What really interested the earliest rabbis was the collection and organization of the so-called oral law, the traditions that had already been gathering about the text of the Torah for centuries. This was the next layer, the next level of sediment in the mounting deposit of what would come to be modern rabbinic Judaism. It culminated in the completion of the Mishnah, around the year 200 A.D. This important text, collected and edited by the illustrious Rabbi Judah the Prince, is one of the earliest documents of what can properly be called Judaism in the modern sense. It remains one of Judaisms greatest classics and, after the Bible itself, is the foundation of the Jewish religion. The term mishnah comes from a Hebrew word meaning to repeat or to study, which points to the way in which it was originally studiedby memorization. The Mishnah is organized by topics and comprises sixty-two sections known as tractates. These tractates are divided into six principal parts, dealing with (1) agriculture, and also the portions of various crops that are to be set aside for the temple, the priests, and Israels poor; (2) sabbaths and festivals; (3) women, property, marriage, and divorce; (4) civil and criminal law, including torts and the law of witnesses; (5) conduct of the cult or sacrificial liturgy of the temple; and (6) the preservation of purity in the temple and, under certain specific circumstances, in the home. Noteworthy is the continuing emphasis on the temple. At least two of the six principal parts of the Mishnah deal with that building, which isnt surprising since much of the oral law had probably begun to take shape during the period when it was still standing. But its impressive that successive generations of Jews have continued to study the Mishnah, including the substantial portions of it that would train them to conduct the sacrifices and other rites of the temple should it ever return. And it must be assumed that, at the early time when the Mishnah was compiled, the hope that the temple would soon be rebuilt still burned bright in the hearts of many scattered Jews. The lack of a temple, they were certain, would only be temporary.

Indeed, for a brief period in the fourth century, the Roman emperor Julian (360-63)known to Christian sources as Julian the Apostate but in Jewish tradition under the more neutral nickname of Julian the Helleneraised hopes for the Jews of Palestine and the rest of the empire. Quite understandably unimpressed by the behavior of his supposedly Christian imperial family, which included murders and cruelties of astonishing variety, Julian had renounced Christianity. A highly intelligent man, he had accepted in its stead a philosophical version of the old Greek religion and had set out to reduce the power of the Christian church and its bishops. As part of his policy, he announced in 362 that he would sponsor the rebuilding of Holy Jerusalem, including its temple. By restoring the Jews to their ancient capital and by reestablishing their great shrine, Julian knew, he would score a major propaganda victory against the Christian church, which had based much of its propaganda on the destruction of Jerusalem as a sign of Gods curse upon the Jewish people and the transfer of the divine blessing to the Christians.[1] He was also motivated, it seems, by genuine sympathy with Jewish doctrine and by a deep interest in religious ritual generally. The Christian reaction to Julians plans was, predictably, furious and apparently violent. Thus, when Christian legends report miraculous fireballs that destroyed everything the Jews had built on the temple mount, we can probably infer from this that pious arsonists set fire to the construction site. And when Julian was stabbed to death by a devout Christian Arab soldier among his troops, the dream of a restored Jewish temple died with him.

There still existed a large Jewish colony in Mesopotamia, in the area to which the Jews had been carried off during the so-called Babylonian captivity. As already mentioned, the captives had prospered there, and most of them had chosen to remain in comfortable exile even when the road to return was entirely open. They enjoyed a flourishing intellectual life and maintained relatively close contact with their fellow-believers in and around Palestine. Soon, the Mishnah reached them there. But the rabbis didnt, at first, occupy the first rank among Babylonian Jewry. Surprisingly enough, these exiles enjoyed a kind of quasi-political autonomy later than the Jews of Palestine did. For a time, their leader, who was known as the exilarch, functioned as a kind of princehe claimed to be descended from the very King Zedekiah who had been carried away into captivity just after Lehis departure from Jerusalem in the sixth century B.C.and served as a high official in the Parthian state that ruled the area. However, when the fervidly Zoroastrian Sasanian Dynasty came to power early in the third century, the privileged role and the political powers of the exilarch were curtailed. But as the political elite of Babylonian Jewry lost power and prestige, the influence of the rabbis expanded to fill the vacuum. Thus, eventually, just as in Palestine, the scholars took over. Jesus words, spoken more than two centuries before, were now truer than ever: The scribes and the Pharisees, he had said, sit in Moses seat.[2]

