Summer Sale -- We Reduced Prices on Our Talmudic Books

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

---

Kosher Talmud: Hullin $.99

---

God's Favorite Prayers $2.99

---

Define Judaism: Ten Seminars $2.99

---

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

---

Eleazar: Rabbi, Priest, Patriarch $2.99

---

Kosher Prayers: Talmud Yerushalmi Berakhot $2.99

---

Rashi: The Greatest Exegete $.99

---

Six People You Meet in Synagogue $.99

---

Whence and Wherefore $2.99

Read More

jStandard: Aramaic and Angels Redux

May 24, 2013
To the Editor:

Rabbi Zahavy’s column about kaddish (“Dear Rabbi,” May 3 Jewish Standard) and the letter responding to it (“Do the angels pray in Aramaic?,” May 10 Jewish Standard) raise a host of issues that must be dealt with rationally.

When my parents died, I, as an Orthodox Jew, said kaddish three times daily for 11 months for both. I did it out of respect for Jewish law and tradition and respect for them. Certainly not because I expected that my actions or inactions in this world would have any effect on their position vis-a-vis God in the World To Come. Rabbi Zahavy says that “to secure a place for the departed soul”… “many Jews believe” that by daily recitation of Kaddish, you will be “certain” about the departed’s immortal life “in the eternity of heaven.”

To begin with, our religion makes very clear that we are rewarded and/or punished for our own deeds and not for what anyone else does. My parents’ place in the World to Come does not depend in the least on what I or anyone does on their behalf.

Secondly, both he and the letter writer, Israel Polak, discuss whether angels do or do not communicate in Aramaic! One of my problems, relating to this and the Kedushah, has to do with the issue of angels praising God. It is established that 1) angels have no free will and 2) God has no need of our prayers nor of our praise of Him. We are the ones who need to pray and to praise God. Why then does the Creator of the Universe need to hear, as the Talmud states, the Kedushah illustrates, and Rabbi Zahavy argues, words of praise from beings who have no choice in the matter?

While it may be comforting and romantic to believe, as Rabbi Zahavy says “many Jews” do, that we can intercede with God “to gain heavenly immortality for the soul of a departed one,” it makes no sense that our intercession will, as it were, cause God to change His mind.

Jeff Bernstein
New Milford

Rabbi Dr. Tzvee Zahavy, replies:

Mr. Bernstein makes good points. I agree that we always must offer respectful performances of our ritual. And surely we do not expect our prayers will compel God to act. But my explorations seek to understand why we say this Aramaic or Hebrew prayer in this place and for this amount of time.

I do believe that God hears my fervent and humble prayers and that they do make a difference. That is why, during Yizkor on the second day of Shavuot, I said the El Maleh Rachamim, asking God to grant proper rest in heaven for the dear souls of my father and my mother, “O God, full of mercy, Who dwells on high, grant proper rest on the wings of the Divine Presence in the lofty levels of the holy and the pure ones, who shine like the glow of the firmament…”

Experience God's Favorite Prayers

Read More

JStandard: Do Angels Speak Aramaic?

My Dear Rabbi column (May 3) sparked an urgent letter to the editor at the Jewish Standard. I answered it.

The Dear Rabbi Column, “ ...based on timeless Talmudic wisdom” (May 3), writes the following about the Kaddish: “Yet this prayer is especially apropos for a mourner because we believe that it is the Aramaic praise that the angels recite in God’s presence in the heavens.”

1.The Talmud (Shabbos 12 A) states that the angels do not understand and certainly do not communicate in Aramaic.

2.The prophets, Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 3, inform us of the praises that the angels recite to God, verses that are incorporated in the daily prayers as the Kedusha, not the Kaddish.

3.The rabbis have explained that the unique quality of the Kaddish, which elevates it even beyond the Kedusha ( Berachos 21 B), derives from the fact that it is the result of human initiative.

Israel Polak
Teaneck

Dear Rabbi, aka Rabbi Dr. Tzvee Zahavy, replies:

I thank Mr. Polak for his letter. My column targets the issues of people, not of angels. Since I have not yet been to heaven, I can only speculate on the language skills of angels and their activities based on the assertions of our traditions. The Talmud passage Mr. Polak refers to cites the individual view of one rabbi regarding the language skills of angels. Other authoritative rabbis in the Talmud and later times argue that some angels do know Aramaic or that the question is moot, because angels know what you are thinking. Putting the language and angel issues aside, I do agree, as I proposed in my column, that the Kaddish is a powerful prayer of praise, a “human initiative” that mourners recite here on earth to act as if they are intercessors to gain heavenly immortality for the soul of a departed loved one.

