Note to Self: Do not wear Geox shoes in the rain or snow. They have little holes in soles!

We wear Geox shoes almost all the time nowadays. They are truly more comfortable for someone like us who mainly sits at a desk throughout the day. They allow air to circulate around our feet.

When we bought our first pair, the salesman assured us that the diameter of the holes in the bottom sole is smaller than the "diameter of a water molecule" and therefore the shoes are counter-intuitively waterproof, they will not leak, they will not let in water.

Note to self: They are not waterproof. They do leak. They do let in water. It's better when they are new. They let in less. As you break them in and the shoes wear a bit, the pores open and they let in more water.

Several times when we wore a pair of older Geox shoes in the rain in Manhattan, our socks got soaking wet after we walked just a few blocks. Curiously, the shoes themselves do stay mainly dry. The water goes right through the perforations in the soles and it gets sopped up by your socks, especially if you wear thick athletic type stocks like we do.

Hence (we think this is poetic enough advice to be a verse in the book of Proverbs): Do not wear Geox shoes in the rain or snow. They have little holes in soles!

Some other people in blogs say the same thing. //reposted//

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JStandard: Is Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's book "Kosher Jesus" Kosher?

Our review article about Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's book "Kosher Jesus" has appeared in the Jewish Standard.

Read it here: Is Shmuley Kosher?

Watch for our next free Kindle Book day, March 4 for God's Favorite Prayers
From Talmudic Books New Soncino Talmud Titles (classic English translation)

Kindle Talmud Temurah

Kindle Talmud Kerithoth

Kindle Talmud Meilah, Tamid, Middoth and Kinnim

Kindle Talmud Niddah

Kindle Mishnah Seder Tohoroth

New Kindle books from Tzvee

Kosher Talmud (my elegant translation of all of Bavli Hullin)

Kosher Prayers: selected from my original translation of Yerushalmi Berakhot

Kindle Rashi: the Greatest Exegete (I added a foreword to a classic book)

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New for Kindle from Talmudic Books Soncino Mishnah Seder Tohoroth (Soncino Babylonian Talmud) the Mishnaic Law of Purities

# 3. In Talmud Kindle Books the Mishnaic Law of Purities

Soncino Mishnah Seder Tohoroth (Soncino Babylonian Talmud)

M. H. Segal, I. Fishman, I. W. Slotki, H. Bornstein, S. M. Lehrman, Isidore Epstein

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Tohoroth (‘Cleannesses’), which is the name given to the last of the six ‘Orders’ into which the Talmud is divided, has for its subject the laws of the ‘clean’ and ‘unclean’ in things and persons.

The ‘Order’ consists of twelve tractates, arranged according to the separate printed editions of the Mishnah in the following sequence:

1. KELIM (Vessels): Deals with the rules about the uncleanness of ‘vessels’ (a term denoting articles of utility of every kind), indicating under which conditions they are unclean, or become susceptible to uncleanness, in accordance with Leviticus XI, 33-35. 30 Chapters.
2. OHOLOTH (Tents): Treats of the laws concerning the defilement conveyed by a dead body to persons or ‘vessels’ which happen to be in the same tent or under the same roof with it, as set forth in Numbers, XIX, 14-15. 18 Chapters.
3. NEGA‘IM (Leprosy): Sets forth the rules concerning the treatment of leprosies in men, garments and dwellings in accordance with Leviticus XIII-XIV, and the prescriptions for the leper’s purification. 14 Chapters.
4. PARAH (Heifer): Describes the required properties of the Red Heifer, and the preparation and use of its ashes for the purification of the unclean, according to Numbers XIX. 12 Chapters.
5. TOHOROTH (Cleannesses): Deals with the rules about the uncleanness of food-stuffs and liquids, indicating under what conditions they are rendered unclean through contact with different sources and grades of impurity. 19 Chapters.
6. MIKVA‘OTH (Pools of Immersion): Gives the requirements for wells and reservoirs in order to render them ritually fit for immersions, and the regulations governing all ritual immersions. 10 Chapters.
7. NIDDAH (The Menstruant). In a separate volume.
8. MAKSHIRIN (Predispositions). Has for its theme the conditions under which foodstuffs become ‘predisposed,’ that is susceptible to uncleanness after having come into contact with liquid (in accordance with Leviticus XI, 34, 38), and enumerates the liquids that make foodstuffs susceptible in this sense. 6 Chapters.
9. ZABIM (They That Suffer Flux): Treats of the uncleanness of men and women affected with a running issue, according to Leviticus, XV, 2-18. 5 Chapters.
10. TEBUL YOM (Immersed at Day Time): Discusses the character of the uncleanness which, until the setting of the sun, adheres to one who has immersed himself during the day time for his purification (cf. Leviticus XXII, 6f.) 4 Chapters.
11. YADAYIM (Hands): Treats of the uncleanness of unwashed hands and of their purification. It also includes a discussion on certain books of the Canon of the Bible,
12. ‘UKZIN (Stalks): Deals with the conditions under which stalks of plants or fruits convey uncleanness to the fruits or plants to which they are attached or vice versa. 3 Chapters.