Given the new Jewish focus on the writing of commentaries, its hardly surprising that scholars immediately began to comment upon the Mishnah. Both the rabbis of Palestine and the rabbinic academies of Mesopotamia thus produced editions of what is known as the Talmud. (The name comes from a Hebrew word meaning study, or learning.) This represents the third layer of Judaism as we know it. The Talmud grew out of lectures and discussions on the Mishnah, which was the core of the curriculum. The Jerusalem Talmud, or Talmud of the West, was complete by the end of the fourth century A.D. Most of the work on it was actually done in the city of Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. It represents the thought and the decisions of the Palestinian rabbis and scholars during the two centuries that had passed since the compiling of the Mishnah. In fact, although presented in the form of a commentary, it actually goes beyond the Mishnah and includes material on issues the Mishnah had not touched at all. Work on the Babylonian Talmud took somewhat longer and was finished a century later. Although the Babylonian is the more detailed of the two Talmuds, both are in substantial agreement. Both are mostly in Hebrew, with passages in western Aramaic and a sprinkling of Greek loan words in the Jerusalem Talmud, and passages in eastern Aramaic and a few Persian loan words in the Babylonian Talmud. Together, they form an admirable foundation for a unified body of religious law and practice.

[1] For some interestingly similar modern views on the matter, see Thomas L. Friedman, From Beirut to Jerusalem (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989), 430-31.

[2] Matthew 23:2.

Posted from Park City, Utah

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Revision 1.13 The Mishnah and the Talmuds | Dan Peterson - Patheos

NEW YORK-July 21, 2020- (Newswire.com)

Today, Trinity Church Wall Street and prominent faith organizations, including The National Action Network, led by Rev. Al Sharpton; Central Synagogue; and Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York, launchedFaith Communities for Just Reentry, a coalition calling on Mayor Bill de Blasio to enact immediate measures to provide safety and support for those being released from Rikers Island during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Without adequate support, those who are being released because of COVID-19 are facing homelessness and illness and thats not acceptable.said the Rev. Phillip A. Jackson, Priest-in-charge and Vicar of Trinity Church Wall Street. The pandemic has magnified the systemic racism of the criminal justice systemand, as faith leaders, we have an obligation to call for action.

The Mayor and City Council have the power to fix this, he said. Their immediate action is urgent because of the pandemicand these actions would also address the ongoing need for support and dignity for those re-entering society.Each year, 15,000 to 20,000 New Yorkers are caught in the cycle of incarceration and homelessness, 80% of them people of color.

Jewish tradition teaches that one may never say to a penitent, remember your former deeds (Mishnah, Bava Metzia 4:10), said Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, Senior Rabbi at Central Synagogue. In fact, our sages accord a sacred status to those who transform and change their lives through the process of atonement. In the place where penitents stand, even the wholly righteous cannot stand (Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 34b). And yet, over and over again, our city not only reminds those returning from jail or prison of their justice-impacted histories, we also actively deny them the resources and support needed for their re-entry journeys and ongoing transformations, she said.

As a people who believes in the power of repentance and atonement, we urge our city to not only welcome home our brothers and sisters who have served their time, but to embrace their personal transformations as models for all of us embarking on personal and collective journeys of change and evolution, she said.

The coalition, which includes leaders from the Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Muslim faith communities, is proposing a three-point Policy Agenda for urgent action to:

1.Provide safetyfor people released from incarceration during COVID-19by providing them with valid identification, an effective healthcare transition that allows people to immediately access the care and medication, and timely coronavirus testing.

2.Ensure that justice-involved individuals have stable homesby ending permanent exclusions from government-supported housing and discrimination in the private market, modifying the rental assistance voucher system, and leveraging public funds to create new housing to meet their needs.

3.Develop a coordinated reentry systemthat works across government agencies and is held accountable to the well-being of each person so thatthis will not happen again.

Contact:Tiani Jones, 917.710.3289,tjones@trinitywallstreet.org

Press Release ServicebyNewswire.com

Original Source:Faith Leaders Demand Action From New York City's Mayor to Ensure Safe Reentry for Those Leaving Rikers Island During COVID-19 Pandemic

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Faith Leaders Demand Action From New York City's Mayor to Ensure Safe Reentry for Those Leaving Rikers Island During COVID-19 Pandemic - Press Release...

