literature, with all three terms referring to the same group of people. Nevertheless, these terms are not evenly distributed across early Jewish literature like one would expect if they were completely synonymous. As a result, Kuhn proposed that Israel/Israelite is the preferred "insider" terminology, while "Jew" is a term typically used by outsiders and sometimes carries a nuance of disrespect or contempt, and was used by Israelites themselves as an accommodation when communicating in an outsider or diaspora context. As for "Hebrew," Kuhn explains that this term serves as another "more dignified" alternative to the "deprecatory element that clings so easily to [Jew]."

Lest anyone cast a dubious eye upon Kuhn's scholarship on Judaism due to his enthusiastic support of German National Socialism, Beek (1909-1987) reassured us that "The dagger and uniform never hampered Dr. Kuhn's lectures on Rabbinic texts. I could never doubt his scientific purity on this point." Beek's predecessor at the University of Amsterdam had been dismissed in 1940 and died in Auschwitz in 1944.

Similarly, modern proponents of Kuhn's insider/outsider paradigm are either unaware of his background or have dismissed the idea that his ideology had any impact upon his conclusions. But a closer look reveals serious problems with his proposed model for these terms, most notably that the supposed "depreciatory element" of the term Ioudaios is unattested in the period about which Kuhn writes.

Such a contemptuous nuance was, however, frequently associated with the word Jude in Kuhn's own context, while Israelite conveyed a more respectful connotation in prewar Germany. Far from an inductive proposal based on the nuances found in the ancient texts themselves, Kuhn's paradigm therefore superimposes the perspective and terminological nuances of Nazi Germany onto antiquity. Remarkably, despite widespread recognition of numerous shortcomings in mapping onto the data, Kuhn's paradigm has remained the default explanation for the ancient use of these terms well into the twenty-first century.

My book, The Idea of Israel in Second Temple Judaism: A New Theory of People, Exile, and Israelite Identity , proposes a new paradigm based on a thorough examination of a wide range of evidence across the Second Temple period. The first step is recognizing that the reason these terms cluster in specific texts and context rather than being evenly distributed across the literature is that they are not in fact synonymous and do not represent exactly the same people groups. Contrary to the widespread presumption that during the exilic period and thereafter, "Israel" was simply an alternative appellation for the Jews as a group, "Jews" are instead a subset of the larger group of "Israelites."

First-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus explicitly states as much in his explanation of a rather sudden shift in terminology in book eleven of his Jewish Antiquities. Whereas the subjects of his history had been primarily called "Hebrews" and "Israelites" the previous ten books of his history, from book eleven forward Josephus speaks instead of "Jews," using "Hebrews" only twice more and entirely dropping "Israel" after book eleven.

Josephus explains that he has switched his terms because although many Jews returned from the Babylonian Exile, "the whole people of Israel remained in that land [of exile], so it came about that only two tribes returned to Asia and Europe and are subject to the Romans. But the ten tribes are still beyond the Euphrates River and are a boundless multitude too great to number" (Antiq. 11.133). A few paragraphs, later he explains that "after they [the two tribes] returned from Babylon, they were called Jews after the tribe of Judah, since that was the prominent tribe" (Antiq. 11.173). That is, a "Jew" ( Ioudaios) is simply a "Judahite," someone from the southern kingdom of Judah, only one portion of the larger twelve-tribe entity of Israel.

This means that although Jews are Israelites, not all Israelites are Jews. The Samaritans, who claimed Israelite heritage from the northern tribes of Joseph but did not claim to be Jews, are perhaps the most obvious confirmation of this distinction, which is maintained with remarkable consistency across early Jewish literature. The implications of this distinction are especially significant to our understanding of early Jewish eschatology, as already suggested by Josephus' subtle reference to the magnitude of the ten tribes not under Roman rule.

Indeed, although modern scholarship widely presumes that the Persian period returns and rebuilding of the temple narrated in Ezra-Nehemiah mark the end of the exile and the restoration of Israel, one searches in vain for a single early Jewish text that treats the events of Ezra-Nehemiah in this way. Instead, even Ezra-Nehemiah itself finishes on a sour note that suggests that the restoration is at best incomplete, and other early Jewish texts frequently downplay the events of the Persian period, looking forward to a glorious future restoration compared to which those events remain "times of oppression" (Dan 9:25).

One of the reasons for this is that although Ezra-Nehemiah narrates a return of Jews (that is, those from the southern tribes of Judah and Benjamin along with priests and Levites) from the Babylonian Exile, the rest of Israel remains strikingly absent, with the hostility between the inhabitants of Samaria and the Jewish returnees only emphasizing that the restoration and reconciliation of all twelve tribes of Israel promised in the Prophets had not yet come to pass.

This fact helps account for why early Jewish literature so frequently situates the reader in exile, looking forward to the future fulfillment of God's promises to the whole people of Israel. The very existence of a novella like Tobit, which tells of the divine preservation of a righteous Naphtalite family in ongoing exile, illustrates the importance of non-Jewish Israelites to these restoration hopes. For such groups as the sect behind the Dead Sea Scrolls, much of Judah may have returned, but until the rest of Israel has returned, the "age of wrath" (CD 1:5) has not yet come to an end.

The continued distinction between "Israelites" and "Jews" in the Second Temple period is therefore not merely a pedantic exercise but rather reveals a specific paradigm of Israelite peoplehood and eschatological discourse while also reflecting by a more diverse conception of "Israel" (and what might be called "Israelism") than is typically appreciated within this period.
Jason Staples is Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at North Carolina State University. Click here for a PDF of this article.

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The Relationship Between "Jews" and "Israelites" After the Babylonian Exile

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By Jason Staples In his review of Karl Georg Kuhn's Achtzehngebet und Vaterunser und der Reim, the Dutch Biblical scholar M.A. Beek fondly recalls studying Rabbinic texts with Kuhn before World War II as "an idyllic time in the summer semester of 1934 when Dr. Kuhn was still a private dozent at the University of Tübingen.

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there are so many good sources for learning some of the Seventy Faces of Torah, i.e. the 70 (or at least many!) possible meanings of a word, a verse, a story in the sacred texts. Here's one source - Enjoy!

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‘Now the eyes of my eyes are opened’ – learning from Balaam in Shemitah

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From the blog of David Seidenberg at The Times of Israel

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Ruth is seen by rabbinic tradition as the model for conversion when she says to Naomi "your people shall be my people, and your G*d my G*d." (Ruth 1.16-17)
Those who choose Judaism become Jewish all the way back to Abraham and Sarah, according to Maimonides, the great Sephardi teacher.
Those who choose Judaism after being out there in the big spiritual world bring to the Jewish people the glorious diversity that keeps us spiritually healthy.
There's plenty of negativity in the Jewish world toward those who convert, but our tradition teaches that HaShem treasures the convert who CHOSE to join the people through thoughtful consideration and full-hearted commitment. If only, HaShem says, more people born into the Covenant were like those who choose!

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Pride Month: 30 books by Queer Jewish Authors you should read

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Pride Month: 30 books by Queer Jewish Authors you should read

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...and not just this month. Thanks Hey Alma!

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Alma readers asked for it, so obviously we are here to deliver: 30 book by queer Jewish authors you should absolutely read. We've covered many of these books before, so be sure to click through to read interviews and reviews where relevant.

Happy Pride month!! But also, every month is Pride Month here at Alma, so make these queer writers part of your ongoing reading practice. And, you can shop this list on Bookshop, a platform supporting independent bookstores. Let's dive in:

1. "Surviving Autocracy" by Masha Gessen

Masha Gessen is a Russian American Jewish journalist who is an outspoken critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Born in the Soviet Union, they immigrated to the U.S. as a teen and then returned to Russia in 1991. Their latest book, based on a 2016 essay in the New York Review of Books, is about how the U.S. is close to becoming an autocratic state. Other works by Masha include " The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin," " The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia," and " Where the Jews Aren't: The Sad and Absurd Story of Birobidzhan, Russia's Jewish Autonomous Region." All their books are worth reading on understanding totalitarianism, modern Russia and so much more.

"When Gessen speaks about autocracy, you listen," writes Jennifer Szalai in the New York Times Book Review.
Get it here.
2. "These Violent Delights" by Micah Nemerever

Just read this description from the blurb and tell me you don't want to read this book: "'The Secret History' meets 'Lie with Me' in Micah Nemerever's compulsively readable debut novel-a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence.... As their friendship spirals into all-consuming intimacy, they each learn the lengths to which the other will go in order to stay together, their obsession ultimately hurtling them toward an act of irrevocable violence." I mean!! "These Violent Delights" is the story of Paul and Julian, two 17-year-old undergraduates in early 1970s Pittsburgh who plot the murder of a stranger.

"Tapping deep into the malaise of his 'queer, Jewish, isolated' teenage self, Nemerever creates a twisting tale tracing the ever-fluctuating psychological and behavioral dynamics between two budding sociopaths," writes the Seattle Times.

3. The Girl with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke

Ellie Baum is a 16-year-old on a school trip to Berlin; she is the first member of her family to return to the country since her grandfather escaped a death camp during the Holocaust. At the Berlin Wall Memorial, she's suddenly back in time in 1988 East Berlin - when the Wall is still standing. Ellie has to figure out who is using dark magic to try to change history - while working with a group that use balloons and magic to help people escape over the Wall. A remarkable YA historical fiction.