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Feldheim Publishers in Israel in Deep Trouble

Reuven wrote to tell us "Oy Vey" that Arutz Sheva reports, "Feldheim Books In Israel in Danger of Collapse. Feldheim Publishing in Israel, which caters to the hareidi religious community, is in danger of collapse and may be bought out."

Book publishing is so over. Nobody buys physical books. The underlying story for Jewish books is that vanity authors are keeping some of the small Israeli and American Jewish presses alive, paying big bucks to have their books published.

Here is the Feldheim story from A7:

Feldheim Publishing in Israel, which caters to the hareidi religious community, is in danger of collapse but may be bought out.

Its financial difficulties, reported Monday by B’Hadrei Haderim, are the latest in the book publishing and distributing industry that has been overwhelmed by online publishers and e-books.

Feldheim officials said it has asked for a stay in proceedings of financial claims against the company, and an industry source indicated that the Or Chaim publishing house is negotiating with Feldheim Israel to buy it out.

The stay in proceedings has not affected the operation of Feldheim’s chain of book stores, at least for the time being.

The publishing company was founded in 1939 by Philip Feldheim and now is managed by his son and grandson, who have expanded the firm. His son operates the publishing house in Jerusalem, with several bookstores in the capital city in addition to other Israeli cities with a large hareidi religious population.

Feldheim is known for publishing high-quality books on Judaica and pioneered in adding fiction and non-fiction titles that suit religious readers to its range. Its stores feature books from other publishing houses as well as its own.

The news of its financial difficulties is a blow for authors and readers for whom Feldheim has been their favorite for marketing English language books geared for the orthodox Jewish community both in Israel and in the United States and elsewhere.

“This is very sad,” one author told B’Hadrei Hareidim. “Feldheim is very well organized and a very serious company, and the book market will miss it. If it collapses, not only hundreds of workers will be affected but also thousands of readers.”

Feldheim officials confirmed to Arutz Sheva the financial difficulties at its Israeli branch and added it will decide in the next few days between several possibilities it is examining for rescuing the company.

E-books are on the way in. Amazon owns Kindle, the dominant e-books ecosystem. For Hebrew books it looks like PDF is the way to go. Reuven also sent us this announcement from Jewish E-books:

Jewish E-Books-the most extensive Jewish digital library to date-has built a literary empire of over 1,200 English and Hebrew titles of an assortment of genres, including Judaism basics, Jewish law, Kabbalah, biographies, Jewish history, and fiction, to name a few. Representing major Jewish publishers like Feldheim, Israel Bookshop, Jerusalem Publications, Aish.com, and Sichos in English, the E-Book giant’s repertoire features bestselling Jewish authors like Akiva Tatz, Gila Manolson, Matityahu Glazerson, and Tziporah Heller.

"What makes us unique is that you can’t get our e-books on any other site," explains CEO Levy. "We’ve got classic Jewish books for half the price of hard copy."

Jewish E-Book’s Hebrew sister site, www.j-ebooks.co.il, boasts over 600 Hebrew titles-and has just went live with its one-of-a-kind Hebrew e-Book lending library.

But the e-book titan hasn’t confined itself to the bookshelf: in a trendsetting move, the company recently kicked off its Jewish E-Magazines Department, starting with the AMI e-mag-the very first Jewish digital weekly-and the Comics eMagazine for kids.

A massive breakthrough in Jewish publishing, the unprecedented partnership between Jewish E-Books and AMI Magazine inaugurates an entirely new e-mag market, setting a new standard.

"At Ami, we bring readers from all segments of Jewry a high-quality, intelligent and informative publication," says Rechy Frankfurter, senior editor at the magazine. "As part of our aim to reach a larger and more diverse readership, we’re excited to branch out with Jewish E-Books."

