New Yorker Cartoon: The Origin of Midrash

Hat tip to Barak.

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Free Kinnos Kinnot Lamentations Elucidations for Tisha B'Av

Reuven Brauner wrote to us from Raanana, Israel about his publication on the lamentations (Hebrew: kinnot or kinnos) for Tisha B'Av, "Key Notes for Kinnos." The work is available in PDF format for free downloading at http://www.halakhah.com/:

The Tisha B'Av poems of lament, the Kinnos, like all our Piyyutim and Selichos, were written in a poetic language and style containing hinted references to verses in Tanach, stories in the Talmud and Midrashim, and other historical incidents like the Crusades. They are difficult to comprehend and appreciate by even the most knowledgeable modern speaker or student of Hebrew, not to mention those who are not fluent in the Holy Tongue.

What chance is there for most of us to fully understand the depths of their messages of sadness and despair, prayer and hope?

In a modest attempt to rectify a part of this problem, I have selected a few key words and phrases from each Kinnoh and provided a flash of information regarding their definitions and references in hope that the reader will be able obtain a measure of meaning from and appreciation for what he or she is reading during the services of this day of fasting and repentance.

This work I call A Few Key Notes on Kinnos. It has been designed to be used as a sort of quick reference guide and companion volume in conjunction with a proper Sefer Kinnos.

I have also added some brief prefatory remarks regarding the authors of the various Kinnos, and some other background material of interest.

The information in this monograph is based primarily on the work on the Kinnos of the great liturgical researcher and scholar, the late Dr. Daniel Goldschmidt, his footnotes and comments, which was published by Mossad Harav Kook and which I highly recommend.

44 Talmudic Books for Kindle | The Amazing 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English | Cosmology and Religion meet in Whence and Wherefore | God's Favorite Prayers

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Politics Derailed the Film about Cyrus the Great

The Cyrus Cylinder is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, through August 4, 2013. This reminds us...

From my post of 1/29/2010: Cyrus was supposed to be the subject of a historical epic film. We wonder what ever happened to that film. Our best guess is that the film industry has closed ranks and decided that given the current political leadership in that country, there will be no film made that extols the culture of Persia, modern day Iran. Not surprising then, modern reality trumps ancient history.

Here is what we said in a blog post about Cyrus and the film - way back in March 2005...

Critics say that Russell Crowe and the movie Gladiator helped revive the Hollywood genre of the so-called sword and sandals historical epic. Warner Brothers released Troy, an adaptation of The Iliad, with Brad Pitt as Achilles. Universal made a film hurling the Spartans into battle against the Persians at the Battle of Thermopylae. Sony Pictures filmed a movie about Hannibal the Carthaginian general from the third century B.C.E.. Dino De Laurentiis produced a movie about Alexander the Great, co-financed by Universal and DreamWorks.

For the Jewish community this trend has been a mixed bag. In February 2004 Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, appeared. It is an epic retelling of twelve days of the life of Jesus. Because it implicates Jews in the death of Jesus, many feared that Gibson's film would be used by anti-Semites to trigger an onslaught of hatred and violence against Jews here in the US and around the world.

But there is reason for Jews and for all proponents of multiculturalism to be more sanguine about this revived sword and sandals fashion in film. In particular, a London-based company, co-owned by Marinah Embiricos, a relative of the Aga Khan and a member of the Greek shipping family that controls the Embiricos Group, has teamed with the Sultan of Brunei to finance a multi-million dollar film about Cyrus the Great.

These backers want to tell the story of Cyrus not just for the entertainment value. They believe that their film will inspire goodwill and world peace.

The title character, Cyrus the Great, lived from 580-529 BCE. Notably he founded the Achaemenian empire in Persia. Impressively, more than 2500 years ago, as emperor he freed the slaves in his empire.

Additionally, Cyrus has been admired by history as an enlightened liberator, not a heroic conqueror, because of his tolerance and respect for the customs and religions of every region of his great empire. Some might argue that Cyrus was the founder of multiculturalism.

From a global point of view, Cyrus was a trailblazer of epic proportions. A decree of Cyrus' social and political views inscribed on a clay cylinder, now in the British Museum, has been described as the first declaration of human rights. The pronouncement concerning his enlightened goals and policies has been recognized as a charter of the rights of nations. A replica of the cylinder is displayed at the United Nations. It declares,
History especially records that Cyrus was very good for the Jews. When he conquered Babylonia in 539 BCE he allowed the Jews to return to Judea. The Hebrew Bible records the Israelite perspective on his great magnanimity at the beginning of the book of Ezra,

. . .When my soldiers in great numbers peacefully entered Babylon... I did not allow anyone to terrorize the people... I kept in view the needs of people and all its sanctuaries to promote their well-being... Freed all the slaves... I put an end to their misfortune and slavery (referring to the Jews and other religious minorities). The Great God has delivered all the lands into my hand; the lands that I have made to dwell in a peaceful habitation...

The Persian Kurash Prism tells of this same multicultural generosity by Cyrus for many peoples and sanctuaries, and from the Persian perspective, Ms. Embiricos, the primary backer of the film, has said that she wants her production to promote harmony among all the world's religions. "We wanted to send out the message that people should be tolerant of each other's religion. It was a very spiritual time and we want to rekindle this. It is not that I want to make movies - I want to make this particular film."

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be accomplished, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing: "Thus says Cyrus king of Persia: The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he has charged me to build him a house at Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whoever is among you of all his people, may his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and rebuild the house of the Lord, the God of Israel -- he is the God who is in Jerusalem; and let each survivor, in whatever place he sojourns, be assisted by the men of his place with silver and gold, with goods and with beasts, besides freewill offerings for the house of God which is in Jerusalem." Then rose up the heads of the fathers' houses of Judah and Benjamin, and the priests and the Levites, every one whose spirit God had stirred to go up to rebuild the house of the Lord which is in Jerusalem; and all who were about them aided them with vessels of silver, with gold, with goods, with beasts, and with costly wares, besides all that was freely offered.