Locke is also the co-editor of the forthcoming " This Is Our Rainbow: 16 Stories of Her, Him, Them, and Us," the first LGBTQA+ anthology for middle-graders with Nicole Melleby, and " It's a Whole Spiel: Love, Latkes, and Other Jewish Stories," a collection of YA Jewish stories with Laura Silverman.
Get it here.
4. "Continuum" by Chella Man (Pocket Change Collective)

"All of who I am lies on a continuum. My identity cannot be encompassed by a single term," writes Chella Man, a Jewish Chinese actor, artist and activist. "My ethnicity. I am biracial. I am both Jewish and Chinese. My gender. I am genderqueer, existing outside of the binary of 'boy' and 'girl.' My disability. I am Deaf with access to some sound through two cochlear implants. My sexuality. I am pansexual, loving beyond 'straight' or 'gay.'" In this essay, part of the Pocket Change Collective ("a series of small books with big ideas from today's leading activists and artists"), Chella Man beautifully writes of his experiences within his Deaf, transgender, genderqueer, Jewish and Chinese identities.
Get it here.
5. "I Might Regret This: Essays, Drawings, Vulnerabilities, and Other Stuff" by Abbi Jacobson

Abbi Jacobson stole our hearts on " Broad City." The Jewish bisexual actress's debut essay collection (she had published two coloring books earlier) is the story of a three-week road trip she took across the country. It's a vulnerable and intimate look at Abbi, and the structure of the road trip is a perfect way to tell her story.

"I think the heightened version of me in Broad City - and this is something I love about my job - is that I get to play all of the anxiety, fear, and nervousness physically. Abbi's this blubbering idiot, and it's so rare that someone rants all of this anxiety and fear out loud, so sometimes when they yell 'cut!' I'm like, 'what just happened?' No one really expresses all of their uncertainties and anxieties out loud like that, and I get to work some of that out through my character. I'm way more internalized in real life," Abbi told PAPER Magazine soon after the publication. "I think that in terms of the writing in this book, a lot of the essays are not heightened in that way. A lot of them are more real, and I get to write my personal anxieties and fears and doubts in a totally different way where I get to explore that part of myself, much in the same way I get to do on the show, but in a very different format."
Get it here.
6. "The New Queer Conscience" by Adam Eli (Pocket Change Collective)

Activist, writer and Voices4 founder Adam Eli (you may know him from Instagram, @adameli) wrote a book on queerness and activism, and it is absolutely essential for all young people (and old people. And people who don't identify as "young" or "old"!). Eli draws on his background as an activist, and on his Jewish and queer identities, to write this important manifesto about how "queer people anywhere are responsible for queer people everywhere." The book is dedicated to his "grandmothers Freda Braunstein, Rita Werner, and all of the women, queer and not, Jewish and not, who make the world go round." Eli takes his readers by the hand on a journey through his adolescence growing up queer in an Orthodox Jewish community and his own understanding of what being queer means today.
Get it here.
7. "The Rabbi Who Prayed with Fire" by Rachel Sharona Lewis

"The Rabbi Who Prayed with Fire" is a queer rabbinic mystery novel that tells the tale of gay Providence rabbi Vivian, whose synagogue catches on fire. Its pages are rife with commentary on things from synagogues' bureaucratic structures, to police brutality, to the difficulties that come with dating as a queer female rabbi. "In a lot of cases, Vivian's specific experiences are really particular to young Jews, queer Jews, and young queer Jews in progressive circles. It makes me really happy that I can mirror people's experiences," Rachel told Alma about writing the character of Rabbi Vivian. A fun, Jewish whodunit that gets at serious social issues. What more could you want?!

8. "Milk Fed" by Melissa Broder

"Milk Fed" tells the story of Rachel, a 24-year-old struggling comedian living in Los Angeles who obsessively counts calories and has a toxic relationship with her mom. One day, her therapist challenges her to "detox" from communication with her mother - as in, not speak to or text her for 90 days. Soon, Rachel meets Miriam, an unapologetically fat Orthodox Jewish woman who works at a frozen yogurt shop. Miriam slowly gets Rachel to eat, and enjoy, what she's eating, while Rachel begins to fall for Miriam. There's also a dreamy subplot about Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the famous rabbi of Prague who made a golem.

As Kelsey Grashoff wrote in Alma, "While she makes some serious missteps with Miriam and doesn't quite understand or respect all the nuances of observant Jewish life or Miriam's boundaries, Rachel comes to appreciate and develop her own Judaism, taking the pieces that are most meaningful to her and allowing them to shape her view on the world." It's a moving, funny and beautiful story - of love, queerness, finding oneself, and recovering from disordered eating. And golems.

9. "A Year Without a Name" by Cyrus Grace Dunham

"I could try to tell a story that ends with resolution, but the only way to succeed would be to lie. If I lied, I would be whole at the end of the story. Wholeness would be possible," writes Cyrus Grace Dunham in the opening lines of this powerful memoir. Dunham, a writer and organizer, wrote a powerful memoir about gender identity and figuring oneself out in the shadow of a famous sister (as in, Lena Dunham). ( You can read an excerpt here.)

From the book jacket: "Dunham's fearless, searching debut brings us inside the chrysalis of a transition inflected as much by whiteness and proximity to wealth as by gender, asking us to bear witness to an uncertain and exhilarating process that troubles our most basic assumptions about identity. Written with disarming emotional intensity in a voice uniquely his, 'A Year Without a Name' is a potent, thrillingly unresolved meditation on queerness, family, and selfhood."
Get it here.
10. "Everybody (Else) Is Perfect: How I Survived Hypocrisy, Beauty, Clicks, and Likes" by Gabrielle Korn

"No one wants to think of themselves as privileged," Gabrielle Korn told Alma earlier this year. "When you are part of minority groups, in some way, it's hard to reconcile what you know about the way those groups of people are treated versus how you're treated. People don't read me as Jewish, they don't read me as gay. They read me as just some blonde girl. And that has allowed me access to a lot of spaces that I don't know if I would have gotten. I know that I felt really different from my co-workers, but in hindsight I looked a lot like them. It's this feeling of being the only one - but still being in the room."

When she was 28, Gabrielle was promoted to editor-in-chief of Nylon magazine, the same day the print edition of the magazine folded. Her memoir is the story of her journey in media, but also of her own journey to find herself as a person. Throughout the book, she opens up about her struggles with disordered eating and how the body positivity movement isn't always so positive. A memoir for our modern media age.

11. "Lot Six" by David Adjmi

Playwright David Adjmi's debut memoircharts his journey from the Syrian Jewish community in Midwood to debuting his delightfully sacrilegious work, "Stunning," at Lincoln Center in 2009. As Michael Zalta wrote in Alma, "To me, reading 'Stunning' was like being given a flashlight in a dark forest of self-doubt. David quickly became a role model, who had blazed the trail for queer Arab Jews like myself, the likes of whom cannot be found in 'Angels in America' or on 'Transparent.'"

Adjmi tells Alma: "The title of the book, Lot Six, refers as you know to SY [Syrian Jewish] slang for queer - but writing the book, I've come to see the term as shorthand for a kind of cultural queerness, or at least the part of me that's unassimilable and can't be conveniently slotted in a typical social matrix."

12. "The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred" by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

Dr. Prescod-Weinstein is a theoretical physicist whose work focuses on cosmology, neutron stars and dark matter (though she makes a compelling argument for why dark matter shouldn't be called "dark matter"). You may already be familiar with her, if you're one of the over 80K people who follow her on Twitter, where she grapples with racism, Judaism, science, politics and often where all those things intersect. In her book, Dr. Prescod-Weinstein brings her unique and necessary perspective to science as a Black Jewish scientist, writing for a more just world.

In publishing "The Disordered Cosmos," she explains, "I'm thinking about Chanda at age 17. What is the book that would have said to her: Your interest is okay and beautiful, and your dreams are okay and beautiful. The thing that Carl Sagan didn't do was tell me what a life in science for someone like me would be like, and how to handle that. I don't know if my book is a particularly good guide on how to handle that. But I hope that my book at least says you can do it."

13. " True Believer: The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee " by Abraham Riesman

Abraham Riesman writes, "Stan Lee's story is where objective truth goes to die." Lee, born Stanley Martin Lieber in 1922, was a master of creating legends about himself. He told so many stories - so many false stories - over and over again that he eventually believed them to be true. Riesman does a great job of unpacking these myths and half-truths, speaking to many people in Lee's orbit, and writing a comprehensive biography of the Marvel comics legend.

"I'm not trying to say Stan was more saint or more sinner, or have final judgment on him. There are a few morals of the book, I would hope, and one of them is: There are no superheroes. It sounds so simple but humans, especially Americans, have to be reminded over and over and over again that celebrities are not different. Celebrities are not another species. Celebrities have not been granted superpowers. Celebrities are people, they're people who happen to have become famous," Riesman tells Alma.

14. "The Cosmopolitans" by Sarah Schulman

Sarah Schulman is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, gay activist and AIDS historian. (What a strong first line of a Wikipedia article!) She's also Jewish, and a prolific writer: She's written 11 novels, seven works of nonfiction and two plays.

For this list, we're gonna talk about "The Cosmopolitans," her second-most recent novel. In a beautiful essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Hugh Ryan writes, "While no one book can contain the revelations of an entire career, 'The Cosmopolitans' is a novel that has deep roots in Schulman's nonfiction, which I would broadly classify as an attempt to explore, catalog, and explain the queer experience in America today through the specific lens of her own life." The novel is set in 1958 New York City and tells the story of Bette, a middle-aged secretary who was driven away from her family in Ohio; Earl, Bette's neighbor and best friend, a gay Black man; and Hortense, Bette's young cousin who appears one day at Bette's home.