But more than just an e-commerce site, Jewish E-Books has used a cutting-edge business model to become a powerful marketing platform for Jewish authors and publishers. With a widespread presence on Jewish social media like Facebook and Twitter, as well its very own Jewish E-Books Blog-featuring fascinating author interviews and the latest news about Jewish books and everything Jewish, Jewish E-Books.com has become a hub of Jewish action and info, transforming the landscape of Jewish book promotion.

"We want to get the word out-big time," says CEO Levy. "We want every Jew and non-Jew-wherever they’re located-to get the Jewish books they want."

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Religion Dispatches: Is sport religion or is religion sport?

Jay Michaelson writes on RD, "Does God Want Jeremy Lin to Win?" And in the op-ed he ponders some questions about the religious sports figure of the hour.

If you’ve unplugged your computer and TV for the last week, you may not have heard of Jeremy Lin, the sudden basketball phenomenon, Asian-American hero, and, like Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow before him, out-of-nowhere success story who wears his faith on his sleeve.

Lin, like Tebow, is a deeply religious evangelical Christian. And while his own religious utterances have been both humble and thoughtful (Lin went to Harvard, after all), the press swirling around him has led to a spate of bad theology—which is a shame, because sports stories have the ability to capture the public imagination and have the potential to inspire us to reflect on truly important religious values, instead of truly awful ones.

The awful values, of course, have to do with theodicy: that God picks sides, and roots for one sports team over another. In the case of athletics, this belief is both ridiculous and widespread...

Okay let's just stop right there.

We think Michaelson misuses the term theodicy. But more difficult, he thinks that God does not "pick sides" or "root for one team over another."

Wait, stop. It is a belief at the core of Judaism, Christianity and Islam that God does "pick sides" and "root for one team over another."

End of critique.

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Haaretz: Is Rick Santorum an Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jew?

No, not yet. Rick Santorum is not an Israeli ultra-Orthodox Jew. He is not Jewish. He is an American Catholic politician. 

A political analyst for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has a biting (a bit tongue-in-cheek) take on Santorum's mix of religion and politics.

With a beard and a shtreimel, Santorum would be perfect for an Israeli ultra-Orthodox party

The battle over contraception and other 'culture wars' now raging in American presidential politics can make an Israeli feel right at home.
By Chemi Shalev

"Hadarat nashim", the exclusion of women, is the catchphrase that encompasses all of the recent manifestations in Israel of the attempts to distance females from sitting at the front of the bus, singing in military ceremonies, publicly accepting prizes, appearing on public billboards and what not. It's what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was talking about a few months ago when she reportedly told the Saban Forum in Washington that such things remind her of Iran.

Last week, in yet another sign of the close affinity of Republicans with Israel, "hadarat nashim" crossed the Atlantic and reached the U.S. Congress.

Representative Darrel Issa summoned an all-male panel – including an Orthodox rabbi of impeccable pedigree, Yeshiva University's Meir Soloveichik - to testify before his House Oversight Committee on the Catholic confrontation with the Administration over financing contraception for employees.

Issa refused to allow third year Georgetown University student Sandra Fluke to testify before his committee, thus providing Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman with a perfect comeback line to Clinton, who had cited Rosa Parks, the famous African-American civil rights hero, in her critical remarks about Israel in November. "At least in the Knesset, we allow women to testify," Lieberman might say.

Though there is clearly "a difference of sky and earth", as the Hebrew saying goes, between the U.S. and Israel, America's so-called "culture wars", such as those that have erupted in presidential politics in recent weeks, can sometimes make an Israeli feel right at home. The Republican battle cry that the Obama Administration is waging a "war on religion", for example, is standard operating procedure for Israel's ultra-Orthodox political parties. Hardly a day goes by without an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, leader or pundit circling the wagons and drumming up support by claiming that one secular politician or another – especially if his last name is Lapid - is waging a "war on Judaism" or "war on the haredim". And in recent days, if you close your eyes, listen to his words and conjure him with a beard and a traditional Orthodox shtreimel (fur hat) on his head, one might easily cast Republican frontrunner Rich Santorum as a leader of an Israeli ultra-Orthodox party rather than the devout Catholic that he is.