Inviting people to laugh with you while you are laughing at yourself is a good thing to do, Carl Reiner said. You may be a fool, but youre the fool in charge.

Carl Reiner was a comedy genius. We remember him for The Dick Van Dyke Show, Sid Caesars Your Show of Shows, and of course as straight man to Mel Brooks in The 2000 Year Old Man.

His passing reminds us of an era when perhaps 80 percent of leading comics were Jewish. The passing of a style of humor we might call earthy, clever, slapstick, and/or Jewish.

So what makes a joke Jewish? It must express a Jewish sensibility, and usually calls upon, according to Joseph Telushkin, those values and issues that matter to Jews: anti-Semitism, financial success, verbal aggression, assimilation, professional success, anxieties, creative logic and argumentation, family relationships, to name a few. Some Italian, Irish, Swedish, Welsh, and Russian collections of humor have Jewish flavors. We dont have a monopoly. A good laugh is a good laugh in any culture.

Five years ago, when my wife, Celia, and I joined the synagogue in Sag Harbor, Temple Adas Israel, we formed a Jewish Humor Group that met regularly to tell jokes and to share potluck suppers and camaraderie. We had trouble defining what constitutes Jewish humor, but we had a helluva great time telling jokes. I became the fool in charge, and we laughed at ourselves and one anothers jokes. We formed lasting friendship bonds that transcend todays Zoom.

You can enjoy Jewish humor without defining it. Here are plenty of examples:

A man from Israel visits New York in 1950, a time when not many Israelis could afford to travel. He meets a New Yorker who says, I havent met any Israelis. Tell me, how are things in Israel? The Israeli says, Good!

The New Yorker thinks this answer is too short. He says to the Israeli, Can you tell me more? Add a few details? You know, elaborate? The Israeli says, Certainly! He pauses to think a moment. Then he says, Not good!

Ive told this joke many times both to Jewish people and to non-Jewish people. The Jews think its funny. Others dont get it. Im not sure why, but I think it has something to do with Talmudic thinking. You know, On the one hand, but on the other hand. The Talmud often presents both sides, or even more than two sides, to any argument. Remember that three Jews will often have four opinions? (Why four? One of them is schizophrenic.)

Here are two poems by our friend the late great poet Harvey Shapiro that are unmistakably Jewish:

New York Notes

1

Caught on a side street

in heavy traffic, I said

to the cabbie, I should

have walked. He replied

I should have been a doctor.

2

When can I get on the 11:33

I ask the guy in the information booth

at the Atlantic Avenue Station.

When they open the doors, he says.

I am home among my people.

The Old Jew

Who would have thought

his taste for pickled herring

would outlast his taste for women.

Another example: Two guys are walking their dogs in Central Park. One has a German shepherd. The other a Chihuahua. The German shepherd owner says, Lets have lunch at Tavern on the Green.

The Chihuahua owner says, Hey. Its not like in France. They dont allow dogs in restaurants here.

The German shepherd owner says, Yes they do! Just watch me get in with my dog. Say what I say, and do what I do, and well both get in with our dogs.

So the German shepherd owner goes up to the matre d and says, Id like to have lunch here.

Sorry, sir. No dogs allowed.

But thats a seeing-eye dog.

So the matre d says, Welcome. Please come right in!

The Chihuahua owner follows the same script. And the matre d says, Sir. Do you realize that you have a seeing-eye Chihuahua?

And the Chihuahua owner shouts, What? They gave me a Chihuahua?

Or,

Behind every successful man stands a surprised mother-in-law.

I have all the money Ill ever need, if I die by 4 p.m. tomorrow.

How about this? Woman on a plane to Hawaii says to the passenger next to her, How do you pronounce the place were going to, HaWaii or HaVayi?

The passenger says, HaVayi!

The woman says Thank you.

The passenger says, Youre Velcome!

A priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar, and the bartender says, What is this? A joke? (This is a meta-joke, a joke about jokes.)

A priest, a minister, and a rabbit walk into a bar. The rabbit says, Wait a minute, I think Im a typographical error.

A grandmother takes her grandson to kindergarten for the first time. She says, Bubbeleh. Were going to school, Bubbeleh. Its your first day, Bubbeleh. Youre going to love it, Bubbeleh. Youll meet new friends, Bubbeleh. Heres your sandwich, Bubbeleh. Lets get dressed, Bubbeleh. Come on, Bubbeleh. Lets not be late, Bubbeleh.