Consider this your motivation to read at least one Sarah Schulman work in your lifetime (and hopefully many, many more).
Get it here.
15. " Beyond the Pale " by Elana Dykewomon

Elana Dykewomon, born Elana Nachman, is a Jewish lesbian activist and writer who describes herself as "a Lesbian Separatist, descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, typesetter, [and a] poet." She changed her last name to Dykewomen for her second book, "an expression of her strong commitment to the lesbian community and a way to keep herself 'honest,' since anyone reading the book would know the author was a lesbian," and for her third book, she became "Dykewomon" so as to "avoid etymological connection with men."

Her novel "Beyond the Pale" is the story of two Jewish women: Gutke Gurvich, a midwife from the Russian shtetl who immigrates to New York, and Chava Meyer, a Russian Jew whose birth is attended to by Gutke, who survives a pogrom. As the Jewish Book Council writes, "Both epic and intimate, the book takes readers deep inside diverse worlds, with harrowing and heroic stories of midwifery, the Russian pogroms, and early lesbian life."
Get it here.
16. "Camp" by L.C. Rosen

"Camp" takes place at the LGBTQ Camp Outland, where theater-loving Randy Kapplehoff is determined to finally win over his eternal summer crush, Hudson Aronson-Lim, by transforming himself into "Del" - a masculine, athletic alter-ego. It's a story about the masks we all sometimes wear, and about how toxic masculinity can creep into the most accepting, queer-friendly spaces. But it's also a delightful story of summer love between two Jewish boys.

For young queer readers, Rosen hopes they take away that "there's no right way to be queer, and anyone who tells you as much is (intentionally or not) hurting you. That masc and femme are both types of drag, and you should be able to pick one, the other, or some combination of the two to dress yourself in any day. That just because straight kids will often see you as just the queer kid doesn't mean you can't be some other kind of kid on top of that - jock, nerd, theater kid, goth, whatever. You get to try on all these identities, same as the straight kids do, and take the parts of them you like the best to assemble who you want to be. You get to be whoever you want to be. Don't let anyone tell you you don't. But also - and this is important for teen readers - be who you need to be to keep yourself safe, too. You can keep who you are like a secret inside if you need to. That's one special talent all queer people have."

17. "The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South" by Michael W. Twitty

In 2012, "Afro-ashke-phardi" culinary historian Michael W. Twitty went on a "Southern Discomfort Tour" to trace the history of his black ancestors through food. He documents his journey in "The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African-American Culinary History in the Old South," where he also draws parallels to Jewish history. As NPR wrote, "As someone who is Black, gay and Jewish, Twitty is emblematic of everything neo-Nazis rail against." His reply? "America is the only place on earth where I'm possible, and that is the dirty little secret behind these hate groups. They are here to take away the possibilities that America the Ideal represents." His memoir is his personal story, but also a story of Southern cuisine and food culture. Twitty is currently working on his second book, " Kosher Soul," a book that blends Black and Jewish food traditions, set to be published in 2022. We cannot wait.

18. " Sarahland " by Sam Cohen

"Sarahland" is a short story collection of 10 stories centered on various women named Sarah. There's a Jewish college student named Sarah dealing with hook-up culture and sexual assault. There's Sarah of the Bible, who, in Cohen's writing, is a trans woman who sleeps with Hagar to become the real parents of Ishmael. There's a "Buffy"-loving Sarah who writes fan-fiction; there's an aging lesbian Sarah who literally becomes a tree. Each Sarah is told through a queer Jewish lens, with tenderness and care.

"For most of my life, deep questioning of gender and representation of non-normative sexualities were pretty fringe discussions. For me, it's really amazing to put this book out at a time where public discussions about queerness, transness, rape culture, etc. are already happening. It feels like the book can be part of a bigger conversation than I imagined being part of, where, you know, my mom's 70-year-old suburban friends already have a context in which to understand these stories, which might not have been the case 10 years ago," Sarah explained to Alma.

19. "The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia" by Emma Copley Eisenberg

Emma Copley Eisenberg's debut book is a true crime story about the murder of two young women in West Virginia in 1980. Dubbed the "Rainbow Murders," since the women were on their way to a festival known as the Rainbow Gathering, the crime went un-prosecuted for 13 years. In 1993, a local resident was tried and convinced for the murders, only to be released when a white supremacist serial killer admitted to them. "The Third Rainbow Girl" isn't solely the story of the Rainbow Murders, but also of Eisenberg's time spent living and working in Pocahontas County, West Virginia (where the murders took place).

As Eisenberg ( an Alma contributor!) writes in the acknowledgements, "To write a book that is the story of events so painful to so many at the same time that is the story of my becoming was at times a strange and terrible undertaking." The book beautifully interweaves the telling of the crime, the history of the region, and nuanced analysis of gender, class, and violence in rural America.

20. "Willa & Hesper" by Amy Feltman

Willa and Hesper fall in love while in an MFA program, but break up - and both dive into their roots to heal from the breakup. Willa "joins a group trip for Jewish twentysomethings to visit Holocaust sites in Germany and Poland, hoping to override her emotional state. When it proves to be more fraught than home, she must come to terms with her past-the ancestral past, her romantic past, and the past that can lead her forward." Meanwhile, Hesper "runs, following her fractured family back to her grandfather's hometown of Tbilisi, Georgia, looking for the origin story that he is no longer able to tell." A moving tale of heritage, queerness, and what happens when you go looking for yourself in the past.
Get it here.
21. "All My Mother's Lovers" by Ilana Masad

Ilana Masad's debut novel tells the tale of a queer Jewish 27-year-old named Maggie. At the start of the novel, Maggie is in bed with her girlfriend-who-is-not-quite-her-girlfriend-yet when she gets a call from her brother telling her their mom has died in a car crash. She is numb, but immediately springs into action - buying her flights, figuring out the service at synagogue and shiva, and so on. When she gets to her parents' house, Maggie finds letters that her mother left with her will, addressed to different men. After the funeral, she decides, she will set out and deliver them to their intended recipients. It's a powerful story of grief and mother-daughter relationships.

"Since my queer identity has long been deeply intertwined with my own political beliefs and practices and ideals, I feel like my Jewish self is slowly catching up, or connecting, or something," Masad told Alma.

22. "Becoming Eve" by Abby Chava Stein

"Becoming Eve" is the story of Abby's "two interwoven transitions: coming out of ultra-Orthodoxy, and coming out as a trans woman." As she writes in the introduction, "I hope in these pages you will find a portrait of a life that every human being can relate to: the vulnerability and the glory, the frustrations and the revelations, the shedding of one identity and growing into another. No agenda, just my story." Abby is a trailblazer: She grew up in an ultra-Orthodox community in Brooklyn - and was ordained as a rabbi - but her journey "off the derech" as a trans woman has made her an outspoken leader in Jewish and queer communities. We are so grateful for Abby's voice.

23. "Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls" by T Kira Madden

T Kira Madden's gorgeous and remarkable debut memoir chronicles her childhood in Boca Raton, Florida, as the daughter of parents who struggled with addictions. T Kira told Alma ahead of the book's publication that she hopes people can find themselves in her story: "I hope people feel the power of being an outsider. I hope people can recognize some version of themselves, or some element of themselves, in the book. It's likely no one will be just like me - but they might feel that sense of being an outsider, being a former loser, having family secrets and trying to reckon with those, or having experienced assault or addiction in the household. There are so many elements of identity and pain and love in the book, and I hope people can meet me there. Not necessarily take away a moral of the story, but to know that somebody else is there. And is meeting them. And they're not alone in that experience."

24. "Jew-Ish: Reinvented Recipes from a Modern Mensch" by Jake Cohen

"I don't think people should take food or the way they cook very seriously," Jake told Alma. "They can get a lot out of it - there can be a lot of deepness and meaning to it - but I don't think that it should be precious. To me, that was just ways to add some punch lines and remind people it's Shabbat! I'm not asking you to make a brisket and daven [pray]. I'm asking you to have dinner with your friends and family, and take a moment to yourself. That comes across better when you add a little levity to the situation."

"Jew-Ish" is dedicated to Jake's husband, Alex, because "this book is nothing short of our love story," detailing their shared Jewish journey and different Jewish upbringings. Jake is Ashkenazi and Alex is Mizrahi, and along with the delicious recipes - rose water and cardamom challah French toast, anyone? - the book explores how they've figured out what it means to be Jewish in 2021. The cookbook takes the reader through a bevy of foods around Shabbat dinner, with bonus chapters for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur break fast, Hanukkah and Passover.

25. "Golem Girl" by Riva Lehrer

Riva Lehrer is an artist, writer and curator whose work focuses on issues of physical identity and the socially challenged body. Her book, "Golem Girl," is an illustrated memoir of a Jewish artist born with disabilities who searches for freedom and connection in a society afraid of strange bodies. Why golem? "There is a very old legend in Jewish folklore about a rabbi who creates a monster out of mud from a river in Prague to protect the Jews who are about to be attacked by a pogrom of peasantry. And so he builds this monster, and it rounds up the miscreants, puts them in jail. In the process, the monster gets bigger and bigger and begins to have ideas of its own. And as soon as it does, the rabbi destroys it, and it falls back into a heap of mud. And so I thought about my life in those terms, in that I was built by others in a variety of senses, but in the immediate medical sense by many, many doctors," Riva explained to NPR.

