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The Soncino Babylonian Talmud English translation is online - at a site that is not anti-Semitic or polemical.

Download the Talmud in English free at http://www.halakhah.com/ - 25,000+ downloads each month! 300,000+ each year.

TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH WITH NOTES, GLOSSARY AND INDICES UNDER THE EDITORSHIP OF RABBI DR. I. EPSTEIN B.A., Ph.D., D. Lit. FOREWORD BY THE VERY REV. THE LATE CHIEF RABBI DR. J. H. HERTZ. INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR. THE SONCINO PRESS, LONDON.

Contains the Sedarim (orders, or major divisions) and tractates (books) of the Babylonian Talmud, as translated and organized for publication by the Soncino Press in 1935 - 1948.

The site has the entire Soncino Talmud edition in PDF format and  about 8050 pages on line in browser compatible HTML format, comprising 1460 files — of the Soncino Talmud.

Please add a link to the site http://www.halakhah.com on your web site or blog.

Highlights:

• A newly formatted 2-column PDF version of the Soncino Talmud at Halakhah.com.
• A Kindle edition of the Soncino Talmud available from Amazon.com: The Kindle Soncino Talmud in English

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Caroline Kennedy: the Daring Swimmer

The Times profiled Caroline Kennedy on the occasion of her nomination as ambassador to Japan, "Caroline Kennedy, Catching the Torch".

In the article we read about a surprising facet of her life. She is an avid open water swimmer.

...A few years ago, Mr. Hughes made an offhand comment that he and his partner, Dr. Richard Friedman, a psychiatrist who directs the psychopharmacology clinic at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital, made a ritual of competing in Swim for Life, a 1.25-mile event in Provincetown, Mass, that raises money for AIDS and women's health charities. "She said, 'Oh, I'd really like to do that,' " Mr. Hughes said.

And so, Ms. Kennedy did. "She just showed up and changed in a gas station and came out and did the race," Mr. Hughes said. "It was pretty choppy, and she did a terrific job. I'm happy to say I beat her. But just barely."

Last year, Mrs. Kennedy and her daughters Tatiana and Rose joined Mr. Hughes and Mr. Friedman in Turkey for another swim, this time a 3 1/2-mile race across the Hellespont, which takes entrants from Europe to Asia.  "Lord Byron went in with a disabled leg and came in with a much faster time than we did," Mr. Hughes said. "But it was extraordinary. It was one of the most terrifying things I've ever done."

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Are personal lubricants kosher?

The Guardian reported ("Kosher lube puts oral sex on the menu for Orthodox Jews") that yes, now some personal lubricants are kosher.

The US-made Wet range of lubes now has eight lines that have been given a religious stamp of approval, including its "Ecstasy" product. This means that rabbis from the Rabbinical Council of California have inspected Wet's 52,000 sq ft production plant and researched the origins of every ingredient to check none comes from items prohibited by kosher rules...

For hundreds of years the Jewish religious establishment has been divided on whether oral sex is allowed as part of a bedroom repertoire; it's still pretty taboo for public discourse – and the rabbis who have approved the lubes haven't spelled out whom their certification will benefit. ...this is the first rabbinic innovation to help kosher oral sex. In eight flavours.

Don't know where the Guardian gets its "divided" information. Maybe from British rabbis.

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In Mommy Edith's Memory - Please Quit Smoking Today

In 2000 my mother Edith Zahavy passed away on the 4th day of Tammuz after six months of hospitalization at Mt. Sinai in NYC. She was 79. For 63 years she smoked, mostly menthol cigarettes. The corporate tobacco pushers hooked her into addiction by giving her free samples outside her school, Hunter College, when she was a teenager. They supplied her habit for six decades. For several years prior to her death she could hardly walk because of her profound vascular disease, heart disease and emphysema. Her last months in the hospital on a respirator were awful as all of the organs of her systems weakened and failed.

My mother was a beautiful, selfless, generous, creative, religious person who dedicated her whole life to her family, to her friends and to her students. She first brought us up (myself and my brother and sister) and then went on to teach in the NYC public schools. She stood behind my father, me and my siblings through thick and thin. But through the years she always smoked, mostly Newports and Salems.

As I remember her -- an active vibrant woman -- I plead with you -- if you smoke cigarettes -- QUIT TODAY. Please for the sake of the memory of my mother -- for your own sake -- for the sake of your spouse, your parents, your children, your friends -- please stop.

(Repost annually from 2006)

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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.