She picks him up at school at the end of the day. She says, Well, Bubbeleh. Did you like school? What did you learn today?

The kid says, I learned my name is not Bubbeleh!

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The food here at the hotel is terrible and such small portions!

I had a dream. I was having dinner with my father and mother. I made a terrible Freudian slip. I meant to say, Please pass the salt. And instead, in the dream, I said, You horrible parents. You ruined my entire childhood.

A fetus is a fetus until it gets out of medical school.

You should always be yourself, unless youre a jerk. In that case, you should be someone else.

An American is riding in a taxi in Israel. The driver is a Russian immigrant. The American says, How were conditions in Russia?

The driver says, I cant complain.

You mean to say that even with all the food shortages there?

The driver says, I cant complain. But the American goes on, Even with all the history of anti-Semitism and persecution there?

I cant complain.

The American, frustrated, finally says, Well, why come to Israel?

The driver says, Here, I can complain!

We value those strong and unique friendship bonds formed in our Jewish Humor Group. Why do we value jokes and friends today, more than ever? Why does Jewish humor matter in our strange science-fiction-like era of quarantine, social isolation, elbow-bumps, lockdown, face masks, and Zoom relationships?

I can answer from personal experience, speaking as the fool in charge. Laughter! Camaraderie! Sharing good comedy of any origin or flavor with good friends!

Yes, Jewish humor matters. Did I mention the health benefits of laughter?

Stephen Rosen, a physicist and regular Star contributor, is co-founder, with his wife, Celia Paul, of the Jewish Humor Group at Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor, which will have an open mike Jewish Joke Fest free to everyone on July 23at 7 p.m. on Zoom.

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Guestwords: Let There Be Laughter - East Hampton Star

Embracing your unique self is essential for relating to others.

Remember when you were just beginning to take your first steps? You had been holding onto the sofa in the living room and your parents and grandparents were clapping and cheering as you let go of the sofa with one hand and took a step forward. Then you completely let go of the couch and took two or three shaky but quick steps into the middle of the room. You were smiling, two bottom teeth flashing and everyone was screaming, You did it! Hooray! You're walking!

As you took each new step, your father went to the middle of the room, and took a step backward as he held out his hands to encourage you to keep walking. And then you stopped and realized that you weren't holding on to anything or anyone. You were on your own in the middle of the room. How did I get here? you asked yourself. What am I doing out here all by myself without anything to hold me up? I cant do this! And you sat down on the floor in a flood of tears as your mother rushed over and scooped you up.

Standing in the middle of the room on your own was a crucial moment of self awareness that you were independent. You were no longer holding onto the couch or onto Mommys apron strings. It was just you and the world. That was the first fleeting moment that you subconsciously realized that you were a persona self in your own right.

And what is the natural reaction to this realization of a personal identity? Absolute terror. So you sat down.

That feeling is one of fear of your own identity, of being alone within your own self. This realization is ingrained as part of the human condition. It is an existential feeling of being alone on your own in the big living room called the world.

This realization can give rise to your feeling alienated, isolated and lonely. And it is natural. Whenever you feel isolated or lonely in life, you are tapping into the same feeling that you first experienced standing alone in the middle of your parents living room as you walked for the first time.

Those scary, lonely situations don't have to give rise to a feeling of alienation. Yes, you are alone because you are unique! No one else in the entire universe has your personality, your unique DNA, your upbringing, environment and unique mix of abilities and weaknesses.

Now you can say to yourself, I am different and therefore, I am lonely" or "I am different and therefore I am unique and special." In order to play your unique role in the world you have to be alone. But this does not mean that you have to be lonely.

This awareness of your unique self can be a motivator. It can challenge you with the realization that your unique characteristics empower you to perform a unique job that only you can perform. You have been handpicked for your unique destiny. When you look at your existential self in this light you can turn the liability of being lonely, into the asset of being alone and unique in the world. Instead of living in dread of your loneliness, you can revel in your aloneness. It is only when you are alone that you can truly fulfill your potential.

The Jerusalem Talmud (Sanhedrin 4) asks why God created the first man, Adam, alone. It explains that Adam was created alone so that each and every person who is born could relate and identify with his singularity and aloneness and say: I am like Adam.