26. "Confessions of the Fox" by Jordy Rosenberg

Jordy Rosenberg's debut novel is speculative metafiction; he takes a well-known historical figure and spins the narrative into something new. In "Confessions of the Fox," Rosenberg writes Jack Sheppard - an English folk hero who really existed, who was an 18th-century English thief who escaped from the notorious Newgate Prison - as a trans man. In real life, Sheppard's mom sent him to a workhouse when he was 6. In Rosenberg's telling, Sheppard's mom, confused by her daughter who identifies as male, was sent into servitude. The main text is the fictional memoirs of Sheppard, but the footnotes are crucial to the story as well - and within the footnotes is the story of Dr. R. Voth, who found Sheppard's manuscript and annotates it. The footnotes are both fascinating and increasingly unhinged as Dr. Voth, a trans academic, tries to uncover the mysteries of Sheppard's memoirs while also saving his own career. Rosenberg, a trans Jewish professor of 18th century literature, gender and sexuality studies, and critical theory at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, is well suited to the subject matter.

27. Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

Here's how "Blackfish City" is advertised: "A mysterious woman arrives in the floating Arctic city of Qaanaaq, in a future where rising seas have caused dramatic geopolitical changes. She's accompanied by an orca and a polar bear, on a mission that might be bloody and might be beautiful and might be both." If you are into scifi and dystopia fiction, this is the book for you. I loved how Vulture described it a few years ago: "The social and political resonances with 2018 are powerful, but so is the story itself, a gripping thriller that manages to traverse some very bleak territory without ever becoming heavy or dour. As much as this story is practically dystopian, it's optimistic, too - even galvanizing - as Miller's outcasts embark on a captivating high-stakes quest." (And here's a note from 2021: It still very much resonates.)

And if you're looking for more Sam Miller, also check out " The Blade Between," a "a queer-themed, sea salt-laced dark fantasy" set in Miller's hometown of Hudson, New York, that explores the dark sides of gentrification," and " The Art of Starving," about a young gay teen struggling with an eating disorder.
Get it here.
28. " Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North " by Blair Braverman

Blair Braverman's name is particularly apt: She is a brave woman, and in 2019, became the second-ever Jewish woman to finish the grueling and historic Iditarod sled dog race. Braverman told Alma that the Iditarod is "something I've been dreaming about since I was a kid." She grew up in Davis, California, and now lives in northern Wisconsin with her husband, Quince Mountain. They run BraverMountain Mushing (a portmanteau of their names), and on Twitter, Blair is an expert storyteller where she shares her life raising dogs, racing and being the only Jew in her rural Wisconsin community. (And very, very cute puppy photos.)

Her memoir is a love letter to dogsledding, a travelogue of an American in Norway, a grappling with the aftermath of sexual violence, and an honest look at a woman navigating the male-dominated world of the wilderness.

29. "Cool for the Summer" by Dahlia Adler

"Cool for the Summer" is a YA Jewish bisexual love triangle, featuring Lara, who is starting her senior year of high school. The guy of her dreams, Chase, is finally into her. But then Jasmine, her summer fling who just moved into town, shows up (think "Grease," but gay and way less problematic?). Who does she go for? As Shelly Jay Shore wrote in Alma, the book is a gamechanger for queer Jewish teens. "Reading 'Cool for the Summer' felt like a revolution - like coming to a new place in representation. While queer characters have had an explosion of representation in young adult fiction, as have Jewish characters, a bisexual Jewish romance focusing on two girls always seemed like such a niche market... To see a book not just with bi Jewish representation but with multiple Jewish characters who relate to Judaism in different ways feels huge."

Fun fact and deeply relevant to this book listicle: Dahlia Adler founded LGBTQReads, a site dedicated to promoting curated LGBTQIAP+ literature for all ages.

30. " Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl " by Carrie Brownstein

Last but very not least: Carrie Brownstein's memoir. An actress and member of the band Sleater-Kinney, the book title comes from the lyrics of one of their iconic songs, "Modern Girl," which is particularly apt: The memoir is about her relationship to music, with a journey into her childhood and upbringing. "The woman who emerges from this memoir seems much like the young girl she was, a very human mixture of insecure and fearless, thorny and placating, buoyant and depressed," writes the New York Times Book Review.

"That's why all those records from high school sound so good. It's not that the songs were better-it's that we were listening to them with our friends, drunk for the first time on liqueurs, touching sweaty palms, staring for hours at a poster on the wall, not grossed out by carpet or dirt or crumpled, oily bedsheets. These songs and albums were the best ones because of how huge adolescence felt then, and how nostalgia recasts it now," writes Brownstein in her memoir. If you love her music, or if you just love music, period, you will love this memoir.

Happy reading!
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30 Books by Queer Jewish Authors You Should Read

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Alma readers asked for it, so obviously we are here to deliver: 30 book by queer Jewish authors you should absolutely read. We've covered many of these books before, so be sure to click through to read interviews and reviews where relevant. Happy Pride month!!

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Balancing on the Mechitza: Transgender in Jewish Community
A Rainbow Thread: An Anthology of Queer Jewish Texts from th First Century to 1969
Please post your own finds!

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To see more reviews check out MI Book Reviews.

I had one major issue with this entire book, that is the issue of conflating the issues of intersex people and transgender people. The editor of the book does not define what transgender is, but instead uses a few different labels that are not commonly associated with transgender people such as bear (a big hairy gay man). Bears may be transgender, but saying that all bears are or using it as a transgender label is not correct. Also the issue of sayin...more

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To see more reviews check out MI Book Reviews. I had one major issue with this entire book, that is the issue of conflating the issues of intersex people and transgender people. The editor of the book does not define what transgender is, but instead uses a few different labels that are not commonly associated with transgender people such as bear (a big hairy gay man).

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This is your necessary guide to understanding the central collection of Jewish identity stories. Queering the Torah is yes, about naming LGBTQIA+ characters, but it is more: studying Torah requires awareness of multiple understandings of possible meanings, even those that conflict. We are taught that each word, even each letter, of Torah can be understood in 70 different ways: "turn it and turn it for everything is in it" like a prism catching the light and shedding all the rainbow of colors on us.

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A modernized, queer reading of the Torah

In the Jewish tradition, reading of the Torah follows a calendar cycle, with a specific portion assigned each week. These weekly portions, read aloud in synagogues around the world, have been subject to interpretation and commentary for centuries. Following on this ancient tradition, Torah Queeries brings together some of the world's leading rabbis, scholars, and writers to interpret the Torah through a "bent lens". With commentaries on the fifty-four weekly Torah portions and six major Jewish holidays, the concise yet substantive writings collected here open up stimulating new insights and highlight previously neglected perspectives.

This incredibly rich collection unites the voices of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and straight-allied writers, including some of the most central figures in contemporary American Judaism. All bring to the table unique methods of reading and interpreting that allow the Torah to speak to modern concerns of sexuality, identity, gender, and LGBT life. Torah Queeries offers cultural critique, social commentary, and a vision of community transformation, all done through biblical interpretation. Written to engage readers, draw them in, and, at times, provoke them, Torah Queeries examines topics as divergent as the Levitical sexual prohibitions, the experience of the Exodus, the rape of Dinah, the life of Joseph, and the ritual practices of the ancient Israelites. Most powerfully, the commentaries here chart a future of inclusion and social justice deeply rooted in the Jewish textual tradition.

A labor of intellectual rigor, social justice, and personal passions, Torah Queeries is an exciting and important contribution to the project of democratizing Jewish communities, and an essential guide to understanding the intersection of queerness and Jewishness.

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A modernized, queer reading of the Torah In the Jewish tradition, reading of the Torah follows a calendar cycle, with a specific portion assigned each week. These weekly portions, read aloud in synagogues around the world, have been subject to interpretation and commentary for centuries.

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A "mixed multitude" has been part of the Jewish people since the very beginning: Torah recounts the reality of marriage between Israelites and other ancient Mesopotamian and Mediterranean groups, and 2000 years ago the rabbis of the Talmud were already creating a conversion process for those not born Jewish who knew that they were, after all, Jews. Being Jewish has always been a matter of choosing to be Jewish, even for those who were born to a Jewish parent.

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(לז) וַיִּסְע֧וּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֛ל מֵרַעְמְסֵ֖ס סֻכֹּ֑תָה כְּשֵׁשׁ־מֵא֨וֹת אֶ֧לֶף רַגְלִ֛י הַגְּבָרִ֖ים לְבַ֥ד מִטָּֽף׃ (לח) וְגַם־[עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב] עָלָ֣ה אִתָּ֑ם וְצֹ֣אן וּבָקָ֔ר מִקְנֶ֖ה כָּבֵ֥ד מְאֹֽד׃

(37) The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Sukkot, about six hundred thousand fighting adults on foot, aside from noncombatants. (38) Moreover, a mixed multitude went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds.

The Torah relates that an erev rav,, a "mixed multitude," left with the Israelites during the Exodus from Egypt. And according to some midrashim, not even a majority of the Israelites left.

וחמושים עלו - אחד מחמשה. ויש אומרים: אחד מחמשים. ...אלא שמתו הרבה מישראל במצרים.

" hamushim they went up from the land of Egypt" - one out of five ([' hamishah'] who had been there).... many of the Jews having died in Egypt.

There are several places in the Tanakh that refer to an erev rav or just an erev in such a way that context seems to indicate what the Prophet Ezekiel below calls "the mixed populations" - Jeremiah 25.20, I Kings 10.15, and a few more.

Significantly, the erev rav is mentioned as being part of the group that go out of Egypt, but the term disappears from the narrative after that.

What was the Biblical attitude toward the erev rav? It depends on when you ask.