Check Out 45 Talmudic Books
See the 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English
Ponder the Questions of Whence and Wherefore
Experience God's Favorite Prayers

Read More

What is Kaddish?

We said Kaddish for our dad this past year. Some writers responded to their year of saying Kaddish by writing books about it. Four good ones are shown above.

We published a popular book about prayer a in July 2011, so we don't feel the need to go ahead and write another one about our Kaddish year.

In fact in that book, we resolved our main understanding of the meaning of the Kaddish. We have not changed our mind. Here is some of what we said in "God's Favorite Prayers" as explained by our archetypal mystic, Hannah, on pages 59-61:

Hannah invites us to examine next the well-known and practiced Kaddish prayer, a second case of the entry level mystic’s prayers.

There are several varieties of Kaddish recited in the synagogue, enough to confuse the beginner. One of them, called the Half (chatzi) Kaddish, because a few sentences are left off of it, is recited by the leader of the services as a framing mechanism to mark the end of each major section of the liturgy. And, coincidentally, the term ‘half’ (chatzi) relates to the Hebrew word for a dividing or framing action.

The second Kaddish variety, called the complete one (shalem), marks the very end of the services proper.

The best-known Kaddish in the synagogue though is the mourner’s Kaddish (yatom), the one that is employed as a mourner’s doxology (i.e., a praise of God). The practice of associating this prayer with a mourner first appears in the thirteenth century. The synagogue authorities endorsed the custom that mourners during the first eleven months after losing a close relative ought to rise and recite a Kaddish on their own. In the case of this Kaddish Yatom, the mourner rises in his place in the synagogue and recites the doxology at a few appointed times in the daily, Sabbath, and festival services.

I ask Hannah, What is it that the prayer tells us? And, in particular, what makes the prayer an apt mystical enactment for the mourner who recites it? She explains that the substance of the prayer is not at all philosophical or deep. It is a litany, as a mystical prayer is wont to be, of the right words of praise of God in the correct order. She shows us the mystical component of the Kaddish, those lines that cite for us the adoration that is recited by the angels in heaven.

Hannah explains then that reciting the Kaddish provides an appropriate vicarious association for the mourner—to stand and recite a prayer on behalf of the departed souls of the dead:

Magnified and sanctified may his great name be in the world he created by his will. May he establish his kingdom in your lifetime and in your days, and in the lifetime of all the house of Israel, swiftly and soon—and say: Amen.
May his great name be blessed forever and all time.
Blessed and praised, glorified and exalted,
raised and honored, uplifted and lauded
be the name of the Holy One, blessed be he,
beyond any blessing, song, praise and consolation
uttered in the world—and say: Amen
May there be great peace from heaven,
and life for us and for all Israel—and say: Amen.
May he who makes peace in his high places,
make peace for us and for all Israel—and say: Amen.
(Koren Siddur, p. 178)

This lilting and poetic passage does have a certain unique cadence, yet it seems to us in its words to be no more than a standard glorification of God, nothing about death or dying or the deceased. I ask again, why then is this prayer especially apropos for a mourner? Hannah proposes that it is because reciting this heavenly angelic Aramaic praise is the epitome of a mystic’s liturgy. It is a stand-in enactment by the mourner on behalf of the departed loved one. The mourner stands in place in the synagogue and recites the words.

But acting in the mode of the mystic archetype, the mourner advances to the next level of mystical prayer. She is not just addressing God with the outpourings of her personal anxiety and vexation, but imagining that she is standing aloft in heaven, representing the soul of her beloved departed, knocking on heaven’s door to seek entry for that spirit into a secure, eternal place close to the divine light and near the warmth of God. 

I pressed Hannah on this matter. I asked her to clarify to us what is going on when she recites the Kaddish. Is she addressing God from her pew, using the words authorized by the angels on behalf of the deceased? Or is she imagining her ascent to heaven to plead there for the soul of the departed?