In creating Adam alone, God challenges us to become aware of our separate and unique identities and to get to know ourselves so that we can successfully relate to others. We have to become self-aware; we must learn to relate to ourselves. Before Eve married Adam, she was an individual in her own right. We need to become aware of our individuality before we enter into a healthy, giving relationship.

This is the meaning of Hillels famous saying in the Ethics of the Fathers: If I am not for myself, who will be for me? (1:4). Far from being a statement promoting the ego, it is really a challenge that you have to get to know who you are and learn to develop a personal self-concept as a prerequisite to activating your potential.

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The Terrifying Feeling of Being Alone in the World - Aish

Hillel and Shamai, the exemplars of rabbinic and Jewish pluralism, have a dark secret that is seldom found on the many source sheets featuring these archetypal rivals.

While most teachers focus on the many stories highlighting the high level of respect and civility between these two men and their respective study houses, we can find a story depicting the darker side and potential risk of ideological disagreement.

The Jerusalem Talmud tells of the students of Hillel and Shamai studying together in the attic of Hanania ben Hizkiya: The students of Beit Shamai stood at the bottom [of the stairs], and they killed the students of Beit Hillel. It was taught: Six of them went up [to the attic], and the rest of them attacked them with spears and swords (Yerushalmi, Shabbat 1:4). In other words, what started as a study session eventually ended with a murderous fight.

The point of the inclusion of such a story in the talmudic canon, whether fact or myth, is obvious. As a people constantly engaged in fierce debate, the Rabbis werent oblivious to the potential danger of fierce disagreement. However, it is specifically due to this deep understanding of the pathologies of ideological disagreement that made their commitment to fostering civil debate all the more noble. Judaism has always understood that potential can be equally co-opted for both good and bad.

About a week ago, I was plunged headfirst into the best and worst of internet discourse. For weeks prior, I had been having dozens of conversations with people within the right-wing Jewish community about the moral imperative to support the Black Lives Matter movement, only to have my efforts be stymied at every argument.

Black Lives Matter, they said, is anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and even anti-American. Plus, when we say All Lives Matter, of course that includes people from the Black community! Why do we need to specifically affirm that the lives of one group of people matter?

This is the question I consistently faced from the All Lives Matter crowd. Of course, when one looks at American history, and even at many of our current policies, the answer to the above question is clear. However, to my friends in conservative circles, who have bought into the myth that we are post-systemic racism, these points of argumentation are simply met with a carefully selected (read: biased) set of statistics. I realized I needed to try something else.

Thus, my last article for The Forward, Zionism is the Jewish Black Lives Matter, was born. My argument points out that Zionism can be viewed as a Jewish rejection of All Lives Matter, as we strove for national self-determination. Similarly, I argued, Zionists should understand first-hand why particularistic movements are sometimes crucial.

This argument, I hoped, would allow right-wing Jews to understand the double standard of shouting All lives matter while also taking offense whenever someone questions the need or right for the Jews to have their own self-determination. This was the extent of the comparison.

The article came out Friday morning and, within a few hours, I had received dozens of texts and messages from a variety of friends alerting me to the fact that a handful of left-wing journalists had taken screenshots of the title, subsequently tweeting about their anger towards it. Of course, their hundreds of thousands of followers mirrored the rage without even having read the piece. People came up with all sorts of arguments they thought I was making (from their analysis of the title alone) and then proceeded to call me a whole range of insulting epithets based on their mistaken understanding.

I always strive to foster an environment of civil debate. I have written about the need to talk with civility to anti-Semites, I attempt to personally and nicely answer every negative email and social media comment I receive on my writing, and I try to live by this principle every day of my life. The importance of civil debate, Judaism teaches, is simply too important to have it be ruined by anger and ad-hominems, no matter how enticing and cathartic these reactions may be.

In the wake of this latest article, many of my friends, and even my own mother, urged me to take a break from writing about controversial topics. It isnt worth it, they said, to attempt to have nuanced and important conversion on social media, a realm known for its polarization. But I disagreed. I quickly commented on every re-tweet and re-share of my article, telling people that I wrote the article and would love to talk more about it!

My faith in conversation was quickly restored. Dozens of email threads, personal messages, and even a couple of phone calls immediately transpired. Threads that had started with insults and curses ended with apologies. However, the best result came in response to a video that Jewish rapper Y-Love made about my article. I found this video to be a misrepresentation of my article and argument - but knew that commenting something adversarial wouldnt be of any help. Instead I left a nice comment ending with asking Y-Love if he wanted to talk. Civility won the day as Y-Love invited me onto his show and subsequently interviewed me about the article and other germane topics.

