The more things change, the more they stay the sa...
Monday, 30 April 2012
Saturday, 28 April 2012
Religion items of note in the Times this weekend:OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR "God and Man in Tennessee" by AMY GREENE"EARLIER this month state senators in Tennessee approved an update to our sex-education law that would ban teachers from discussing hand-holding, which it categorizes as “gateway sexual activity.” The bill came fast on the heels of a new state law that effectively allows creationism to be taught in our classrooms. Though he voiced misgivings, our governor, Bill Haslam, refused to veto it..." IT...
No, comedian Jimmy Kimmel is not a Jew. He is a Catholic. Wikipedia explains, "He is Roman Catholic and, as a child, served as an altar boy. Kimmel is of German and Irish descent on his father’s side and Italian descent on his mother’s side."Kimmel performed 4-28-2012 at the White House Correspondents' dinner where he poked fun at Washington politicians.Kimmel has had a relationship with the Jewish comedian Sarah Silverman that began in 2002. Wikipedia...
The Talmud has seven whole Tractates in the division called "Women" and one of them is over 1000 pages in the English Translation. For starters check out tractates Yebamoth and Kethuboth (Soncino Babylonian Talmud Yebamoth, 1072 pages and Soncino Babylonian Talmud Kethuboth, 877 pages in the Kindle editions).And remember that about the contents of the Talmud, the saying goes, "Turn and turn it for you will find everything in it" --...
Friday, 27 April 2012
No, superstar singer and dancer Madonna is not a Jew. She was born and brought up Catholic. However in recent years she has been linked to the Jewish mystical practice called Kabbalah.On Madonna's 2005 album, "Confessions on a Dance Floor" the tenth track is controversial because it is called Isaac and contains allusions to the Kabbalah. Rabbis in Israel (mistakenly) thought Madonna was trying to cash in on the good name of Isaac Luria, the Ari,...
Thursday, 26 April 2012
Soncino Talmud Rosh HashanahSoncino Talmud TaanithSoncino Talmud Megillah and ShekalimSoncino Talmud Moed KatanSoncino Talmud HagigahSoncino Talmud YebamothAll of them are on sale now. Don't wait another minute. The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in EnglishGet our entire list: Talmudic Books for Kindle on the Talmud, Bible, Kabbalah and Pra...
Reported from the Srugim blog via a nice summary-translation by Life in Israel "Rav Amar And Rav Sharki get Into It At Kotel About Hallel." There have been lots of interesting events, incidents and news stories regarding Yom HaAtzmaut, but the one I find most interesting is the one regarding the tefilla led by Rav Sharki at the Kotel last night.Rav Uri Sharki , head of the beis medrash of Machon Meir, started, a few years ago, leading a festive holiday...
Wednesday, 25 April 2012
For Yom Haatzmaut, Israel Independence Day, here is how you may legitimately add to your siddur using a "liturgical loophole."The Artscroll Siddur has personal prayers for livelihood and for forgiveness that "during the silent Shemoneh Esrei one may insert" into the paragraph of shema koleinu (p. 108 in shacharit in some editions).If you use that siddur, or any prayerbook, and if you do wish to follow the advice therein, our recommendation is that...
Here is a poetic prayer for Yom Haatzmaut from Israel. (Hat tip to Menahem Mendel who has links to the other relevant and important sources for the IID liturgy as wel...
על הניסים ועל הפורקן ועל הגבורות ועל התשועות ועל המלחמות שעשית לאבותינו בימים ההם בזמן הזה
Tuesday, 24 April 2012
No Mitt Romney is not a Jew. He is a Mormon.There are those who argue that Romney is not even a Christian because Mormons are not Christians. That is a question that the Mormon Church has cleverly blurred since the 1980s. (See the text that we bolded in the article below.)Though he used the term only once in his 2007 "Faith in America" speech, an Indiana University professor argues that Romney's oration was a quintessential Mormon statement....
Monday, 23 April 2012
Originally posted 10/30/05...There was a shouting match this past Shabbat morning at the 8:30 minyan at the Bnai Yeshurun synagogue in Teaneck. The Gabbai added the single word sheteheh to the Prayer for the State of Israel. That meant he said that we prayed that the Lord protect Israel and that the State will be the first flowering of our redemption -- instead of praying that the Lord protect it because it is the beginning of our redemption.The...
We wrote several books on the history and development ancient Jewish prayer. The more we worked carefully and seriously on the textual evidence, the less certain we were of the conventional history of our religious texts and rituals.A while ago we read about a ritual and a text, not from 2000 or 3000 years ago. The so-called Serenity Prayer was first uttered less than 100 years ago.And the short of it is, according to this story below from the...