I am Kurash [ "Cyrus" ], King of the World, Great King, Legitimate King, King of Babilani, When I entered Babilani as a friend and when I established the seat of the government in the palace of the ruler under jubilation and rejoicing, Marduk, the great Lord, induced the magnanimous inhabitants of Babilani to love me, and I was daily endeavoring to worship him.... As to the region from as far as Assura and Susa, Akkade, Eshnunna, the towns Zamban, Me-turnu, Der as well as the region of the Gutians, I returned to these sacred cities on the other side of the Tigris the sanctuaries of which have been ruins for a long time, the images which used to live therein and established for them permanent sanctuaries. I also gathered all their former inhabitants and returned them to their habitations. Furthermore, I resettled upon the command of Marduk, the great Lord, all the gods of Kiengir and Akkade whom Nabonidus had brought into Babilani to the anger of the Lord of the gods, unharmed, in their former temples, the places which make them happy.  

Evidently there is now some good news for the Jews from the world of film.

All who support tolerance and peace in our precarious world must herald with enthusiasm the coming epic about the reign of Cyrus the Great.
The First Declaration of Human Rights By Cyrus The Great (The Cyrus Cylinder at the British Museum)

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Free Awesome Torah and Haftorah Chanting Apps from PocketTorah

Barak forwarded this from Eytan Kurshan (first posted on 4/17/12)...

Hi everyone,

I wanted to let you know that I was involved in the creation of an app which has just launched! It is called PocketTorah and is available here. 

The app contains a recording of every aliyah in the Torah as well as all Haftorot. If you'd like to hear me, I recorded the parshiyot from Tazria to Acharei-Mot.

There is also a separate module containing recordings of just the trope of Torah, Haftorah, and Megilah....

Congrats to Rabbi Charlie Schwartz and Russel Neiss for putting this all together.

Eytan

We downloaded and reviewed the apps. They are awesome.

"PocketTorah is an application that  will provide the user the ability to learn the weekly Torah and Haftarah portion anywhere, at any time, on any mobile device or computer for free."

Denominational Alert! These two apps obviously were designed for Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Jews. There are women Torah readers recorded on the apps, so officially they are not suitable for Orthodox users.

Learn to chant

1. Download for iOS
2. Download for Android
3. Use it on any computer in a web browser using Chrome or Safari.

Ads: Talmudic Books for Kindle on the Talmud, Bible, Kabbalah and Prayer
The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in English

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Summer Sale -- We Reduced Prices on Our Talmudic Books

Summer Sale. Wow. Our Talmudic Kindle Book Prices are Reduced!

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Kosher Talmud: Hullin $.99

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God's Favorite Prayers $2.99

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Define Judaism: Ten Seminars $2.99

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God Bless You: The Origins of Jewish Prayers and Blessings $2.99

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Eleazar: Rabbi, Priest, Patriarch $2.99

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Kosher Prayers: Talmud Yerushalmi Berakhot $2.99

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Rashi: The Greatest Exegete $.99

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Six People You Meet in Synagogue $.99

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Whence and Wherefore $2.99

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Without Wearing Neckties, Israeli Jewish adults attending synagogue 'happy and healthier'

Even though the ordinary Israeli who attends synagogue does not even own a necktie, a social scientist has "proven" that "Israeli Jewish adults attending synagogue 'happy and healthier'"

In fact the researcher involved already knew the answers before he even conducted his "studies." Professor Jeff Levin has spent his career "proving" the health benefits of religion for the world. There is zero chance at this stage of the game that he would come up with a conclusion to disprove his base assumptions.

We are shocked by this discovery though for a specific reason. We've been criticized for discussing in our "Dear Rabbi" column a rule requiring tie-wearing by Jews in a local synagogue if they want to receive a Torah-honor on Sabbaths and Holidays.

Here's a nugget from a letter to the editor of the Jewish Standard that fervently defends the wonderful meaning of the tie-wearing practice by Dr. Reuben Gross:

Rabbi Zahavy takes a strong stand with the congregant. He labels the shul’s dress code as “nonsense.” This is hardly appropriate language coming from a rabbi about a shul’s policy, which follows the dictates of no less a person than the prophet Ezra (6th century BCE), who enacted the rule that individuals should give special “kavod” (honor) to the Sabbath, marked by their change of clothing.

Truly we did not know that Ezra the Scribe (usually not called prophet) knew about neckties in the 6th century BCE.

And so we wonder how Jews in Israel who attend shul regularly can be happier and healthier even though they do not own or wear ties.

Or let's be positive here. Can you imagine just how happy and healthy these synagogue attenders would be in Israel if they wore neckties?

Perhaps we can start a new program to promote even greater health and happiness in Israel: Neckties Without Borders for Religious Sabras.

Here is a news report on the impressive research on the health benefits of attending synagogue:

Israeli Jewish adults, who go to synagogue regularly, pray often, and think of themselves as religious are much healthier and happier than their non-religious counterparts, two new studies have suggested.

Baylor University researcher Jeff Levin, Ph.D, said that commitment to Jewish religious belief and practice is strongly associated with greater physical and psychological well-being.

One study used 2010 data on 1,849 Jewish adults from the Israeli sample of the European Social Survey and has been published in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, an official journal of the American Psychological Association.

The other study used 2009-10 data on 991 Jewish adults from the Israeli sample of the International Social Survey Programme's Religion III survey and has been published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. (ANI)

Rabbi Neckties

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JStandard: Dear Rabbi on Standing for the Sh'ma and Wearing a Tie in Synagogue

Your Talmudic Advice Column by Rabbi Dr. Tzvee Zahavy

Dear Rabbi,

I don’t understand why we Jews in most synagogues sit when we recite one of our most important prayers – the Sh’ma. I have heard that it is permitted to recite this core affirmation of our faith either sitting or standing. Why then do we most commonly choose to sit when reciting it?