As national polarization along with our online interaction increases - the ability for civil debate is more important than ever. The outrage culture cultivated in the online world, on both sides of the political aisle, is ugly and dangerous, but we must work through it. Although the debates between Hillel and Shamai even turned violent, the Talmud teaches that they still married one anothers daughters, thereby remaining one community. In todays polarized culture each of us has the potential to be an immense force for either destruction or civility. My experience has taught me to keep choosing civility.

Moshe Daniel Levine is the Senior Jewish Educator at OC Hillel and a Rabbinic fellow at Temple Beth Tikvah. You can read more of his writing on his website. He can be reached at dlevine21@gmail.com.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

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My article was controversial - and I talked to the haters - Forward

The problem of evil, or theodicy, is a straightforward but deeply challenging one: How can an all-powerful and all-good God be the steward for a world that is home to so much evil and suffering?

While some religions can resort to explanations that paint God as less than omnipotent or completely benevolent, that would seem to be beyond the pale for classical Jewish theology, which insists that God is both. The problem is compounded by the principle of sakhar va-onesh literally reward and punishment, the notion that God rewards the good and punishes the bad. From this perspective, not only is the question of righteous suffering a challenge, but so is the prospering of evildoers.

Jewish tradition offers two general approaches to this problem. One is the retributivist approach, whereby all suffering is the result of a specific sin. The other general approach avoids taking this step, whether by locating the root cause of evil in something other than God, denying the existence of evil, or pleading an inability to understand Gods ways.

Throughout the Torah and the later rabbinic writings, the retributivist approach was the dominant one. Both Leviticus and Deuteronomy promise health and prosperity if Gods laws are followed, and destruction and even exile if they arent. As Jeremiah 9:12 puts it, Why was the land destroyed? Because they [Israel] left my Torah.

While the Hebrew Bible does contain some other ideas about good and evil, including Job chalking up evil to Gods inscrutable will rather than a consistent application of reward and punishment, the retributivist approach remains primary. And while some texts including some among the Dead Sea Scrolls entertain the possibility that evil stems from some force other than God, this possibility is not a mainstream idea in Jewish thought.

Rabbinic literature, which largely continues the retributivist approach, is forced to contend with the fact that divine justice often seems to falter. The ancient rabbis offered several explanations. One of which is that if the righteous suffer, it is so they exhaust their punishment in this world and can enjoy uncompromised bliss in the next one. Some sources take this further, asserting that there is no true reward and punishment at all in this world only in the world to come.

Another explanation is that times of national crisis may be exceptions to the usual rule, where the saints suffer along with the sinners. Unnoticed failings, and possibly even missed opportunities for Torah study, may justify the punishment of the righteous. God may also show closeness to someone by imposing suffering on them, which the Talmud refers to as afflictions of love. While some sources take a more skeptical attitude toward our ability to understand why God rewards some and punishes others, other sources attempt to do precisely that.

Medieval philosophers were very much occupied with this problem as well, not least of them Maimonides. In seeking to explain why God allows for evil perpetrated by people, Maimonides leans on the central principle of free will, without which all human action is meaningless. But this doesnt explain natural evil, like sickness or natural disasters. Maimonides has several suggestions besides the traditional retributivist one. Either evil can be understood as a function of humanitys physical (and therefore flawed) nature. Or it is the result of a privation that is, the absence of goodness, and therefore not an entity unto itself that is attributable to God.

The medieval and early modern kabbalists also offered versions of this latter explanation in moving to distance evil from God. Whether as a result of Gods contraction from this world (tzimtzum, in the language of Jewish mysticism), or certain worldly evil forces (like the sitra achra, literally the other side), the kabbalists pointed to certain things God created or left in the world that retain the autonomy to do evil. Offering a different explanation centuries later, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook took the perspective that all things come from God and thus must contain a spark of good, such that evil must be holy too.

In the 20th century, the massive scale of the evil perpetrated by the Nazis gave a new urgency to these ancient questions. In responding to the immense theological challenges posed by the Holocaust, some liberal Jews embraced the idea that God is hiding, or even that God is dead, effectively removing God from the question of what happens in the world. But the Orthodox approach has generally been to double down on retributivism, insisting that the abandonment of Jewish tradition, failing to immigrate to Israel, or some other religious failing was the cause of the Holocaust.