(ה) כּ֣וּשׁ וּפ֤וּט וְלוּד֙ וְכׇל־הָעֶ֣רֶב וְכ֔וּב וּבְנֵ֖י אֶ֣רֶץ הַבְּרִ֑ית אִתָּ֖ם בַּחֶ֥רֶב יִפֹּֽלוּ׃ {פ}

(5) Nubia, Put, and Lud, and all the mixed populations,and Cub, and the inhabitants of the allied countries shall fall by the sword with them.

(ג) אַ֚ף חֹבֵ֣ב עַמִּ֔ים כׇּל־קְדֹשָׁ֖יו בְּיָדֶ֑ךָ וְהֵם֙ תֻּכּ֣וּ לְרַגְלֶ֔ךָ יִשָּׂ֖א מִדַּבְּרֹתֶֽיךָ׃

(3) Lover, indeed, of the people,
Their hallowed are all in Your hand.
They followed in Your steps,
Accepting Your pronouncements,

(1) אף חובב עמים, also members of the gentile nations, such as the mixed multitude whom Moses had accepted as converts at the time of the Exodus, and who had done so in order to receive the Torah, G'd became fond of and accepted them so that they too were included in the camp which Shekhinah, benevolent presence, rested over the people.

Some commentators feel positively toward those who joined the Israelites; others are ambivalent or even hostile toward those from outside. Some of this comes through in the other meanings of "mixed":

(ה) בַּחֹ֣דֶשׁ הָרִאשׁ֗וֹן בְּאַרְבָּעָ֥ה עָשָׂ֛ר לַחֹ֖דֶשׁ [בֵּ֣ין הָעַרְבָּ֑יִם] פֶּ֖סַח לַה'׃

(5) In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, there shall be a passover offering to ה',

Beyn haArbayim, "between the erevs", refers to the time between fixed times, i.e. neither day nor night. This kind of indefinite which resists classification is difficult for any coherent system to tolerate.

Yet that's the reality of living with others: much is neither clearly defined nor classified. Yet we depend upon each other.

והכתיב (ויקרא כו, לז) וכשלו איש באחיו איש בעון אחיו מלמד ש

כל ישראל ערבים זה בזה

But isn't it written: "And they shall stumble one upon another" (Leviticus 26:37)? This verse is homiletically interpreted to mean that they shall stumble spiritually, one due to the iniquity of another, which teaches that the entire Jewish people are considered guarantors for one another.

In the process of stumbling spiritually onward, discerning the path with the help of others upon whom we come to depend, we see that meaningful community is created as trust overcomes hesitation and members of a group develop the willingness to step up for each other. For the Jewish people, this is what finally defines the community that stood at Sinai; not the circumstances of birth but the choice of the heart to do what it takes to belong.

בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁעָמְדוּ יִשְׂרָאֵל לְקַבֵּל הַתּוֹרָה אָמַר לָהֶם אֲנִי נוֹתֵן לָכֶם תּוֹרָתִי הָבִיאוּ לִי עֲרֵבִים טוֹבִים שֶׁתִּשְׁמְרוּהָ וְאֶתְּנֶנָּהּ לָכֶם, אָמְרוּ אֲבוֹתֵינוּ עוֹרְבִים אוֹתָנוּ, אָמַר לָהֶם הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא אֲבוֹתֵיכֶם יֵשׁ לִי עֲלֵיהֶם, אַבְרָהָם יֵשׁ לִי עָלָיו, שֶׁאָמַר (בראשית טו, ח): בַּמָּה אֵדַע. יִצְחָק יֵשׁ לִי עָלָיו, שֶׁהָיָה אוֹהֵב לְעֵשָׂו וַאֲנִי שְׂנֵאתִיו, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (מלאכי א, ג): וְאֶת עֵשָׂו שָׂנֵאתִי. יַעֲקֹב שֶׁאָמַר (ישעיה מ, כז): נִסְתְּרָה דַרְכִּי מֵה'. אֶלָּא הָבִיאוּ לִי עֲרֵבִים טוֹבִים, וַאֲנִי נוֹתְנָהּ לָכֶם. אָמְרוּ לְפָנָיו רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם נְבִיאֵינוּ עֲרֵבִין לָנוּ. אָמַר לָהֶם יֵשׁ לִי עֲלֵיהֶם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (ירמיה ב, ח): וְהָרֹעִים פָּשְׁעוּ בִי וגו', וּכְתִיב (יחזקאל יג, ד): כְּשֻׁעָלִים בָּחֳרָבוֹת נְבִיאֶיךָ יִשְׂרָאֵל הָיוּ, אֶלָּא הָבִיאוּ לִי עֲרֵבִים טוֹבִים וְאֶתְּנֶנָּהּ לָכֶם, אָמְרוּ הֲרֵי בָּנֵינוּ עוֹרְבִים אוֹתָנוּ. אָמַר הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא הָא וַדַּאי עֲרֵבִים טוֹבִים, עַל יְדֵיהֶם אֶתְּנֶנָּהּ לָכֶם, הֲדָא הוּא דִכְתִיב (תהלים ח, ג): מִפִּי עוֹלְלִים וְיֹנְקִים יִסַּדְתָּ עֹז, וְאֵין עֹז אֶלָּא תּוֹרָה, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (תהלים כט, יא): ה' עֹז לְעַמּוֹ יִתֵּן.

When the Israelites stood to receive the Torah, HaShem said to them: 'Bring Me good guarantors that you will observe it, and I will give it to you.' They said 'Source of the universe, our ancestors are guaranteeing for us.' The Blessed Holy One said to them: 'I have [claims against] your ancestors. Abraham, I have [a claim] against him, as he said: "How will I know" (Genesis 15:8). Isaac, I have [a claim] against him, as he loved Esau, and I hated him, as it is stated: "And Esau I hated" (Malachi 1:3); Jacob, who said: "My way is hidden from the Lord" (Isaiah 40:27). Rather, bring me effective guarantors and I will give it to you.'

They said before HaShem: 'Source of the universe, our prophets will be guarantors for us.' HaShem said to them: 'I have [claims] against them, as it is stated: "And the shepherds were disloyal to me [and the prophets prophesied to the Baal]" (Jeremiah 2:8). And it is written: "Like foxes among the ruins, so are your prophets, Israel" (Ezekiel 13:4). But bring me effective guarantors and I will give it to you.'

They said: 'Our children are guaranteeing for us.' The Blessed Holy One said: 'They are certainly good guarantors, I will give it to you on their account.' That is what is written: "From the mouths of infants and sucklings You founded strength" (Psalms 8:3), and strength means only Torah, as it is stated: "HaShem will give strength to the people (Psalms 29:11).

וְהַעֲרֶב נָא ה' אֱלֹקֵֽינוּ אֶת־דִּבְרֵי תוֹרָתְךָ בְּפִֽינוּ וּבְפִי עַמְּךָ בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל. וְנִהְיֶה אֲנַֽחְנוּ וְצֶאֱצָאֵֽינוּ וְצֶאֱצָאֵי עַמְּךָ בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל כֻּלָּֽנוּ יוֹדְעֵי שְׁמֶֽךָ וְלוֹמְדֵי תוֹרָתֶֽךָ. ( י"א תוֹרָתְךָ) לִשְׁמָהּ.

HaShem our God, make the words of Your Torah pleasant in our mouths and in the mouths of Your people Israel. And may we and our descendants [and the descendants of our descendants] and the descendants of Your people the House of Israel, all know Your Name and be students of Your Torah for its own sake.

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The Erev Rav: Who Stood At Sinai? | Sefaria

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(לז) וַיִּסְע֧וּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֛ל מֵרַעְמְסֵ֖ס סֻכֹּ֑תָה כְּשֵׁשׁ־מֵא֨וֹת אֶ֧לֶף רַגְלִ֛י הַגְּבָרִ֖ים לְבַ֥ד מִטָּֽף׃ (לח) וְגַם־[עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב] עָלָ֣ה אִתָּ֑ם וְצֹ֣אן וּבָקָ֔ר מִקְנֶ֖ה כָּבֵ֥ד מְאֹֽד׃ (37) The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Sukkot, about six hundred thousand fighting adults on foot, aside from noncombatants. (38) Moreover, a mixed multitude went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds.

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A gathering of primary sources that trace the development of the tradition of eating dairy on Shavuot

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It is the custom of our ancestors that they bring children when they are three or four years of age to learn [for the first time] on Shavuot since the Torah was given then...At sunrise on Shavuot, they bring the children, in keeping with the verse "as morning dawned, there was thunder and lightning" (Exodus 19:16). And one covers the children with a cloak from their house to the synagogue or to the rabbi's house, in keeping with the verse "and they stood underneath the mountain" (ibid., v. 17). And they put him on the lap of the rabbi who teaches them, in keeping with the verse "as a nurse carries an infant" (Numbers 11:12).

And they bring the slate upon which is written "Moses commanded us the Torah" (Deut. 33:4), "may the Torah be my occupation", and "The Lord called to Moses" (Lev. 1:1). And the rabbi reads every letter of the alef-bet and the child repeats after him, and [the rabbi reads all of the above and the child repeats after him].

And the rabbi puts a little honey on the slate and the child licks the honey from the letters with his tongue. And then they bring the honey cake upon which is inscribed "HaShem gave me a skilled tongue to know..." (Isaiah 50: 4-5), and the rabbi reads every word of these verses and the child repeats after him. And then they bring a peeled hard-boiled egg upon which is written "Mortal, feed your stomach and fill your belly with this scroll... and I ate it and it tasted as sweet as honey to me" (Ezekiel 3:3). And the rabbi reads every word and the child repeats after him. And they feed the child the cake and the egg, for they open the mind...