Wants to take a stand

Bergenfield

Dear Wants:

Other rabbis offer social and historical reasons to explain the postures that we prefer for praying. I prefer to listen to the contents of each prayer and understand how its distinct personality dictates its proper postures.

Consider, by contrast, that because of its personality we do stand to recite the Amidah. That prayer is a formal set of rabbinic blessing-declarations, containing praises and petitions that express a mixture of theological, personal, communal, political, and national beliefs and aspirations.

When I recite the words, to me it seems as if I am a priest performing a repeated ceremonial rite at the altar in the Temple in Jerusalem. Just as a priest stands up to perform his official public actions, it makes sense to me that I stand up and perform this prayer.

I find in the Sh’ma an altogether other form and personality. It’s easy to see that this expression of beliefs and values comes directly from carefully chosen Torah passages that emphasize a special subset of Jewish values and beliefs. The texts emphasize that we should love our one God, who keeps accounts and rewards and punishes us based on our actions. The passages further underscore that we should patronize our scribes — that is, we should wear their t’fillin on our bodies and affix their mezzuzot to our homes.

To me the Sh’ma encompasses the personality of Torah study and the values of the scribes who write our texts and who keep our accounts. Study, writing, and accounting are done almost always while sitting down at a table or desk. And so, since the contents and personality of our prayer dictates the posture of our prayer, I find it altogether fitting and proper that we should sit down like scribes and students to recite the Sh’ma.

Dear Rabbi,

I am sad for my good friend, a respected community leader and a member of a local Orthodox synagogue for many years, who does not like to wear a tie. His synagogue follows an idiosyncratic rule that no matter how nicely dressed he may be, a man who does not wear a tie cannot receive an aliyah to the Torah on a Shabbat or a holiday. So my friend has not received an aliyah to the Torah on any of those days for many years, even on the special occasions of his parents’ yahrzeits. It hurts me to see him suffer this arbitrary form of petty ostracism and humiliation. What should I do?

Fit to be tied

Teaneck

Dear Fit:

Common sense would dictate that you and your friend not go to places where you feel uncomfortable, even if it is a mere trifling practice that creates a sense of annoyance and intimidation for you. You know that an Orthodox synagogue must follow the many laws and customs that govern who should receive an aliyah. For example, a Cohen receives the first aliyah, and a Levite gets the second. A man who has a yahrzeit often gets precedence, and so does the father of a newborn child and a groom before his wedding. Major donors to a synagogue get some preferential treatment, as do important rabbis. I’ve noticed also that the gabbai who allocates aliyot gets his fair share of them too. And a woman is not called to the Torah at all.

You may know that some non-Orthodox Jews find the exclusion of women from this process of public honors to be troubling or even offensive. Orthodox spokesmen point out that women receive due respect and honor in their community, just not by receiving aliyot.

Forty years ago, when I asked Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik about the possibility of women receiving aliyot in an Orthodox minyan, he quipped to me, “When women write the checks, then they will receive the aliyahs.” The Rav dodged my inquiry. I understood his reply to be a clever observation or a social comment, but not any halachic guidance.

Now, the synagogue that you describe in your question definitely created for itself a heightened odd character when it adopted an additional “tie rule” to further govern its members’ roles and aliyah-rights. Even if its eccentric practice is an approved requirement of synagogue committees, officers, and boards, it still fits the category of a socially undesirable “because-we-say-so” intimidation.

That said, you and your friend may be able to ignore and rise above this nonsense if you keep in mind that Moses, King Solomon, Jeremiah, Rabbi Akiva, Maimonides, the Vilna Gaon, and many other great non-tie-wearing-Jews would not be offered a Torah honor if they somehow, via time and space travel, showed up in your suburban shul.

The Dear Rabbi column offers timely advice based on timeless Talmudic wisdom. It aspires to be equally respectful and meaningful to all varieties and denominations of Judaism. You can find it here on the first Friday of the month. Send your questions to DearRabbi@jewishmediagroup.com

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Is the New Dunkin’ Doughnut, Egg and Bacon Breakfast Sandwich Kosher?

CBS reports that there is a New Dunkin’ Doughnut, Egg and Bacon Breakfast Sandwich.

It's made from a glazed donut, fried egg and bacon. And it has only 360 calories.

No, it is not kosher? It has bacon.

It's also a violation of improperly mixing up the distinct categories of the universe. Desserts, must not be mixed with real foods.

I mean what next? Cupcake burgers? Fries with whipped cream?

And lastly, yuck.

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Michelle Bachmann Warns us that Minneapolis - St. Paul are the new Sodom - Gomorrah

The Daily Currant reported last week that Michelle Bachman has threatened to "Leave Minnesota Over Marriage Equality" because the new Twin Cities are now just like the old Twin Cities of the Bible. This is funny stuff (5/13/13):

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann threatened to leave Minnesota today if the state goes ahead with its plans to legalize gay marriage.

In an interview with a local television station, the conservative firebrand said she believes God will destroy Minneapolis once the legislation is enacted, and wants to be far away when the reckoning happens.

"The Bible is very clear on this issue," she told KSTP-TV this morning. "Homosexuality is a sin, and God will punish communities that support it.

"Sodom and Gomorrah thought they could defy the will of God, and we all know what happened to them. If the governor signs this legislation into law the Minneapolis-St. Paul region will be next.

"I have a friend from Eden Prairie who's already packed everything she owns into her car and is driving out to Montana as we speak. These are very scary times. I don't want my family to be the last ones out."

...Although none of the other states has suffered from Biblical-like destruction, Minnesota's most outspoken voice in Congress told anchor Bruce Nolan that it's only a matter of time.

"I don't know what it will be, Bruce," she said. "It could be an earthquake. It could be a volcano. It could be some sort of flesh eating virus. All I know is that God does not let homosexuality go unpunished, and Minneapolis is next in line for his wrath.