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The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in English

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Non-Congratulations to the New Non-Rabbis

Thirty years ago, in 1983 we were happy to start sending our women Jewish Studies major graduates at the University of Minnesota to train to become rabbis in the Reform movement. We told them to go out and become full head rabbis of synagogues, not assistants or educational directors. Some did. We were proud.

This week we read of the non-ordination of three females by an Orthodox institute. We sadly shake our heads and dejectedly shrug our shoulders. This is a milestone of non-progress.

This non-event is a rare mixture of chutzpah and cowardice on the part of these women and their teachers. Their mentors dared to give a "degree" and "title" to the women and yet they fearfully refrained from ordaining them with the accepted titles "rabbis" or the feminine of the term, "rabbahs" to be more grammatical.

All of this is too perplexing for our Talmudic CPU to process. Our Talmudic processing system has short-circuited and crashed and cannot analyze this conflicted non-event any further.

Hence we can at best non-extend our non-congratulations to the new women non-rabbis.  We heartily offer our non-applause to them on their non-ordinations.What a bewildering religion.

Here is the story from JTA.

(JTA) — Yeshivat Maharat, which trains Orthodox Jewish women to be religious leaders, held its first graduation ceremony.

Ruth Balinsky Friedman, Rachel Kohl Feingold and Abby Brown Schier graduated Sunday in a ceremony in New York City attended by some 500 people.
The graduates are set to work for Orthodox synagogues and institutions.

Maharat is a Hebrew acronym for Manhiga Hilkhatit Rukhanit Toranit, or leader in legal, spiritual and Torah matters.

Each graduate of the New York yeshiva will use the title of maharat rather than rabbi or rabba — the title given to Sarah Hurwitz, the dean of Yeshivat Maharat, when she was ordained by Rabbi Avi Weiss.

The movement to confer religious authority on women in the Orthodox community, which began in 2009, remains controversial in the Orthodox community.

Last month, the Rabbinical Council of America reissued a 2010 statement that said, “We cannot accept either the ordination of women or the recognition of women as members of the Orthodox rabbinate, regardless of the title.”

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Is Sigourney Weaver Jewish?

Now it is far-fetched that anybody would think that actress Sigourney Weaver is Jewish. No, Sigourney Weaver is not a Jew.

The tall actress who we know and love from Alien, to Working Girl to Avatar, and who we once met and told her how much we liked her work, is a Christian of Scottish-English extraction.

But it is noteworthy that IMDB reports that when she was young after graduating from high school in 1967, she spent several months on a kibbutz in Israel. /repost from 7/16/10/

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The Daily Beast: Dear Rabbi: Should I Shoot Women?

It happens. When you practice irrational thuggery in the name of religion it does not take long for an impressionable young person to get a really wrong idea. On the Daily Beast we read, "Dear Rabbi: Should I Shoot Women of the Wall?" by Sigal Samuel on Jun 6, 2013.

Fortunately (did we reach rock bottom yet?) there was no violence today as women prayed at the wall under a heavy police guard. It's getting clearer every day that Orthodox Judaism has decided to resort ever more often to bullying and thuggery against what it sees as weak Jewish opponents - women who want to pray. Not brave; not heroic. But the legacy of bullying vulnerable women via rabbinic decree goes back a long way to illustrious roots.

The Daily Beast reported, "In a disturbing QandA session, a 17-year-old Jerusalem yeshiva student asked a rabbi in an online forum whether it’s permissible under Jewish law to shoot and kill members of the liberal prayer group Women of the Wall when they gather at the Kotel. The boy was arrested today after Rabbi Baruch Efrati alerted police to the question—which, true to the rabbinic tradition of she’elot u-teshuvot (responsa literature, literally “questions and answers”), he nonetheless deigned to answer...."

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Topless German Protesters in Berlin Burned a Barbie Doll on a Cross

I get it - a Barbie doll has an exaggerated ideal body type that frustrates some women.

I do not get the symbolic action of this part of the protest:

Reuters reported that Topless German Protesters Burned a Barbie Doll on a Cross.

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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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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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2006: When Rabbi Aryeh Strikovsky ordained Aviva Ner-David

I wrote this seven years ago:

On one level, I was overjoyed to read in the Jerusalem Post report (May 4, 2006) that a Jerusalem Orthodox rabbi Aryeh Strikovsky has ordained his woman student Aviva Ner-David as a rabbi saying that her "knowledge and mastery of Jewish law are remarkable."