Hannah did not know the origins of the Kaddish as a mystic’s prayer on behalf of the soul. Alan Mintz explained that this association began in the Middle Ages (Hurban: Responses to Catastrophe in Hebrew Literature

In the generations immediately following the First Crusade the ceremony of remembering the dead began to be practiced not only in the case of renowned rabbinical martyrs of public persecution but also simply for all who died natural deaths, entirely irrespective of the conditions of persecution. A bereaved son would recite the Kaddish, an Aramaic doxology, for the memory of his recently departed father or mother, in the conviction that such recitation had the power to save the deceased’s soul from tortures beyond the grave. The practice gained headway in the thirteenth century and by the fifteenth a new custom emerged: the Yorzeit, the recitation of the Kaddish on the anniversary of the death of a relative. And soon there was further established the Yizkor or Hazkarat Neshamot, the Kaddish together with various supplications for the souls of the departed, recited on the Day of Atonement and the last days of the Pilgrimage Festivals. Taken together, this amounts of a kind of cult of the dead that began in medieval Ashkenaz and later spread to all of world Jewry.

Mintz commented further about the deep personal attachment that Jews have to this prayer:

The astounding tenacity of this outlook is observable in the simple sociological fact, known to all, that in the process of secularization, and especially in the acculturation of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe to America, the recitation of the mourner’s Kaddish with its attendant rites is the very last particle of tradition to be given up.

Without knowing anything about the historical development of the Kaddish, the entry-level mystic in the synagogue does engage in some prayer, emulating the angels and sending praises and petitions heavenward. She also may practice an intermediate form of mystical prayer, an imagined ascent to stand in another realm and importune her case before the angels and before God....

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

Read More

Free at Last from Friday through Sunday: Six People You Meet in Synagogue

For the Passover holidays, the Talmudic Blog and Talmudic Books is giving away a new book:  Six People You Meet in Synagogue.

In this book, the author, Tzvee Zahavy, presents six ideal personalities of Jewish prayer and their respective prayers.

This is a condensed version of the author's previous work, God's Favorite Prayers (Talmudic Books, 2011) where he first developed the notion of the six distinct prayer archetypes: the performer, the mystic, the scribe, the priest, the meditator and the celebrity.

Six People You Meet in Synagogue
For Kindle from Amazon: FREE for Passover -- from Friday through Sunday, March 29-31.

Check Out all the Talmudic Books
See the Kindle Edition Talmud in English
ALSO FREE for Passover -- Ponder the Questions of Whence and Wherefore -- FREE 

Read More

Is Tisha B'Av Relevant?

Is Tisha B'Av relevant? No we do not think that the fast of Tisha B'Av is relevant anymore. We need a holiday from Tisha B'Av.

That day was for a long time a commemoration through fasting and prayer over the destroyed city of Jerusalem and the Temple. We've last visited Jerusalem in May of 2011 and can attest that the city is not desolate. It is without reservations, glorious.

Who then wants the bleak story to be told? Archetypally the "celebrity" archetype wants to keep recalling defeat, destruction and desolation, to spur team Jews on to fight the foes and to triumph at the end of time. That scheme may work for that archetype as long as the facts of reality do not fly smack in the face of the narrative. And when they do, what then? The narrative loses all of its force. We cannot imagine Jerusalem in ruins. Period. And indeed, why should we perpetuate an incendiary story of gloom and doom into a diametrically opposite positive world of building and creativity? The era of desolation has ended.

For at least twenty-five years, we've been lamenting the irony of lamenting over a city that is rebuilt. It's more rebuilt now -- way more -- than it was twenty five years ago. What do we do then about Tisha B'Av, the Jewish fast day of lament and mourning? Here is what we said those many years ago.

We wrote this op-ed for the Jerusalem Post in 1986 where we summed up many of our thoughts about Israel in our day, and of Jerusalem in particular. The article appeared in the Post on the day before Tisha B'Av:

I shall be fasting this week from sundown Wednesday until sundown Thursday. But this year, more than ever before, I feel silly mourning over the destruction of Jerusalem. I really do not know what to do when it comes time to listen to and to recite for myself the classical laments for the fast of Tisha B'Av.

Much of what we say about Jerusalem in the synagogue is just not true any more.

It is obvious to anyone and everyone that Jerusalem does not lay in ruins. On the contrary, this is my fourth extended visit to Jerusalem in the last seven years. [They say: your not in galut if you commute.] Over the last seven years I have watched as buildings spread out from the center of town to the new neighborhoods. Now Jerusalem sprawls across the hills of Judea, south and north from Gilo to Ramot and beyond.