"It breaks my heart to think that the Democrats are willing to play politics with the lives of so many Minnesotans. And I hate to leave so many of my constituents behind, but I urge them - please, please - follow my example and get your loved ones to safety before it's too late."

In a subsequent interview with The Daily Currant, Bachmann says she's not sure where she'll go if she leaves, but is seriously considering Oregon as a possibility since its constitution bans same sex marriage.

"I've heard wonderful things about Eugene," she says, "and I think (Democratic) Congressman (Peter) DeFazio may be vulnerable to a challenge. They're the nicest people in the world out there. I'm sure we'd be welcomed with open arms."

Update: The governor signed the bill ("Minnesota Legalizes Gay Marriage: Gov. Mark Dayton Signs Bill Into Law") and, so far, no destruction.

Clarification: This story is a joke.

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Top Ten Reasons We Eat Dairy on Shavuot

It seems we can never remember exactly why we eat dairy on Shavuot. Multiple thanks to our good friend who researched and thought about this question and sent us a retrospective for this year and reminder for years to come.

After immersing myself and my family in milk, cheese, eggs and noodles for the past two days, the question remained, why? Why do we eat dairy on Shavuot? Here are the top ten reasons that I came up with.

My first thought was to look for some Biblical or Talmudic reason and for that, I turned to "The Jewish Book of Why", which gave three reasons:

1. "Dairy foods should be eaten on the day the Tora was received on Mount Sinai because the words in the Song of Songs, 'honey and milk under thy lips' (4:11) imply that, like milk products and honey, the words of the Tora are pleasant and good for our spirits".

2. From Exodus 23:19: "'The choicest first fruits shalt thou bring to the House of the Lord. Thou shalt not cook a kid in its mother's milk.' The 'first fruits'... refers to the Shavuot holiday. The second part... is taken to mean that the two main dishes to be served at the holiday meal are to be first a dairy dish, followed later by a meat dish".

3. According to a legend repeated in "The Jewish Book of Why", the Israelites returning from Mount Sinai did not have enough time so slaughter an animal and instead made the quickest possible meal, which was dairy.

I don't find any of these explanations convincing, so I turned to the experts. We are, after all, talking about food, so where better to look than in Jewish cookbooks? So, here we go:

Joan Nathan, noting the origin of Shavuot as a harvest festival in the iconic "The Jewish Holiday Kitchen", asks "how do dairy dishes fit into a barley harvest festival?" and she gives the following explanations:

4. "At this time of year...such foods are eaten because of the large amount of cheese produced. Churning and cheesemaking are common features of spring harvest festivals the world over, when goats, sheep, and cows begin to graze more and thus produce more milk."

But wait, there's more from Joan Nathan:

5. Psalm 68:16-17 refers to Mount Sinai as the "mountain of peaks (har gavnunim). She notes that gavnunim comes from the same root as gevinah, Hebrew for "cheese". "Thus (writes Joan Nathan), it could also be called Cheese Mountain, a common folk image."

6. Another reason Nathan cites is a follow-up to Reason #3, in which the Israelites returning to camp after receiving Ten Commandments or Torah, found that they had been gone so long that their milk turned sour and was made into cheese.

7. Nathan cites another rabbinic source which says "the Israelites fasted while they went to receive the Ten Commandments and returned so hungry that they drank milk immediately rather than go through the long process of preparing a meat meal."

Marlene Sorosky's "Fast and Festive Meals for the Jewish Holidays" refers to Reason #4 above, but suggests there is an abundance of milk, rather than cheese, and to another explanation

8. that "the Hebrews abstained from eating meat the day before they received the Torah".

9. Sorosky also suggests that "perhaps it's because the whiteness of milk is symbolic of the purity of the Torah".

So I offer Reason #10. Yes. Let's eat dairy meals because they're fun to make, and when the holiday is over, you can work off all that cheesecake and those blintzes.

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Book of Ruth - Free for Shavuot

From our collaborator Reuven Brauner:

Hi Everyone,

Shavuos is coming up and that means Sefer Ruth.

In order to facilitate your learning of this important work, traditionally read on Chag Matan Torah, I have included the link to my Hadgashas Hane’emar version on halakhah.com which should make this book’s understanding easier, quicker and, maybe even, more fun.

Please feel free to copy it, print it out and pass it on to all your friends. Enjoy.

Happy Rosh Chodesh, have a Good Shabbos and Good Yom Tov

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Is Jonathan Krohn Jewish?

No and yes. According to the Times, the young (former) conservative is being brought up as a Christian. So no, definitely Jonathan Krohn is not Jewish by religion.

Update: At 17, Krohn was doing teshuvah - repenting his conservatism - i.e., he adopted liberal ideas and went to study philosophy at NYU. MSNBC reported in the video clip below, wherein Lawrence O'Donnell lauded him for converting to the "bright side".

Update 2: The Times reported on Krohn: "The Growing Pains of Jonathan Krohn" (4/28/2013)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As to his religion, according to the Times, Jonathan Krohn's mother was Jewish before she converted to Christianity. According to Jewish law, Jonathan is a Jew. Appropriately, the Times is silent on the issue of whether his Baptist parents gave him a bris. It seems the young Christian conservative did not have a bar mitzvah but he did get a present,

He received a computer from his maternal grandfather for his 13th birthday. “In the Jewish culture in which my mom was raised, 13 is a big deal,” he said. “But since I’m a Jewish Christian, I don’t do a bar mitzvah.” (Decades ago, his mother became a Baptist.)

Even in parentheses, the fact that the boy has a Jewish mother, makes him a (latent) member of the tribe. In 2009 we said: We do envy this young man who has concluded at such an early age that the world is precisely the way it should be, that progress is not needed, that government ought to be curtailed and that Rush Limbaugh is NOT a big fat idiot. We wish we had learned all that by the time we were 14. Even now we are struggling to rid ourselves of the desire for progress and the esteem with which we hold those who dedicate their lives to public service in the quest for better government and leadership in our country. //reposted from 3/8/09 because this little feller is finally talking a bit of sense//

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Top Ten List for Seder Leaders

Passover is coming... Time for our top ten tips for your Seder...