Sefer Harokeah (parag. 296) R. Eleazar of Worms (1160-1230)

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Shavuot: what's with the cheesecake? | Sefaria

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It is the custom of our ancestors that they bring children when they are three or four years of age to learn [for the first time] on Shavuot since the Torah was given then...At sunrise on Shavuot, they bring the children, in keeping with the verse "as morning dawned, there was thunder and lightning" (Exodus 19:16).

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from the Kosher Cowboy

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Shavuot Recipes

Shavuot Recipes

Moroccan Meatballs with Sweet Peas

Shavuot Recipes

Unlike Ashkenazi Jews whom eat dairy dishes on Shavuot, Sephardic Shavuot recipes include meat at every meal during the holiday. Every meal incorporates beef or lamb and the seven items listed below.

On the eve of Shavuot, a platter with the seven species of food specific to Israel is displayed prominently on the table. Two loaves of fine wheat flour, shaped like a bird, a mountain or a ladder, are given a place of honor as well.

It is the lovely custom of the Amar family to bring home a sheaf of wheat which is displayed on the table.

The book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) 8:8 lists the seven species native to the Land of Israel:

1. WHEAT is our most basic food. It can sustain life and is the symbol of hospitality and festivity.
2. BARLEY is a plant that can grow even in bad soil and poor weather conditions. It reminds us to be strong even in difficult times.
3. GRAPES symbolize joy and fruitfulness. As they grow in clusters, they remind us of the joy of celebrating together as a family and as a community.
4. FIGS are one of the few fruits that can be harvested year-round. They remind us of the Torah, which we read all year long.
5. POMEGRANATES are full of seeds, just as we would like to be full of good deeds.
6. OLIVES are a rich and versatile food and the olive tree is strong. In Israel there are olive trees 1,000 years old that still bear fruit.
7. DATES are sweet as honey. Their fruit is soft, but the pit is hard. Dates remind us to be sweet, but strong.

History of Shavuot

Shavuot is known as the Feast of Weeks in English and as Pentecost (Πεντηκοστή) in Ancient Greek. It is a Jewish holiday that occurs on the sixth day of the Hebrew month of Sivan (may fall between 14 May-15 June).

Shavuot has a double significance. It marks the all-important wheat harvest in the Land of Israel (Exodus 34:22); and it commemorates the anniversary of the day God gave the Torah to the entire nation of Israel assembled at Mount Sinai, although the association between the giving of the Torah (Matan Torah) and Shavuot is not explicit in the Biblical text.

The holiday is one of the Shalosh Regalim, the three Biblical pilgrimage festivals. It marks the conclusion of the Counting of the Omer, and its date is directly linked to that of Passover. The Torah mandates the seven-week Counting of the Omer, beginning on the second day of Passover, to be immediately followed by Shavuot.

This counting of days and weeks is understood to express anticipation and desire for the giving of the Torah. On Passover, the people of Israel were freed from their enslavement to Pharaoh; on Shavuot they were given the Torah and became a nation committed to serving God.

The word Shavuot means weeks, and the festival of Shavuot marks the completion of the seven-week counting period between Passover and Shavuot. The hazkara (death anniversary) of King David is traditionally observed on Shavuot.

A Collection of Sephardic Shavuot Traditions, Recipes and Prayers
by Deanna Amar Pool
*Download our family traditions, prayers and recipes booklet here.

In the rhythms of Jewish living, Shavuot holds a special place.

In addition to being a spring festival and a great outdoor celebration it has the added honor of being the season when God gave the Ten Commandments to His people who in expectation of that moment study Torah all night.

It was at one of these all-night study vigils, on the eve of Shavuot that the famous 16th century scholar and mystic, Yosef Karo, received a personal divine revelation through a "maggid" who became a regular companion of his, inspiring him to write Maggid Mesharim.

The Eve of Shavuot

On erev Shavuot (the eve of Shavuot) it is customary to go to the mikvek.

Mincha service doesn't start until after the stars appear in the sky so as to complete the seven weeks of the Omer.

At Lel Tikun, to show their gratitude for the giving of the Torah, some congregations purposely add to the reading of the prescribed texts Parasha Naso which at 176 verses is the longest of the Torah. Hence the little derisive rhyme "Me canso Naso; Naso tired me out."

In many Sephardic congregations, on the first day of Shavuot, as we open the Holy Ark, before taking out the Torah scrolls, it is customary to read the Ketubah l' Shavuot or Ketubah de la Ley.

Poem

The poem composed by the Safed mystic Rabbi Israel Nagara (1550-1625) is based on Hosea verses 2:21-22: "I will betroth you unto Me in righteousness, and in justice, and loving kindness, and in compassion. And I will betroth you unto Me in faithfulness; and you shall know the Lord" and Jeremiah 31:31 " I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel."

This "piyyut", actually a love song modeled after Shir Hashirim, takes on the form of a marriage contract between the Torah, the bride and Israel, the groom. God as the bride's father gives her as dowry the 613 commandments, the Bible, Talmud and other sacred writings.

Moses presents as dowry to his son, the people of Israel, the tallit and tefilin, the Shabbat and festivals. The bride enters the chuppah, responding affectionately: "We shall do and we shall hear." Witnessed by God and His servant Moses, the contract is dated the 6th day of Sivan, in the year 2448 from the Creation.

The reading of the Ketubah concludes with the prayer: "May the groom rejoice with the bride whom he took unto himself for his portion. May the heart of the bride rejoice in the husband of her youth and may she praise him "Happy is the people whose portion is thus."

Some Differences

Where Ashkenazim recite the Akdamut, Sephardim chant the Azharot, a rhymed listing of the 613 commandments, composed by the medieval scholar and poet, Shlomo Ibn Gabirol. Outside of Israel, the positive commandments of the Azharot are read with the first half of the Book of Ruth, on the first day of Shabuot. The negative commandments and the second half of the Book of Ruth are read on the second day.

Psalms hold a place of honor at synagogue services and at home: not only do we commemorate their author King David who was born and died on Shabuot, but by so doing we tie him to his ancestress Ruth the Moabite. The Sages teach us that "Ruth" means "sated" and that David "sated" God, as it were, with his psalms of praise and love.

The 10 Commandments

At the reading of the Ten Commandments, the congregants stand up in reverence, men pull their tallit over their heads and gathering their children close to them, they huddle in silent piety.

Shavuot is also a water-festival. At the end of services as men and children walk back home, it is customary to splash them with water to recall that Torah flowed like water upon the parched souls of the Israelites at Sinai, purifying them. It also reminds us that Moses was drawn out of the waters by the daughter of Pharaoh on the 6th of Sivan.

The Sephardic celebration of Shavuot at home differs from that of the Ashkenazim.

Following the precepts of the Gemara that one must partake of wine and meat at a seudah, we do not eat dairy products at any of the required meals of the holiday.

Instead, in honor of the seven species of produce native to Israel, we serve barley, wheat, olives, grapes, dates, figs and pomegranates which according to the rabbis contain 613 seeds.

Rabi Yosi teaches us that Mount Sinai was torn out of Mt. Moriah as a "challah". At Mount Moriah, Isaac was bound, at Mount Sinai Israel received the Torah. We honor the mountain that figures prominently at Shabuot by baking a special bread, "el monte" that is shaped like a mountain.

Other families shape their bread as a dove, in gratitude to the birds that did not chirp during the giving of the Torah, enabling all Israelites to hear the divine words. Others still, make rectangular loaves of bread with four corners.
("Tonight we have discussed the different ways Jews celebrate Shabuot. Let them not be a barrier but rather just a different path each of us takes in order to get closer to God. The message of Shabuot is a universal message of redemption through love, love of God for a down-trodden people of slaves, love of Ruth for her elderly mother-in-law Naomi, love of Boaz for his kin's misfortune. Today, we are the chosen people of universal hatred, we, whose Torah first commandment is one of love. We shall triumph, once more, because we know how to love, how to heal, how to build. The blueprint of our survival is in the Torah we have come to receive tonight.")
Did you know ...

On the 6th of Sivan, fifty days after leaving Egypt, the people of Israel received the Torah at Mount Sinai.

One may wonder why this momentous event did not take place in the month of Nissan, nor in the month of Iyar. Our Sages inform us that the zodiac sign or mazal of Nissan is a lamb and Iyar's an ox, whereas Sivan is represented by human twins. Could the Torah be given to any other than Man who has hands to clap with and feet to dance with?

Why was the Torah given in the third month of the newly established calendar, instead of the first month that made Israel a nation of free men?

A Sage from Galilee expounded before Rav Chisda upon the prominence of the number 3:
Torah is divided into 3 portions: Torah, Nebiim, Ketubim
It has been given to 3 groups of men: Cohanim, Leviim, Israel
Torah was given on the 3rd day (after abstinence)
Moshe Rabbenu was the 3rd child of Amram and Yochebed

Shavuot is also known as the Festival of:

Reaping: Two loaves of wheat were brought to the Temple
Weeks: Shabu'ot - celebrated seven weeks after the Exodus from Egypt
Oaths: Shevu'ot - Na'aseh VeNishma' (we will do and we will hear) promised Israel
First Fruit: Bikurim - the first fruit of the seven species native to the Holy Land, wheat, barley, olives, grapes, dates, figs and pomegranates were brought to the Temple in baskets as modest or luxurious as one's means permitted. Festival of Assembly or Conclusion: Atzeret - Rabbis say that Shabu'ot is the concluding 8th day of Pessah as Shmini Atzeret concludes Succot.