This was a breakthrough that I awaited, but frankly never expected to see in my lifetime. I thought, as I read the news, that this marks the end to the male monopoly on the Orthodox rabbinate. The Reform movement had torn down this wall in the 70s. The Conservative movement had started routinely ordaining women in the 80s. And now, the Orthodox will be ordaining women.

In theory, I want to see this is a good development in the history of Judaism. With women rabbis, more talent can be unleashed into the ranks of religious leadership. With double the talent there can be double the learning and twice as much new theological insight, imagination and energy.

In theory, since the Orthodox rabbi is not a sacerdotal position, a woman should be able to fill it regardless of the patriarchal roots of the system. A woman can become an expert in Jewish law and practice and act in all capacities as a rabbi just like men have been doing for centuries.

But we don't live in a theoretical world. A real reading of the nature of contemporary Orthodoxy will lead one to conclude that it is a system run by men whose political and social power in society at large is marginalized. And yet these men do see themselves as guardians of a particularly important male-dominated world order of their own.

How do those who live by the worldview of the Orthodox rabbinate react to the ordination of an Orthodox woman? These are ten of the most likely responses.

1. They see the growth of women's civil and familial rights as a threat to the historical male prerogatives.
2. They use male bonding as the basis of rabbinic public organization.
3. They see women's ordination as a feminization, a making womanly of the rabbinic estate.
4. They experience the end of the all-male public body of the rabbinate as an admission of the vulnerability and perhaps of the impotence of the collective organization.
5. But they extend the threat to more than just a challenge to the masculinity of the rabbi and flag bearer. They characterized it as a threat to the core beliefs of Judaism.
6. They feel this woman's ordination is a humiliation to the Orthodox rabbinic system.
7. They perceive the notion that a woman can be a rabbi as a foreign threat, imported first from Western feminist culture and most recently from heretical Conservative Judaism.
8. They argue that this weakness of boundaries must be healed - the rabbis cannot allow penetration from the outside or the permeability of the borders of rabbinic life.
9. They say that their religion must be purified of all feminization and alien contamination.
10. Logically it follows that they will act with a vehemence or even violence to attack and defeat the forces antagonistic to their way of life.

This leads me to predict that figurative "blood" will be shed as the Orthodox male leaders battle this startling challenge to their hegemony.
To the existing Orthodox establishment this daring ordination stands out as a symptom of the disordered sexuality of the evil modern world where women try to take the roles that belong to men. The rabbis will invoke this danger and then will likely associate this act of ordination with other disorderly sexual confusions such as gay marriage. They may feel free then to predict that if they allow women to serve as rabbis that will open the door to next allow gays to follow suit.
Yet after all is said and done, Rabbis who preach the perfection of Kosher sex roles and condemn the perversion of treif disorder are speaking sense only to those colleagues in their boys' club who live by their concepts of the world.
So let's expect the onslaught of attacks by the rabbis against the new Orthodox woman rabbi. They will say that she is bad. The rabbi that ordained her is bad. The idea is bad. How low have people sunk? And so on and so on. Lo and behold, Judaism has withstood another crisis of faith and onslaught of challenge.

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Is the author and spiritual seeker Paulo Coelho Jewish?

No Paulo Coelho is not a Jew. He was brought up Catholic and attended a Jesuit school in Brazil. Coelho is not a big fan of any organized religion. He speaks with lyrical disdain and disparagement in his books about the wisdom and ritual of religions.

His current publication, Manuscript Found in Accra, is set in Jerusalem before a battle. The people in the book gather to ask about life so that they can learn enough to save "the soul of Jerusalem." The publisher tells us:

July 14, 1099. Jerusalem awaits the invasion of the crusaders who have surrounded the city’s gates. There, inside the ancient city’s walls, men and women of every age and every faith have gathered to hear the wise words of a mysterious man known only as the Copt. He has summoned the townspeople to address their fears with truth:

“Tomorrow, harmony will become discord. Joy will be replaced by grief. Peace will give way to war. . . . None of us can know what tomorrow will hold, because each day has its good and its bad moments. So, when you ask your questions, forget about the troops outside and the fear inside. Our task is not to leave a record of what happened on this date for those who will inherit the Earth; history will take care of that. Therefore, we will speak about our daily lives, about the difficulties we have had to face.”

The people begin with questions about defeat, struggle, and the nature of their enemies; they contemplate the will to change and the virtues of loyalty and solitude; and they ultimately turn to questions of beauty, love, wisdom, sex, elegance, and what the future holds. “What is success?” poses the Copt. “It is being able to go to bed each night with your soul at peace.” ...