Most folks consider preparing and eating the festive meal to be the central focus of their Passover Seder. There's not much advice that we can offer to help improve upon that.

However, we have always had fun conducting the reading of the Haggadah. We learned this art as a child by watching our father masterfully conduct the communal synagogue Seders as the rabbi of the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan.

Sad. We will miss dad this year. Happy. We greet a new grandson this year. Barak and Miriam just had a boy!

So in the spirit of the season of rebirth and freedom, let us try to help free you from the dread of the task of conducting your family Seder this year.

If you follow these ten tips you will get rave reviews of your Seder from all of your guests. Guaranteed.

1. Know your Haggadah. This year, spend an hour before Passover reading through your favorite version of the Haggadah. Sort out the rituals (like Kiddush), the liturgies (like the Hallel) and the learning (like the ma nishtanah and what follows). Make marginal notes or use a highlighter.

2. Know your guests.
Find out who is coming (yes, Seder leaders need to know that). Think through what their skills are and what role they can play in the Seder. Remember some guests may be simple, some wise, some won't know how to ask a question. Try to meet the needs of everyone assembled.

3. Make a recitation assignment list (in your head or on paper).
The Best Ever Seder will be a collaboration of all the guests. Those who can't read Hebrew can read a passage from the Haggadah in translation (English, Russian or otherwise) or perform another essential task.

4. Prepare props for colorful explanations.
The matzo, maror, haroseth, shank bone, egg all have familiar symbolic meanings worth mentioning. You can include other props of your choosing for added flavor to the event: use miniature pyramids, toy or paper or chocolate frogs, relevant family memorabilia or a special illustrated Haggadah (hold it up to show it off or pass it around).

5. Buy toys for the children. Give them something nice at the retrieval of the afikomen or distribute something small anytime they start to lose interest.

6. Tell a (short) story (or two). During the reading of the Haggadah tell about how your family matriarch or patriarch conducted the Seder or prepared the meal. Reminiscing in small doses adds great flavor to your production.

7. Be dramatic.
The Seder is a drama. The guests are the actors. Yemenite Jews have the custom to dress up and walk around the table to reenact the exodus. Even if you are not much of an actor, at the very least, you can talk about how other people are dramatic.

8. Don't be melodramatic.
You and your guests all are on stage. This is not the time to bring up old family arguments. If you do, your Seder might become the "last supper" that you eat together.

9. Have the matriarchs (of the families) greet Elijah at the door.
Watch as the wine in Elijah's cup changes color as he sips from it. Talk about loss and the mystical redemption.

10. Sing the songs with gusto.
Sing the closing songs in all the ways you can remember. You can sing Chad Gadya in Yiddish, if someone knows how, or you can add the animal sounds. Have fun -- these are supposed to be rowdy songs that you sing after drinking four cups of wine.

These tips may be self evident to you -- or they may be new. Whatever the case, good luck and have a happy and kosher Pesach. [annual repost]

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Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik's Haggadah for the Passover Seder by Rabbi M. Genack

Rabbi Menahem Genack published, The Seder Night: An Exalted Evening: The Passover Haggadah: With a Commentary Based on the Teachings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. A Haggadah in English and Hebrew (2009).

We think it's a great book and happily added it both to our collection of Haggadahs and to our library of works about the teachings of my teacher, the Rav, Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. It is a handsome and professional volume, clearly written and packed with content based on the Rav's torah teachings.

Genack was known as one of the best students in the class when I was in the Rav's shiur back in college and in rabbinical school. He's pursued a career of Jewish service and teaching and continues over the decades to shine as an exemplary disciple of the Rav.

Like most books that present the Rav's torah, this one approaches the task with great reverence and nostalgia. Those are great characteristics for me and for the other several thousand students who personally sat at the feet of the Rav and gave themselves over to him as his uncritical disciples. Genack writes his condensed accounts of the Rav's lectures with the clarity that I need to hear again the Rav speaking. He was a charismatic teacher with a wealth of learning that he imparted in many ways.

In his public talks, the Rav emphasized the experiential side of Orthodox Judaism. He often spoke poetically, I think to prove two important points.

First, he wanted to prove a personal point, to show the world that he was not a cold Litvak, not just a product of the Lithuanian Yeshivas who valued only factual erudition and cold logic.

Second, he had a program in his work, to create and express a form of Orthodox Judaism that was on par with the other great religions of the world. For him that meant in his time and place and out of his training in Europe that he had to demonstrate the validity and fecundity of Orthodox Jewish religious experience. He believed that he was the Jewish Rudolph Otto or William James and that from his teachings the world would see that Orthodoxy stands proudly next to any form of the esteemed Protestant religions of the Old or New World.

The Rav had another mission in his teaching and preaching. That was to transmit the Brisker Torah, the innovative conceptual insights of his own and his family's heritage of learning. So the Rav sought to investigate the phenomenology of Orthodox Judaism, to seek out and abstract the core idea from each performance of the numerous commandments and from each recitation of the many prayers.

Rabbi Genack succeeds in presenting all sides of the Rav in his publication, though he does so without the kind of self consciousness that I have just evoked above.

But now for the other question. How does this book play in Peoria? How will people who were not long-time students of the Rav react to this book? This book is not for the ordinary Jew who never studied with the Rav and it's not for the non-Jewish scholar or layperson. A Reform or Conservative or even an Orthodox Jew who never knew the Rav would need much more translated from the insider's notes and nostalgia of this book to the vocabulary and syntax or religious discourse in its more common and less private forms.

All told, this is a very good work in its genre. //repost from 2009//

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‘The Cheesy TV Bible’ Mini-Series on the History Channel

The Times calls it, "a rickety, often cheesy spectacle that is calculated to play well to a certain segment of the already enlisted choir but risks being ignored or scorned in other quarters."