Taking a more moderate Orthodox approach, the theologian Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik suggested that the appropriate Jewish response to evil is not to attempt to understand it, but to respond to it to fight human evil where it exists and to utilize human suffering as an opportunity for spiritual growth.

Soloveitchik developed not a metaphysic, but an ethic of suffering. The right question to ask about evil is not why, but what. This view can be seen as consistent with the longstanding Jewish tradition of formulating laments in response to national tragedy beginning with the biblical book of Lamentations, written in response to the destruction of the ancient Temple. As it writes, Let us search and examine our ways, and let us return to the Lord.

Today, there is often little tolerance for attempts to reconcile the persistence of evil in the world with faith in a beneficent and all-powerful God, for suggesting that those who suffer are somehow deserving of their fate out of a desire to avoid the conclusion that God either cannot, or will not, relieve their pain. But retributivist theodicy is by no means dead, as can be seen from the many attempts to explain which sin was the cause of the coronavirus pandemic. The great Jewish debate over theodicy, over how to square a perfect God with an imperfect world, rages on.

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A Traditional Jewish Approach to the Problem of Evil - My Jewish Learning

It is a fundamental principle of Judaism that events in our lives not only on a global or national level but on a personal level as well do not occur randomly. We believe that God is both timeless and transcendent; He takes an active part in the shaping of history and guides the world through its every moment. The Talmud succinctly expresses this concept when it says: No one so much as cuts his finger in the world below, unless it is ordained in the world above.We are now in the midst of the Three Weeks Bein Hamtzarim as we commemorate the dreadful events which resulted in the destruction of both the first and second Temples, along with numerous other tragedies, such as the Inquisition. Yet these misfortunes did not occur haphazardly, in a vacuum. As we recite annually in the prayers of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, Because of our sins, we were exiled from our land. These sins are cataloged in numerous talmudic tractates, and they include the neglect of Jewish education, the lack of respect for elders and scholars, and, of course sinat chinam, baseless animosity toward our fellow Jews.All the accumulated flaws in our collective behavior combined to create Tisha Beav, the Black Fast that is considered the low point of our calendar year.I want to suggest that the underlying causes of the destruction can be summarized in just one little word: Eicha. This is the title of the book known as Lamentations in English that we read in its entirety on the night of 9 Av. Fittingly, it is the only one of the five megilot that is read exclusively at night, as we turn down the lights and sit mournfully in semi-darkness. But the question eicha? is not reserved for Tisha Beav alone; it reverberates throughout history.It appears when an overwrought Moses laments to the people: Eicha how can I alone bear your struggles? (Deuteronomy 1:12). Moses was never one to shirk from work or challenge, but he recognizes that, in the final analysis, it is ultimately the nation that must carry the burden, and not the individual. While we are fond of saying great leaders make great nations, Moses, in his unparalleled wisdom, knew the truth is quite the opposite: A great people will invariably cause great leaders to arise.We failed as a people when we allowed our national institutions to become self-serving, engaging in constant corruption and endless even brutal competition and conflict with one faction against the other. We failed when we neglected to call out the evil-doers and demand a high moral standard from our leaders; when we practiced rigidity rather than flexibility in the law and, of course, when we awash in our seemingly endless good fortune showed cynical disdain for the other. Only when a nation as a whole fails so miserably, says Moses, can a disaster as great as Tisha Beav occur.Later, the prophet Isaiah wails (1:21), Eicha how has this faithful city [Jerusalem] become as a prostitute! Lusting after the practices of the nations, desperate to be loved, a harlot sells out her principles to the lover who offers the highest bid. A prostitute has no intrinsic identity; she is a body (politic) for hire, her passions directed solely by those who pay her fee. Isaiah bemoans that in spurning our true benefactor, our eternal soul-mate, Israel compromised its relationship with God, leading to our destruction.HE IMPLIES that as a nation, we must remain loyal to who we are; we must not allow our desire to find acceptance in the world at large cloud our historic vision and pervert our unique character. To be a leader as Abraham the Ivri epitomized you must sometimes stand on the other side of the divide, determined to represent a truth and a mission to which the entire world may object. Finally, Jeremiah, the prophet of the destruction, cries out in Eichas opening verse: Eicha how did Jerusalem become so alone, so like a widow? Just as a woman who has lost her husband feels abandoned, deserted, defenseless, we left ourselves vulnerable to the insidious neighbors surrounding us. With the demise of our relationship with God and our unwillingness to repent and so rekindle that sacred union we became prey to our enemies. They sensed that we no longer had our partner to guard and protect us, and so we were decimated.There is an expectation on the part of the nations that we will be a light, a guide to a more perfect world. That often creates a double- or even triple-standard, but like it or not, that is the creed we live by. If we have skewed all the graphs and survived throughout the ages against all odds, it is precisely due to our adherence to a higher (read: holier), calling.This year will undoubtedly be known as the Year of Corona. But it should also be called the Year of the Protest. Even under the ominous cloud of the virus, there have been massive demonstrations in Israel and worldwide, railing against all forms of hardship and injustice, real or presumed.This, in and of itself, is not a bad thing. The right to protest, along with the right to speak ones mind and hold ones own opinion, no matter how unpopular, is a fundamental right of all people.Yet along with blaming others for our problems, we also have to look inward, at our own behavior. Using the same letters of Eicha (Genesis Rabba 4:10), God calls out to Adam, and to humankind in every generation: Ayeka, where are you?!That first Adam replied, And I hid. But we know that we cannot escape or hide; we must look in the mirror and confront our actions, recognize our failings, and commit to correcting the national sins that resulted in our dispersion and degradation.The Talmud (Taanit 29a) records that on the eve of the Temples destruction, young priests ascended to the roof with the keys to the Temple in their hands. Master of the Universe, they cried, we did not merit to be faithful keepers of Your house, and so we are handing you back the keys. They threw the keys up in the air, and a heavenly hand reached out and took them.It is only when we realize that we hold the keys to our own destiny and the ability to right the wrongs of our society that the dark countenance of the Black Fast will turn into a great and shining light. The writer is director of the Jewish Outreach Center of Raanana.jocmtv@netvision.net.il