What is the reason for staying up on the first night of Shabu'ot and be involved in Torah study. According to the Sages, this custom is based upon:

The Zohar (Perashat Emor 98a)
The Midrash Shir Hashirim Rabba 1:12
The Magen Abraham, which based on a Midrashic account states: "At the revelation at Sinai, when the time came for the Torah to be given, many fell asleep and the Almighty had to awaken them. We must rectify this through our staying awake and studying Torah through the night." (Or Hahayim 494)
Rambam who said, "A person learns most of his wisdom by night."

Yosef Caro and some of his colleagues met to study Torah on Erev Shabu'ot. Rabbi Shlomo Alkabetz, the author of Lecha Dodi, described what happened.

While Yosef Caro was studying his mouth opened and words emerged in a voice that was not his. Those present listened as the voice told them that God approved of their piety and urged them to leave Turkey at once and go to Israel. Shortly after their departure an earthquake ravaged Turkey.

From that day onward, the Maggid or angelic voice became a regular friend of Karo, visiting him often, after midnight or in the early hours of morning, especially Shabbat morning.

Why is Ruth the Moabite celebrated on Shabu'ot, the festival of the Giving of the Torah to the people of Israel?

The numerical value of the name "Ruth" 606 + 7 Noahide laws since she was a convert, total 613, the number of mitzvoth the Torah enjoins us to observe.

Our Sages also tell us that the Book of Ruth, authored by the Prophet Samuel, is read on that day so we might know that the Written Torah and the Oral Torah are one, for the Oral Torah justifies the legitimacy of King David, her descendant.

As Shabu'ot was the setting of Boaz and Ruth's betrothal, so is Torah the instrument of betrothal between God and Israel, for Torah is called "morasha" or heritage, upon which the rabbis comment, not "morasha" but "me'orasa" or betrothal. When the Hebrews encamped at the foot of Mount Sinai, it was their first encampment without strife.

All our traditional Sephardic Shavuot recipes can be found here.

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Moroccan Meatballs with Sweet Peas Unlike Ashkenazi Jews whom eat dairy dishes on Shavuot, Sephardic Shavuot recipes include meat at every meal during the holiday. Every meal incorporates beef or lamb and the seven items listed below. On the eve of Shavuot, a platter with the seven species of food specific to Israel is displayed prominently on the table.

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Shavuot begins Saturday evening at sundown, Saturday May 4!

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Shavuot begins Saturday evening at sundown, Saturday May 4!

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Things you need to know about Shavuot

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In the Torah portion Behar, God describes the laws surrounding resting the land and crops every seven years, as well as the Jubilee year every 50 years. God permits the use of slaves but provides stipulations including the obligation to eventually free your slaves. In Bechukotai, God tells the people of Israel that if they follow God's commandments, they will be provided with rain to feed their crops. God then describes the long list of punishments that will be inflicted on the Israelites if they do not follow God's laws.

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My Jewish Learning - Judaism & Jewish Life

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In the Torah portion Behar, God describes the laws surrounding resting the land and crops every seven years, as well as the Jubilee year every 50 years. God permits the use of slaves but provides stipulations including the obligation to eventually free your slaves.

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On the holy day when we celebrate Z'man Matan Torah, the time of the giving of the Torah, it's a good time to ask: Who Write the Bible? With gratitude to Mike Wilding who sent me the YouTube.

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0:00 / 17:00•Watch full video

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Lag b’Omer is observed in various ways. The first thirty-three days of the Omer are considered to be a period of semi-mourning, and so some activities are restricted — parties, music, getting a haircut, weddings, parties, etc. So on the 33rd day (34th day for Sephardi Jews) all of these are lifted. Bonfires are lit (that great light), weddings and parties are held. Among the Hasidim, three-year-old boys get their first haircut.

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The 33rd day of the Counting of the Omer begins Tuesday evening and continues through Wednesday.  (Recall that Jewish time begins on the evening before.)

lamed ל is 30; gimmel ג is 3 == לג, lag == 33.

The origins of this minor festival are not clear.  According to one tradition, it is the day that a great plague among Rabbi Akiva’s disciples ended.  The plague happened because Akiva’s students were not respecting each other.

Another story is that Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, the greatest disciple of Akiva, died on this day, and/or also revealed the Zohar, the mystical book of the Kabbalists.  Lag b’Omer became known as a celebration of “great light” or wisdom that Rabbi Shimon brought to the world.

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Source material for the Akedah and Prayer

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Source material for the Akedah and Prayer

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My people’s Prayer Book: Traditional Prayers, Modern Commentaries series is a good reference for Jewish prayer.  There are ten volumes with the text of the prayers surrounded by commentary. Its format resembles a page of Talmud with a portion of the prayer literally surrounded with commentary on the biblical context, theology, women’s voice, history, halakhah, translation, and more.  Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman is the editor.

I have found this series to be interesting and helpful in understanding many aspects of Jewish prayer. The books are a good way to take a deep dive into prayer.

The information on the Akedah largely came from volume five, Birkhot HaShacher (Morning Blessings).

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The inclusion of the Akedah in Morning Prayer sets forth one of the most problematic stories in Torah right after the morning blessings.  The beginning of the prayer leading in to the Akedah gives us the context for this Torah passage.  “Remember us with fondness (as You remembered Abraham), and visit us with salvation and mercy from the highest heaven.”  Modern readers are often dismayed by Abraham’s willingness to kill his son Isaac at God’s direction

The point of the Akedah, as is emphasized in the introductory prayer, is to remind us of Abraham’s trust in God that the Covenant would somehow be maintained.  The Akedah is surrounded by prayers for God to remember us on account of the Covenantal relationship with our ancestors.
That may be the key to understanding the presence of the Akedah in the morning liturgy.  The Covenant with Abraham was reiterated at the end of the Akedah: countless descendants, living in The Land, and they (we) will bless themselves by your name. We are asking God to remember us with fond remembrance and visit us with salvation.

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Why is the Akedah part of the weekday Shakharit (morning) Service?  Isn’t that a lot to face first thing in the morning?

It is interesting to note that the word Akedah is not in the Bible, and the story itself is not referenced in the Tanakh outside of this chapter in Genesis.

The prayer before the Akedah itself invokes “Remember the love of ancestors.”  Z’khut Avot, the merit of our ancestors, is the manner in which we gain benefits based on the faith and meritorious deeds of our ancestors. This Abraham is told (again) that his descendants will be myriad, and they will bless themselves by Abraham’s name. And we do at the beginning of the Amidah, for one place. … “Elohei Abraham…”

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Israel’s National Holidays: Yom HaAtzmaut

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Israel’s National Holidays: Yom HaAtzmaut

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Yom HaAtzmaut is celebrated the day after the Day of Remembrance, on the 4th of Iyar, which this year is Thursday, May 5th.   This is Israel’s Day of Independence, the founding of the State of Israel.
There are formal aspects of the day — speeches and ceremonies celebrating independence. There are also “ground-upward” celebrations involving picnics and barbecues, flags, dancing and fireworks. Some recite the Hallel, psalms of praise usually recited on the Festivals.

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Israel’s National Holidays: Yom HaZikaron 

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Israel’s National Holidays: Yom HaZikaron 

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Dr. Elan Ezrachi describes Israeli national holidays as expressing “civil religion.”  These are not holidays derived from biblical or rabbinic sources.  As expressions of a civil religion there are rituals and symbols to give meaning to days marking the religious values of the State of Israel.
Yom HaZikaron is one such day.  The Day of Remembrance is the time to remember all those who have died in the defense of Israel.  In a nation where a large portion of the populace have served in the military, almost everyone knows someone who died in service.
Yom HaZikaron is observed seven days after Yom HaShoah, on the 3rd of Iyar, which is May 4th this year.

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Israel’s National Holidays:  Yom HaShoah 

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Israel’s National Holidays:  Yom HaShoah 

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Over an eight day period, Israel observes three special days of national importance.
It begins with Yom HaShoah, when we remember the lives lost in the Holocaust. Yom HaShoah takes place on the 28th of Iyar.
On this solemn day we say, “Never again.  Never forget.”  At 10:00 am in Israel, a siren is sounded and two minutes of silence are observed.  People stop at home, at work, on the street.  Cars stop on the roads and people stand in the streets, silent and unmoving.
Remembering.
There are ceremonies observing the solemnity of this day of mourning. Often the names of those who died in the Holocaust are read aloud.

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Posts from Balashon - Hebrew Language Detective for 04/19/2022

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shalom all, and mo'adim l'simkha, may your Intermediate festival days be joyful! The Hebrew of the Torah and how it relates to conversational Hebrew today is an endlessly fascinating topic. Take a look at this post on the Hebrew root k.d.sh, and join us in posting similar material when you find it!

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Excerpts:

A reader asked me to write about the Hebrew words kadosh קדוש and kodesh קודש - generally translated as "holy" and "holiness," respectively. It's taken me a few months to get to the request, because while I agree that the root קדש deserves examination, the word is so loaded with religious meaning and pervasive in Jewish liturgy and culture that I found it somewhat intimidating to tackle.

For example, here are just a few of the important terms that derive from the root קדש:

kiddush קידוש - the prayer and blessing over wine inaugurating Shabbat or holidays

kedusha קדושה - the section of the repeated Amida prayer which emulates the praise angels give to God

kaddish קדיש - the Aramaic praise of God, which is part of all prayer services, and whose recitation is part of the mourning rituals

kiddushin קידושין - betrothal - the first step of the marriage process

hekdesh הקדש - property consecrated to the Temple

mikdash מקדש - the Holy Temple

And looking in the Bible, there are over 800 words deriving from the root. Daunting, no?