Saturday, 21 April 2012
David Assaf (in his wonderful Hebrew blog "Oneg Shabbat") writes at some length and detail about how a few 19th century rabbis apparently permitted speaking on a telephone on Shabbat.He ends up with a "that was then, this is now" contrast citing a rabbinic wall poster that was seen in Givat Shaul in Jerusalem a few weeks ago. The poster warns Jews that "iPhones, Android devices, iPads, Blackberrys, MP4 and the like" and all video players and Internet...
Friday, 20 April 2012
Yes, according to an article in the Times Magazine, "How Exercise Could Lead to a Better Brain" by Gretchen Reynolds, swimming does make you smarter.The value of mental-training games may be speculative, as Dan Hurley writes in his article on the quest to make ourselves smarter, but there is another, easy-to-achieve, scientifically proven way to make yourself smarter. Go for a walk or a swim. For more than a decade, neuroscientists and physiologists...
Thursday, 19 April 2012
The Holocaust now is memorialized in synagogues mainly peripherally through added events and tacked on references or via artwork in the building vestibule. We think that the Shoah must be more tightly integrated into the ritual and symbolism of every Jewish place of worship.We have pondered over the years how we could make this particular meaningful change in our synagogue. We want to add tasteful and appropriate symbolism for the Shoah in a more...
Tuesday, 17 April 2012
The Daily Beast has Peter Beinart's response to the recent Jonathan Rosen hatchet job on "The Crisis of Zionism" in the NYTBR. It's a level-headed reply, basically saying that Rosen did not properly review the book, with the opening salvo, "The telling thing about Jonathan Rosen’s New York Times review of my book, The Crisis of Zionism, is the lack of quotes. It’s much easier to turn a book into a cartoon when you ignore the text."It's best to read the book and make your own judgment. To help with that, The Times of Israel has a substantial and...
Monday, 16 April 2012
"Kevin Youkilis, known for his fiery disposition, was selected for his first All-Star Game."Yes, he is a "fiery" player and a "grinder" and Kevin Youkilis is a Jew.According to JTA, he has an honor: Top Jewish player in the 2000s, awarded by Jewish Major Leaguers, a suburban Boston-based organization that each year produces a set of trading cards of Jewish baseball players.We have few Jewish professional baseball players and we take pride in the...
Rabbi Levi in the Talmud Yerushalmi proposes a kind of Midrash, namely that in the verses of the Shema` one can find the principles of the Ten Commandments. [Translation by Tzvee Zahavy][II.A] Why do they recite these two passages [Deut. 6:4-9 and Deut. 11:13-21] each day? R. Levi and R. Simon [disputed this question].[B] R. Simon said, "Because in them we find mention of lying down and rising up [in Deut. 6:7 and Deut. 11:19. These are allusions...
Sunday, 15 April 2012
Our Best Selling Kindle book edition of "God's Favorite Prayers" by Tzvee Zahavy is free 4/16/2012 - a gift for you.Here is why on occasion we offer our Kindle books for free.In the Kindle Direct Publishing KDP Select program we are permitted to offer our books free for five days out of every three months. Kindle explains to us:KDP Select - a new option to make money and promote your book. When you make your book exclusive to Kindle for at least...
Will the War Against Religious Terrorism Ever End?Mark Juergensmeyer, in Terror in the Mind of God, lays out five ways that the reign of religious terror can come to an end. Let's consider each. First consider the end will come with the forceful eradication of the terrorists, what appears to have been the US response to the 9/11 attacks, continued with the more recent killing of OBL.Juergensmeyer outlines,The first scenario is one of a solution forged...
Saturday, 14 April 2012
Jonathan Rosen's review in the Times, "A Missionary Impulse" of the book ‘The Crisis of Zionism,’ by Peter Beinart, is a total hatchet job.Rosen is the editorial director of Nextbook, which seems at first to give him some credentials to review this book, but he is also the author, most recently, of “The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature” which cancels his credentials for this review. He is a published expert in birding, and a memoir...
One Day Sunday 4/15 Get two Free Kindle Talmudic BooksDefine Judaism: Ten Seminars by Tzvee ZahavyEleazar: Rabbi, Priest, Patriarch by Tzvee Zahavyand one more at sale price An Anthology from the Talmud Yerushalmi Berakhot by Tzvee ZahavyLinks to all...Talmudic Books for Kindle on the Talmud, Bible, Kabbalah and Prayer The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in Engl...
Thursday, 12 April 2012
Jenna Weissman Joselit asks at HuffPost, "Do These Amazing Jews Have 'Displaced Talmudic Energy?'" If we bought the analysis referred to in the article about talented contemporary Jews, we would begin to refer to this syndrome as DTE. Alas we do not buy the theory.The Talmud is a literature with distinctive contents and ways of thinking about the world. If it was a source of "energy" we would be among the first to market Talmud-Water or Talmud-Bracelets...
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