Well are they referring to the mini-series or the Bible itself? Hard to tell.

‘The Cheesy TV Bible’ Mini-Series on the History Channel begins tonight.

The Bible

History, Sunday nights at 8, Eastern and Pacific times; 7, Central time.

Produced for History by Lightworkers Media and Hearst Entertainment & Syndication. Created by Mark Burnett and Roma Downey; Mr. Burnett, Ms. Downey and Richard Bedser, executive producers; Dirk Hoogstra and Julian P. Hobbs, executive producers for History; Keith David, narrator; Hans Zimmer, composer.

WITH: Roma Downey (Mother Mary), Diogo Morgado (Jesus Christ), Darwin Shaw (Peter), Sebastian Knapp (John), Amber Rose Revah (Mary Magdalene), Greg Hicks (Pilate) and Simon Kunz (Nicodemus).

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Was Rashi the Greatest Bible Exegete?

Indeed, many scholars believe that Rashi was the greatest Bible exegete.

The paradigmatic master of medieval rabbinic commentary was Rashi (Rabbi Solomon b. Isaac, 1040-1105) a scholar from the north of France. While he is often credited with the move to “literal commentary” in medieval times, even a cursory study of his commentaries reveals how indebted he was to the rabbinic exegesis of the earlier classical compilations. With Rashi we witness the mature development of a new paradigm of interpretation. He delicately balances his interpretations between gloss and exposition. He picks at and edits the earlier Midrash materials and weaves together with them into his commentary the results of new discoveries, such as philology and grammar. His main proposition is hardly radical within rabbinism. He accepts that there is one whole Torah of Moses consisting of the oral and written traditions and texts. In his commentaries he accomplished the nearly seamless integration of the basics of both bodies of tradition.

You can purchase this book at Amazon by Maurice Liber, Rashi: The Greatest Exegete and read about Rashi and his work. We added a Foreword. Price: $0.99

Check Out 44 Talmudic Books
See the 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English
Ponder the Questions of Whence and Wherefore
Experience God's Favorite Prayers

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Five Free Kindle Books -Our Purim Promotion February 10

Make some noise about this, you can get these Free Amazon Kindle Books in Honor of Purim - on Sunday, February 10.

By Tzvee Zahavy 

• God's Favorite Prayers - Our Hot Best Seller
• God Bless You: The Origins of Jewish Prayers and Blessings
• Eleazar: Rabbi, Priest, Patriarch
• Define Judaism: Ten Seminars

And by Zev Zahavy

• Whence and Wherefore

Also on Kindle with a foreword by Tzvee Zahavy

• Rashi: The Greatest Exegete ($.99)

And get your copies of the Talmud in English - 36 volumes @ $.99 each!

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Requested Book Excerpt: The Mindful Meditation of Berkahot Blessings

Here is the much-requested excerpt from my book "God's Favorite Prayers"  ("The Meditator," pages 111-120) wherein I define just how the berakhot (blessings) of rabbinic Judaism constitute a complete system of mindful meditations.

Deborah sits in the synagogue visibly engaged in her prayers. She closes her eyes at times. She sways as she prays, rhythmically and persistently, but slowly, gently and with deliberation.You cannot tell just from these external cues that Deborah is a meditator. To know that, I need to probe and ask her about her innermost thoughts during her time in the synagogue and at many other times when she is out and about throughout the day. During her prayers, you need to know, is Deborah attentively introspective of her own needs and desires and those of her friends and loved ones? Does she see her dreams fulfilled? Is she accepting of her personal and spiritual shortcomings and failures? Is she aware of her own breathing and heartbeat and the air that swirls around her, the heft of her Siddur and the humming of her fellow daveners?Does Deborah recite one-hundred daily blessings with mindful recognition? Does she reach a state of compassion as she says the grace over her meals? 

I might describe the activity of meditation as “study or thinking intently and at length, as for spiritual purposes,” or as “contemplation of spiritual matters.”

But the ancient rabbis did not have a term to describe meditation, so they called the meditative dimension of prayer, “the service of the heart.” To them, that indicated an inner intellectual and emotional activity, which they located in the heart, since they could detect that as the organ which beats slower or faster depending on one’s state of mind. Ancient rabbis had no ideas of brain activity and surely had no devices to monitor it or methods to speak about it.

Today, there are indeed multiple ways that we use the term meditate to describe a person who practices meditation through a variety of activities that we may call meditative. It’s enough to make your head spin. Before I get to what goes on in and around the synagogue, consider for instance those meditators from the 1960s or 70s, who practiced a popular form of Transcendental Meditation (TM), Zen or other related types of meditation. Far outside of establishment places of worship—separate from synagogues and churches—they sought a regimen that would help them achieve a sensation that they could transcend or go beyond themselves. They sought to bend their consciousness by a variety of methods, such as by finding their mantra or via deliberation on gnomic Zen sayings, called koans.

The rapid spread in popularity of TM back then frightened organized religion. Some rabbis specifically declared it to be a forbidden form of idolatry. In 1978, the Lubavitcher Rebbe railed against the threats of meditative cults on the one hand, while on the other hand he called for Jewish doctors to develop a kosher form of therapeutic meditation. By that, he meant they should come up with an independent new course of meditative exercises within Jewish practice and based on Jewish principles or contents.

The rebbe’s suggestion about meditation has not much to do with what we are talking about. I have come here with you now—to the synagogue service—to present to you Deborah the meditator so you can get to know her. As I have learned in my own travels and quests, for Deborah, there is no reason to exit the synagogue or to abandon standard Jewish practices in order to discover ways to meditate. Deborah practices meaningful meditation at the core of her regular standard Jewish prayer and in her daily life through the ordinary texts and actions of her Jewish living.

Now, it is true that the rich meditative qualities of regular Jewish practice were not at all self-evident to me or to Deborah, at first. No Jewish teacher instructed her about them. She reached her understanding and practices through a journey of discovery, all her own and in several stages.