On the ninth day of Av this year the observant Jews of Jerusalem will congregate in synagogues throughout the city to mourn and lament. What they say inside these halls will not reflect the reality immediately outside them.

And so this year I have resolved to add some few paragraphs for myself, silently, to my prayers. Then when I leave the synagogue and step out into the rebuilt city of our people, I will feel that I have been candid in my meditations and forthright in my worship. I shall say something like this:

"Jerusalem is not desolate. It stands glorious above our Land. Our capital looks down on the miracle of the modern state of our people, rebuilt by the sweat and labor of our brethren and sisters. A thousand settlements testify to our return and we our homeless no more.

"The inhabitants of Jerusalem are not homeless. Beautiful buildings abound. Apartments, condominiums, villas, large and small. Hotels and hostels, old and new. Whosoever wishes may come and live here. Whosoever is hungry shall find sustenance here.

"Enemies do not govern our land. The Kenesset building, the site of our self-government, stands at the center of our new metropolis, a vibrant testimony to our freedom. Independent and sovereign we struggle with each other, and with the states of the world, and somehow we manage to live in harmony among ourselves, and to survive in the swirling community of nations.

"Yes, the Temple was destroyed. But we have built other edifices in its stead. Long ago, in another age, our national center was taken from us by forces we could not resist. But now we have built new structures where we symbolize and express our spirit, our minds and our creative energies, and most of all, our freedom.

"A great synagogue and many more stand in our capital. They serve as the many beating hearts of our spiritual organs. In dozens of Yeshivot teachers build the religious minds of our youth. Schools abound. When school is in session, wherever you turn their are children on their way to classes from kindergartens to high schools, soaking up the knowledge of our world.

"A great Hebrew University answers to the essence of our wider educational appetites, right here in the capital of our nation. In its laboratories, classrooms and libraries, students try to unravel the mysteries of nature and society and strive to construct a new and better order.

"The Israel Museum, the Bezalel School, the Jerusalem Theater and other institutions small and large, cater to our cultural needs. In Jerusalem today we display our past and our present. We sing and dance and we mourn no more. We paint and draw and sculpt and adorn the urban hub of our people, the crown of our Land.

"As we watch, day-by-day, luxury hotels go up and up. Lush green gardens bloom before us. We repose in parks and swimming pools. We find our needs in supermarkets, bakeries, and department stores. And we indulge our extravagances in shops and markets, elegant restaurants and offbeat cafes.

"The city of Jerusalem has been rebuilt. Still, the work is never done. And the struggle will not end. But our city is not desolate. How can we mourn? We must, yes, we are obliged, indeed, it is the highest duty, for us to celebrate. For with God's help, but in accord with our own will and with our own hands we have raised Jerusalem beyond its highest heights. Never before in all of our history has this city attained such glory.

And so that is what I shall add as I conclude my lamentations on Tisha B'Av this year. I shall be cheerful this year, and I will not mourn. But I shall do so silently because this is my own private devotion. Will others join me?

In a public lecture in Minneapolis in October 1986 I read this editorial and expanded upon it:

The personal response I received to this article was enormous. More people read this than any other piece I have written and almost all agreed with its sentiments. Only a few Orthodox friends hesitated in their praise because they interpreted my words as a call to abolish Tisha B'Av. Not at all, I told them. And they had better be more careful in what they read lest they make a mistake in interpretation when they consult the shulchan aruch. More than a month later I am still hearing good words about my reflections on the rebuilding of our holy city.

I could say much more, though the Jerusalem Post is not the only forum for criticism and discussion of the impact of modern Israel on the future of Judaism.

I felt strongly and for the first time without equivocation that we in the galut do not adequately appreciate the achievements of those who built the modern state. Never, even in the greatest ages of our people's history, in the kingdoms of David and Solomon, after the rebuilding of the Temple by Ezra and Nehemiah, or in the era of Herod the Great, never did our people achieve so much in the building of our land. Israel today is a true marvel. Its streets and infrastructures in all of its settlements, its political system, and of course, its military might, make it one of the great countries in the world.

And this accomplishment is even greater in light of the destruction and devastation which preceded it in Jewish history. Yet does the average American Jew understand or appreciate the modern state? I often doubt it.

[edit and repost from 2007]

Read More