Now, these many centuries later, the wise man’s answers are a record of the human values that have endured throughout time. And, in Paulo Coelho’s hands, The Manuscript Found in Accra reveals that who we are, what we fear, and what we hope for the future come from the knowledge and belief that can be found within us, and not from the adversity that surrounds us.

This book is new age in every respect that we can think of especially in the way that it wanders through spiritual landscapes and themes without a care for a conventional framework of organization or presentation.

One passage struck us because it sounded like the utter opposite of the philosophy of life and values that we heard espoused at Yeshiva University by our teacher the Rav, Rabbi Soloveitchik and by his followers.

We will cite Coelho's passage and leave it without explanation; and we wish that understanding will flow to those who understand:

Beauty is present in all creation, but the dangerous fact is that, because we human beings are often cut off from the Divine Energy, we allow ourselves to be influenced by what other people think... And we become ugly and embittered.

At that moment, we can draw comfort from so-called wisdom, an accumulation of ideas put together by people wishing to define the world instead of respecting the mystery of life. This "wisdom" consists of all the unnecessary rules, regulation, and measurements intended to establish a standard of behavior. 

According to that false wisdom, we should not be concerned about beauty because it is superficial and ephemeral. 

That isn't true. All the beings created under the sun, from birds to mountains, from flowers to rivers, reflect the miracle of creation. 

If we resist the temptation to allow other people to define who we are, then we will gradually be able to let the sun inside our own soul shine forth... (pp. 60-61)

Back in 2011 we wrote about his previous book Aleph saying that the book... will greatly entertain the spiritual seeker. By that we mean if you are open to the concepts of past lives and the mystical energies of the universe, this book will speak to you. But even if you are such a seeker, you may feel, as we do, that at times the book overdoes some of its themes.

Within the story Coelho provides some gems of writing. We identified with his metaphor of the Chinese bamboo plant since we had spent several years putting down the roots of our latest book. And now, that book (God's Favorite Prayers) has sprouted up boldly after its publication.

Coelho explains that the Chinese Bamboo first, “...spends 5 years as a little shoot, using that time to develop its complex root system. And then from one moment to the next, it puts on a spurt and grows up to 25 meters high.”

Within the narrative Coelho casts in what can be wonderful observations, if they resonate for you. On the life-value of mistakes he tells us, “...only mediocrity is sure of itself, so take risk and do what you really want to do. Seek out people who aren’t afraid of making mistakes and who, therefore, do make mistakes. Because of that, their work often isn’t recognized, but they are precisely the kind of people who change the world and, after many mistakes, do something that will transform their own community completely”.

He does get this inspiring exhortation partly right. We'd say to seek out people who are afraid to make mistakes -- that is a human trait -- but who nevertheless go ahead and make them. And he does need to differentiate and specify what he means by "mistakes". He surely means the worthy and meaty and bold and creative mistakes, not the foolish ones. And then of course, we all need to know some definition of the notion of "transform" -- but we never do get that from most of those who throw out the idea. We just know that they mean that transformation is something good and different and fresh and original.

It's all in a narrative that is highly intuitive and new age. And we get it and we like it. We also like the title.

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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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Inventing the Past: Michael Broyde and Morton Smith

The Jewish Channel's Steven I. Weiss continued his outstanding investigative reporting with a new story on Rabbi Michael Broyde of Emory University, "Investigation Reveals Additional Questionable Identity With Connections to Broyde’s Scholarship". It now appears certain that Broyde invented letters by two imaginary rabbis to support his opinions on religious matters. Weiss also found that an 83 page article published by Broyde in the journal Tradition was bolstered in part by evidence from Broyde's manufactured authorities and was published with subventions funded by Emory and the Templeton Foundation.

The Broyde matter has reminded us of Morton Smith, another professor at a major university who went to great lengths to invent a religious letter to boost his reputation and his scholarly agenda.

Wikipedia summarizes the Smith matter in an article that starts, "Morton Smith (May 29, 1915 – July 11, 1991) was an American professor of ancient history at Columbia University. He is best known for his controversial discovery of the Mar Saba letter, a letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria containing excerpts from a Secret Gospel of Mark, during a visit to the monastery at Mar Saba in 1958."

Along with many other professors of religion, we believe that Smith's discovery was an intricate hoax that he perpetrated out of some unknown and twisted scholarly motives. Smith was quite clever in committing and defending his deception. And there remain a few scholars who still accept the authenticity of Smith's find.