Deborah, at one time, went through a stressful period in her life. She sought ways and means to deal with her overwhelming, swirling anxieties that carried her through flights of manic euphoria to bouts of dark depression. She tried many techniques to take back control of her runaway consciousness. Fortunately, among them, Deborah trained in a course of mindfulness meditation, a derivative of Buddhist practices that seeks to foster clear awareness for an individual of the sensations of their present physical and mental state as it unfolds in the present moment.

As a mindful meditator, Deborah learned to observe more vividly the place she was in—the tones, shades, gradations and nuances of her present, her immediate exterior reality and the flowing progression of her inner thoughts and emotions.

She discovered, in the course of her training, one of the best-selling and most perceptive books on mindful meditation, a volume by Jon Kabat-Zinn, one of its leading proponents in the U.S. That book was Wherever You Go, There You Are. Now, although Kabat-Zinn is a Jew, he has no identifiable connections to Judaism. His insights are derived in the main from Eastern religions and practices. Deborah had to make all the connections back to her practices of Judaism on her own.

Over time, wherever Deborah went, including the synagogue, she became an accomplished mindful meditator. Deborah was able to moderate her own thoughts; to stand outside of them and observe the flow of her consciousness going by, much like a naturalist might observe the currents of a river.

When she came into the synagogue after training as a mindful meditator, Deborah started to find analogues to that style of meditation in the existing practices of her established Jewish rituals.

Accordingly, let’s see how Deborah embodies them as our synagogue archetype—the meditator—the practitioner of mindful blessings and intercessions of compassion.

On entering the synagogue as a meditator, Deborah realized that she was a practitioner of the meditations that we call blessings or, in Hebrew, berakhot. Deborah breathtakingly discovered new dimensions of her old prayers.

She found that a blessing is more than a formula of Hebrew words that have simple knowable meanings. In the past, she had thought that the fixed opening phrase of a berakhah, “Blessed art thou O Lord, our God, King of the Universe,” semantically expressed the speaker’s intention to bestow good wishes upon God or to exalt God, who is referred to in the formula by three names. Deborah learned this formula when she was two or three years old and hardly pondered the theological meaning or even the simple semantics of this phrase each time she recited it as an older child or as an adult.

So what new purpose or function of the berakhah formula did Deborah discover when she came back to reexamine it as a mature meditator? She saw that these recitations served for her as the known cues for many instances of her daily, periodic, repetitive or occasional mini-mindful meditations. These provided for Deborah meaningful guidance to the rush of her thoughts and to the meanderings of the awareness of her waking life.

Deborah the meditator recited her individual blessings when she ate her foods, performed her bodily functions, witnessed meteorological events, saw flowers, or heard good and bad news. She also recited blessings when she suspended the routines that maintained her daily subsistence and when she broke off from the flow of her living in the external world, that is, when she went off into the synagogue to engage in her hours of prayer. 

Here is a tabular summary of a small sample of many of the actions and occasions for which Deborah recited her mini-meditations, the blessings in her daily activities:

Blessed are You…	Purpose	Meditation
Who creates the fruit of the tree	Before eating a fruit	Mindful eating
Who creates the produce of the ground	Before eating a vegetable	Mindful eating
Who gives pleasant fragrance to fruits	Upon smelling fruits	Mindful sensing of nature
Who has withheld nothing from nature and has created in it beautiful creatures and trees for the enjoyment of human beings	Upon seeing flowering trees in their first seasonal bloom	Mindful sensing of the special beauty of nature
Who creates the fruit of the vine	Before drinking wine	Mindful drinking
Who brings forth bread from the earth	Before eating bread—a full meal	Mindful dining, for a full meal
Who commanded us to light the Sabbath/ holiday candles	After lighting the candles	Purposeful ritual, mindful of the passage of time
Who heals all flesh and performs wonders	After bathroom visits	Mindful of one’s body and health
Whose power and might fill the world	Upon witnessing thunder or a hurricane	Mindful of disruptive events of nature
Who is good and does good	For good news	Mindful of elevating emotions
Who is the true judge	For bad news	Mindful of  emotional trauma
Blessings in the synagogue	Opening or concluding paragraphs of liturgy	Mindful of the markers of the elements of prayer

There are three generally mentioned classical categories for sorting out all the blessings: (1) blessings of performance of a mitzvah (ritual acts), (2) blessings of bodily satisfaction (intake of foods, drinks, etc.) and (3) blessings of praise (liturgy).

As part of her mindful practice, these blessings functioned to demand of Deborah a meditative awareness of her person, her body and her immediate external world. For a simple example, she took the blessing she recites upon smelling fragrant fruit, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe who gives pleasant fragrance to fruits” (Koren Siddur, p. 1000) as a cue to be highly aware of her surroundings. She took another case, the formula she spoke before eating an apple, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe who creates the fruit of the tree,” as a cue to mindfully savor the taste and texture of her foods. In both cases, aspects of loving-kindness and compassion accompanied the awareness of the physical food.

These blessings served as triggers for Deborah. They told her to stop, to be mindful of her actions, to be thoughtful of what type of food she held  in her hand, how that food was to be regarded and classified, whether she was smelling it or eating it, and to recall what is “its correct berakhah.”

All forms of mindfulness heighten the practitioner’s moments of experience and elevate ordinary events from a background of awareness to a foreground of thinking. For Deborah, mindful occasions of blessings helped her savor her conscious awareness—the consistency and flavor, the origins and essences of her living.

Meir, a rabbi in the Talmud in the second century, spoke of his expectation for every Jew to experience each day one-hundred triggers of mindful meditation—a life punctuated daily by one-hundred blessings.

To be clear, this mindful meditation through berakhot that we have described is not identical to that which Kabat-Zinn and others taught Deborah. She had to adapt her mindfulness to apply it to her Jewish context. In fact, Deborah realized that, through her blessings, she engaged in mindfulness to the second power, to mindfulness squared, that is to a heightened relationship to her multiple worlds, both personal and cultural. Let me explain.