Santorum's views on contraception (wrong), abortion (never), gay marriage (no different than polygamy), homosexual relations (akin to bestiality, and traditionally punishable by death, according to the Book of Leviticus) are not much different, and, in some cases, perhaps slightly more rigid, than most Haredi politicians in Israel. Santorum's opposition to Federal and State intervention in school education is already being immaculately implemented in Israel's so-called "Independent" school system, in which religious studies are predominant and very little "secular" studies – such as math or the sciences – are allowed to get in the way. Santorum's skepticism about evolution, which he tried to translate into law in 2001 when he was the Senator from Pennsylvania, would be par for the course in ultra-Orthodox circles, where one wouldn't dare to mention the name Darwin, even in dreams.

On the other hand, and contrary to some of his Republican rivals who champion "states' rights", Santorum sees nothing wrong with federal legislation of "family values", just as Israel's religious parties have relied on Knesset laws to regulate issues ranging from marriage and divorce through working on the Sabbath all the way to pig farming. And Santorum's reference to Obama's "phony theology" is par for the course for haredi politicians who routinely describe Zionism as a "phony religion".

Of course, the critical difference between Israel and America is their drastically different political systems. American presidential candidates, if they are to win elections, have to appeal to a broad spectrum of voters, including moderate and mostly secular independents, which means that extreme conservatives such as Barry Goldwater or fanatic liberals such as George McGovern generally lose elections badly. For the same reason, many Republicans are increasingly worried that Santorum might also be too radical to beat Obama in the November elections, (although his increasingly controversial statements in recent days suggest that he's doing whatever he can to make sure that he doesn't get the nomination).

In Israel's proportional system, however, ultra-Orthodox parties don't need to pander to the general public or to bother with formulating policy on such irksome issues as the economy or national security: they can afford to think only of their own narrow constituency and its parochial interests. Given that the two main political blocs, left and right, are always short of an absolute majority, perennially at loggerheads over the "cardinal" issue of peace and territories and wouldn't trust each other if their lives depended on it, they have no choice but to rely on the religious parties to be their coalition partners. Secure in the knowledge that they will always hold the balance of power and be the kingmakers, the religious parties allow their secular colleagues to get on with their business of pretending to make peace or trying to annex the territories, whichever the case maybe, and all they ask for in return is influence, religious laws, autonomy, and enormous amounts of cash that will guarantee their predominance in a few short decades.

What saves America from this imposition of religious edicts in the public sphere is its two-party, winner take all political system. Imagine, though, that America also had a proportional system, with a staunchly social-democratic and dovish Democratic Party on the left and a fanatically free market and hawkish Republican Party on the right, both waging a never-ending political world war on the economy and America's place in the world. Now imagine that between these two poles there is a third party, a single-issue party, made up of Catholic fundamentalists and Protestant Evangelicals and perhaps even a rabbi or two thrown in for good measure, whose main raison d'etre was to eradicate godlessness and instill religiosity in American life.

Of course, the natural alliance of this third party would be with the Republicans, but if the Democrats got more votes, there is no doubt that the two sides would be able to reach an accommodation, with the Democrats being allowed to pursue their policies in exchange for far reaching concessions on abortions, say, or contraception, or religious education. If this doesn't sound plausible to you, it's because you haven't been exposed enough to the absolute cynicism of proportional coalition politics, which can make for the strangest of bedfellows (though not of the type that Santorum finds so offensive).

In any case, even in the current setup, if I were a Republican religious conservative, especially the "Jesus candidate" that Santorum has described, I would urgently dispatch an emissary or two to the courts of some of Israel's ultra-Orthodox rabbis and to the backrooms of their political representatives. If one is going to do battle in the confrontation between church and state - or synagogue and state in this case - one might as well learn from the pros who have been winning at this game for many, many years.

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Amazon Judaism forum: Why do Haredim Target the Modern Orthodox?

Quite interesting that there is an Amazon Judaism forum linked to our book pages:
Why do Haredim Target the Modern Orthodox?

Not a bad discussion.

Years ago we wrote a paper explaining our view at the time of why they do that:

Apocalyptic Orthodox Judaism

Meanwhile keep in mind tomorrow is free Kindle book day.

Free Kindle Book, one day only, Monday, February 20: God's Favorite Prayers

More Titles From Talmudic Books

• Kindle Talmud Temurah
• Kindle Talmud Kerithoth
• Kindle Talmud Meilah, Tamid, Middoth and Kinnim
• Kindle Talmud Niddah
• Kindle Mishnah Seder Tohoroth

Titles by Tzvee:

• Kosher Talmud (Bavli Hullin)
• Kosher Prayers: selected from Yerushalmi Berakhot
• Kindle Rashi: the Greatest Exegete

Free Kindle Book, one day only, Monday, February 20: God's Favorite Prayers

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