Weiss now has proven conclusively in his reporting that Broyde committed equally intricate academic hoaxes. In our view though Broyde's hoaxes are far less clever and dramatic than Smith's.

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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

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Was Shulamith Firestone Jewish?

Yes, the pioneering feminist Shulamith Firestone was at the brackets of her life an Orthodox Jew. She was brought up as an Orthodox Jew as a child, and she was buried in an Orthodox Jewish rite.

During her life, the radical feminist activities that she engaged in and the critical books that she wrote were as far from the values of Orthodox Judaism as day is from night.

The inspiring and haunting New Yorker profile, "AMERICAN CHRONICLES: DEATH OF A REVOLUTIONARY," BY SUSAN FALUDI informs the reader that "Shulamith Firestone helped to create a new society. But she couldn’t live in it."

It informs us, "Best known for her writings, Firestone also launched the first major radical-feminist groups in the country, which made headlines in the late nineteen-sixties and early seventies with confrontational protests and street theatre."

The article begins, "When Shulamith Firestone’s body was found late last August, in her studio apartment on the fifth floor of a tenement walkup on East Tenth Street, she had been dead for some days. She was sixty-seven, and she had battled schizophrenia for decades, surviving on public assistance. There was no food in the apartment, and one theory is that Firestone starved, though no autopsy was conducted, by preference of her Orthodox Jewish family. Such a solitary demise would have been unimaginable to anyone who knew Firestone in the late nineteen-sixties, when she was at the epicenter of the radical-feminist movement, surrounded by some of the same women who, a month after her death, gathered in St. Mark’s Church In-the-Bowery, to pay their respects..."

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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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Is the Daily Beast Kosher?

Used to be Newsweek, now it is the Daily Beast. It is a news site not an animal. So it cannot be kosher in the narrow sense of the word, that is permissible for physical consumption. Is it permissible to read the Daily Beast? We suppose it is kosher.

Here are some of the salient points about the site, mainly from Wikipedia (with our comments):

• The Daily Beast was launched on October 6, 2008, and is owned by IAC (Barry Diller, the chairman). Edward Felsenthal, a former Wall Street Journal editor, was the site's executive editor, and Stephen Colvin was its president. (We believe that all three men are Jewish.)
• The name of the site is derived from that of one of the fictional newspapers in Evelyn Waugh's novel Scoop. (Not all the postings are fictional.)
• On November 12, 2010, The Daily Beast and Newsweek announced a merger deal, creating a combined company, The Newsweek Daily Beast Company. (Losing $ millions each year.)
• One of the features of The Daily Beast is the "Cheat Sheet", billed as "must reads from all over". Published daily, the "Cheat Sheet" offers a selection of articles from online news outlets on popular stories. The "Cheat Sheet" includes brief summaries of the article, and a link to read the full text of the article on the website of its provider. (Sounds like an Internet site from 1997 all over again.)
• Since launch, the site has introduced additional sections, including a video "Cheat Sheet", "Book Beast", "Hungry Beast", and "Sexy Beast", a Fashion and Entertainment section. (Theme is beginning to wear thin.)
• The site's motto is "Read this Skip That" (Kinda like a medieval church index.)

The "Rabbi Beast" section (just joking, it's not a section yet) offers us 60 rabbis who now can proudly say they were chosen best by the Beast:

• America's Top 50 Rabbis
• America's Top 10 Up and Coming Rabbis

Read it or skip it. Some best rabbis' names are missing.

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Is Lena Dunham Jewish?

Yes, Lena Dunham is a Jew. She is creator and star of the controversial hit HBO series Girls, which "we hear" is edgy and entertaining.

Wikipedia reports, "Dunham's father is Protestant, and according to Dunham, a Mayflower descendant; Dunham's mother is Jewish."

Dunham told the Jewish Journal: “I went to Hebrew school for, like, two weeks, and then didn’t get the part I wanted in the play and quit,” she said. “But I’ve always had a great love of all the holidays that we celebrate together as a family: Passover, Chanukah. I’ve spent a good amount of time in temple, and I definitely feel very culturally Jewish, although that’s the biggest cliché for a Jewish woman to say.”

Dunham dates Jack Antonoff, also Jewish and a former neighbor of ours in Bergen County. JStandard reported in a cover story that, "Solomon Schechter’s Jack Antonoff is a Grammy Award winner!" He won for song of the year and best new artist.

Dunham Instagrammed the cover of the Jewish Standard (3/11/2013) observing that, "Jewish boys are best." Thank you Lena.

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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