Deborah understood that, when she held an apple in her hand and recited the blessing for it, she had to know which proper berakhah to make. That meant she had to relate first to that content from her cultural world, Jewish tradition, law or halakhah. Still holding that apple in her hand, she moved through that relationship to look then at the fruit, to feel its heft and taste its tartness as she bit into it.

Because she was mindful, Deborah’s interaction with daily life was not defined just by the torrents of her rushing thoughts. Her thinking was formed in a duplex relationship to that combination of both the cultural and personal contents that she mindfully activated in her conscious mind, under her watchful control. She steered her relationship to her own thoughts and actions by meeting up with them, by making note of them, and then by becoming disentangled from those twisting currents of distractions gushing around her life.

Deborah’s blessing-meditations turned the rush of her daily living into a series of discrete moments of experience, each savored fully with thanksgiving, gratitude and, perhaps, with compassion.

I hedge regarding compassion because it’s likely that Deborah learned more, at first, about the practice of compassion outside of the Judaic framework. True, the cultivation of loving-kindness and compassion is a part of Judaism. However, embracing those who are distressed and feeling the pain of others is more of a core doctrine of Buddhism and, along with it, a prominent part of its meditative practices.

That said, as we discuss below, the grace after meals stands out as a prominent example of a prayer and meditation of compassion, and it is squarely within the practice of Judaism.

What more do we understand about the meditation of the recitation of a blessing? By convention, because a blessing invokes three names of a divine entity (“Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe…”), classical Judaism says that it accomplishes something we conventionally describe as the sanctification of the acts that the meditator performs after each blessing. By her actions of reciting a blessing and then eating, for instance, Deborah fulfilled a commandment. Deborah knows and observes this added explanation of her practice. This is part of the external cultural baggage that she brings to bear on the other essential elements of her mindful actions.

Deborah’s Jewish application of mindful meditation stands somewhat apart from the mindfulness that derives from Buddhist sources and has wended its way into our American cultural setting. Let’s look at an illustration to clarify better how it differs.

Deborah has a friend Tara who practices mindful meditation anchored in a Buddhist tradition. For this demonstration, let’s imagine that both meditators pick up a raisin to eat, to demonstrate their ways of meditation.

This mindful raisin-eating exercise is actually practiced to instruct beginners in the goals and modes of Kabat-Zinn’s style of mindfulness. In the Kabat-Zinn mindful exercise, the leader hands each beginner a single raisin and asks the person to eat it. Most ordinary people will pop the raisin in their mouths, chew a few times and swallow it, largely unconsciously.

But Tara, the meditative eater, wants to perform a mindful raisin-eating. She begins by looking closely at the raisin, considering its shape, weight, color and texture. Next, she places the raisin in her mouth and focuses on how it feels on her tongue and how her mouth responds with salivation.

Then our mindful raisin-eater chews the raisin slowly and thoroughly, focusing on its taste and disintegration. Finally, she swallows the raisin and feels it (or imagines it) as it goes down her alimentary canal and into her stomach.

While eating, Tara may find her thoughts wander to picture the red Sun-Maid raisin box that she knows held the food, or to the supermarket where she last bought a box of raisins, or perhaps to the time she found an old box of dried raisins in the bottom of her purse. But, in each case, she let her thoughts come into her mind and allowed herself to make note of them and let them go, returning her focus to eating that single, present piece of food.

Now, let’s turn by comparison to consider our meditator Deborah, acting as our mindful berakhah raisin-eater. There’s no actual single meditative exercise that Deborah knows of in Judaism comparable to what we described for the mindful raisin-eater. When children learn about reciting blessings for foods, they learn to associate the blessing that applies to each food category and to each specific food.

Let us imagine, then, this example of the way that Deborah, the meditator, would practice a berakhah raisin-eating mindful exercise.

Deborah first takes the raisin and looks at its size. She wants to make sure that it big enough—more than the minimum quantity—to merit that she, the eater, recites a blessing. But she knows that she must recite a blessing before eating any quantity, according to most accepted practices. Still, she needs to think ahead about how much she must eat before she is obliged to recite a blessing after eating, the blessings of the grace after a meal.

Deborah the meditator also has to decide what species of food this is—where it came from, what category it falls into—and thereby to determine the proper berakhah to recite before putting it into her mouth and eating it. A raisin comes from a grape and a grape grows on a vine. She may think then that the blessing should be, “who creates the fruit of the vine,” but that blessing is reserved for wine, the ultimate and finest product of the grapevine.

A grape itself is the fruit of a tree—by its conventional classification. So, she concludes that its blessing is, “who creates the fruit of the tree.” Deborah reflects that this food is processed from grapes. It is dried, not fresh; does that affect its blessing? She ponders, does that change it and downgrade the blessing to the most generic formula, “for all was created at his word?”

You can see that Deborah, in the Jewish context, must supply more than Tara’s simple and present consideration of the physical nature of the food to her mindful-berakhah-raisin-eating simulation. It’s not just that she must be mindful, but it becomes clear that she needs to become mindful to a greater degree, to a mathematically higher power, to be culturally analytical, almost botanical or culinary or scientific, religiously cognizant—all before she recites the blessing and puts the raisin in her mouth.

During this exercise, Deborah may also consider the times she forgot to recite the blessing, the confusion she felt when she did not know a blessing for a food. She may think about whether the red Sun-Maid box has a kosher certification on it, whether foods of this sort need to be certified. But, as a mindful-berakhah meditator, she has to bring her consciousness back to the act of eating and the heightened mode of awareness that she brings to add to that biological ingestion.

For Deborah the meditator, this deep interaction between cultural mindfulness and personal physical mindfulness defines the dynamics of her berakhah meditations...

(The chapter next explains the more advanced meditations of compassion in the birkat hamazon, the grace after eating.)

Talmudic Books for Kindle | Kindle Talmud in English | Whence and Wherefore | God's Favorite Prayers

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