But that doesn't mean I shouldn't try. So I'm acknowledging that I won't touch on every aspect of the words, and perhaps I'll update this post or write another one in the future with additional insights.

Let's start by looking at the forms of the verb.

קָדַשׁ kadash: The kal form of the verb is not commonly used today, but it does appear a number of times in the Bible. According to Klein it can either mean "was set apart, consecrated" or "was forbidden." It is interesting to note that in the two verses quoted in the Even-Shoshan dictionary for this form (Shemot 29:37 and Devarim 22:9), קדש has a negative connotation, referring to something forbidden.

נקדש nikdash: The nifal form, the passive of the kal, is more commonly found. Klein offers "was hallowed, was sanctified" and "was consecrated, was dedicated." The former is found in Biblical Hebrew (only used to refer to God), and the latter meaning seems to have begun in the Rabbinic period.

קִדֵּשׁ kidesh and קֻדַּשׁ kudash: The piel (active) and pual (passive) forms also mean both "to sanctify" (or be sanctified) and "to dedicate" (or was dedicated). Other meanings associated with this root are "to cleanse, purify" (as in Shemot 19:10), and then in Rabbinic Hebrew, to sanctify the Shabbat and holidays (i.e., kiddush) and to betroth (i.e., kiddushin).

הקדיש hikdish and הוקדש hukdash: The hifil (active) and hufal (passive) forms in Modern Hebrew mean "to dedicate, allocate, designate, devote" - with either religious or secular connotations. But in earlier periods, it could mean "was set apart as holy, regarded as holy."

התקדש hitkadesh: In the hitpael (reflexive) form, the root means "to keep (oneself) separated" or "purified (oneself)." It can also mean "to become sanctified," and this is how it used in the Kaddish prayer, when we pray that God's name become sanctified.

We can see from these various definitions, that the root קדש has two primary connotations.

1) "to be holy", in the sense of "lofty, exalted", even "perfect", and perhaps closer to divine. This is captured well by the English word " holy" (and the related " hallow") which derive from an earlier root meaning "whole, uninjured" (and is ultimately cognate with " whole" as well.)

2) "to set apart, separate." Perhaps this meaning could better be expressed with the adjective " sacred," and the verb " sanctify", both of which derive from roots indicating separation or consecration.

There are certainly occasions where that sense overlaps with the "exalted, holy" sense. Something dedicated to God has an exalted status, and anything holy would be separate and distinct from an object without that position. But when there is no such overlap, it allows for the "forbidden" meaning in Biblical Hebrew, and the "designated" meaning in Modern Hebrew.

According to Klein's etymology, the second connotation is the original one:

Related to Ugar. qdsh (= sanctuary), Phoen. קדש (= holy), מקדש (= sanctuary, holy place), Aram.-Syr. קַדֵּשׁ (= he hallowed, sanctified, consecrated), Palm. קדש (= to sanctify, consecrate), Arab. qadusa (= was holy, was pure), quaddasa (= he hallowed, sanctified, consecrated; he went to Jerusalem), quds (= purity, holiness), al-quds (= Jerusalem; lit.: 'the holy place'), Akka. quddushu (= to cleanse, to hallow, sanctify,), Aram.-Syr. קְדָשָׁא (= ear or nose ring; orig. 'holy thing'). The orig. meaning of this base prob. was 'to separate'.

This is also the view of the BDB dictionary, who writes that the original idea behind the root may have been "separation, withdrawal" and translates kodesh as "apartness, sacredness."

However, others, such as Gesenius, claim that the original meaning was connotation 1, noting that the kal form of the verb (presumably the most basic one), meant "to be pure, clean, prop. used of physical purity and cleanliness." This approach does find support in the cognates found in other Semitic languages (as quoted by Klein above.)

I'd like to end with a quote from the philosopher and theologian Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits. He wrote a lengthy essay entitled " The Concept of Holiness" in his book " Man and God: Studies in Biblical Theology." I can't review the entire essay here (I do recommend reading it), but I think the last paragraph is very profound:

In our own analysis, interest was concentrated on the meaning of the term as it is applied to God and man, but we have not lost sight of its purely ritualistic significance either. We have found that the word, holy, does not stand for divine nature in whatever way that nature is understood, it is not a mere "otiose epithet" of God; but it is a specific attribute of the deity and it is consistently used all through the Bible in that specific sense. Rather than indicating transcendence, it seems to be inseparable from the idea of immanence. Far from meaning inaccessibility, it reveals closeness and association. It is not the mysterium tremendum; if anything, it is its very opposite.

According to Rabbi Berkovits, even if kadosh does refer to separateness, that does not mean that God is distant from us, but rather shows just how closely involved God is with humanity.

Read on "

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Posts from Balashon - Hebrew Language Detective for 04/19/2022

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Excerpts: A reader asked me to write about the Hebrew words kadosh קדוש and kodesh קודש - generally translated as "holy" and "holiness," respectively. It's taken me a few months to get to the request, because while I agree that the root קדש deserves examination, the word is so loaded with religious meaning and pervasive in Jewish liturgy and culture that I found it somewhat intimidating to tackle.

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Elul. Have you acted justly? Will you act justly these high holidays so that 7.5 million Immunocompromised Americans shall live? 

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Elul. Have you acted justly? Will you act justly these high holidays so that 7.5 million Immunocompromised Americans shall live? 

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Continuing business as usual is our quickest means of Eugenics

Who have you helped this year?  Did they need to risk their lives to receive help? Have you neutralized  your help with unnecessary risk?

A life expectancy of 65 years for indigenous American males , Down 7 years in the past 2, happened because everyday people wanted to feel normal. Those in the nation with the ability  to inhabit  more “normal” spaces did so,  and lowered the life expectancy of their neighbors. Everywhere.

Latino people were exposed casually to Covid in the general population Then hid in their multigenerational homes from ice and could not demand safe working environments. Their life expectancy fell 4-5 years.

This past wave we had, #7, was 20% shorter in duration that it would have because “the fragile among us are no longer here.”

Someone Immunocompromised has a 20 TIMES higher rate of death than an able bodied person.

An organ transplant recipient has a 485 times higher chance of dying , about 1/10 with full vacination. They are dying of Covid non contact. In the hospital, from amounts of Covid that finds them. It finds them 80 times more often. They don’t leave  their hospital room to catch Covid.

The reproduction rate is 18.6 people sick for every one case. These everyone is going to get sick” waves kills my demographic really effectively. There is no preventative medicine for us. Only 8 percent of monoclonal  antibodies go to the Immunocompromised and almost no has gone to African Americans. Hospitals systems including OHSU do not have Evusheld and tell you to look elsewhere. No more was bought. There were 2 million doses for 7.5 million patients, distributed by lottery to those with roughy a 25% chance of dying from an infection. They did not even have enough for that population.

The reality is that any working monoclonal antibody can be used preventatively like a vaccine in people like me. It’s just not worth the money.

You might  not be able to help me with that. You may not be able to get a doctor to take an African American woman with long Covid seriously. You might not be able to make sure everyone can get good nutrition.

You can stand In the street and yell about the one issue that dwarfs all other inequities. It is kindness to mask for others. It is justice for ALL shulls to have a mask mandate, since kindness is a suggestion and justice is something you pursue so that we ALL may live.

-Mikha’el

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Starting in the sixteenth century, Jewish mystics began to assign themes to each day during the Counting of the Omer.  Using seven of the ten sefirot (sefirah, singular), they set up a schedule in order to focus on various aspects of God.  Each sefirah has many characteristics and association.
The Omer counts seven weeks of seven days, so each week has one of the seven “lower” aspects. Within each week each day is assigned an aspect. So Sunday was Day One of the Omer, so it was Hesed b’Hesed — lovingkindness within lovingkindness. That would be the intention or kavanah for that day. Today, Tuesday, is the third day, so it is Tifaret in Hesed, or balance and beauty in lovingkindness. See Shir Tikvah’s siddur on pages 48-53 for Rabbi Ariel’s framework for counting the days this way of ascending the path from Mitzrayim to Sinai.

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After the Second Temple was destroyed the purpose for the counting of the Omer shifted from a harvest. Celebration to one with a spiritual meaning.  Shavuot transformed from an agricultural festival to the celebration of God giving the Torah at Sinai.  Counting the Omer became the time to reflect and prepare for this revelation as we move from Pesah to Shavuot, from the end of slavery to entering a new relationship with the Creator.

Teach us to number our days,
that we may obtain a wise heart. (Psalms 90:12)

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An Omer is a measure of grain, a sheaf of grain.  An Omer of the first crop, barley, was brought to the Temple in Jerusalem at Pesah.
You shall bring an omer of the first fruits of your hatv st to the priest.  He shall wave the Omer before God to be accepted for you.  (Leviticus 23:10-11)
The next harvest after the barley was the wheat harvest, an even more important grain in the diet of early Israelites.  Torah tells us to count from the first day of the barley offering for 49 days, plus one.
And from the day on which you bring the sheaf of elevation offering — the day after the Shabbat — you shall count off fifty days.  They must be complete.  You must count until the day after the seventh week — fifty days; then you shall bring an offering of new grain to God.  (Leviticus 23:15-16)

This counting of the 49 days is called the counting of the Omer. For us now, the fiftieth day marks the festival Shavuot.