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Eicha - the question that reverberates throughout history - The Jerusalem Post

Last Sunday, we heard a reading from the Matthew 13: 1-23, in which Jesus tells the parable of the man who went out to sow seed. Some fell in places where it failed to grow and some into good soil where it yielded a rich harvest. I began to think about the life of seeds. I heard a sister ask another sister, The package says these seeds are from 2019. Will they still grow? How long will a seed last? The other sister assured her, Yes, they will grow.

This reminded me of a discovery by a doctor in Israel named Sara Sallon. She got a disease when working in India that was cured by traditional herbal remedies. This planted a seed in her mind, and so she pursued obtaining ancient seeds like those from the famous date plantations along the Dead Sea 2,000 years ago as described by Pliny and by the first-century historian Josephus. Most people would say that those places are not there anymore, and that their dates have just vanished. Sallon realized, though, that seeds from those trees still existed. They had been recovered from archaeological sites. So she went to the archaeologists and proposed planting some of those seeds to see if they would grow again. It didnt go well at first. They thought I was mad! she says. They didnt think that this was even conceivable. But she planted one and it grew. Then she went to another site, where there were seeds that were found in the place where the Dead Sea scrolls had been found and she planted more. Now that there are both female and male plants growing, she hopes that they will be pollinated and can then produce dates of the same kind that Jesus ate as he was walking around on earth. Imagine 2,000 year old seeds producing fruit!

We have an amazing seed too, that is, the seed that is planted in our hearts by God. These seeds can last forever but are of no use if we do not use them. They live in us and wait to be heard. The spiritual writer Richard Rohr says, When weve ignored a thousand invitations, theres still another one waiting.

In the gospel, Jesus goes on to explain the parable to his listeners. The seed sown on the path is the one who hears the word but doesnt understand and it is lost. The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who initially hears the word with joy, but when trouble comes, falls away.

The seed sown among thorns is the one who hears but then is distracted by anxiety or riches and bears no fruit. But the seed sown on rich soil is the one who hears, understands and bears fruit. Jesus uses the word hear 14 times in this one teaching.

I recently had a hearing test where I had to repeat a sentence I was listening to while there were other competing voices on the recording. We are always hearing voices competing with the voice of God. Sometimes they are good voices, speaking words that go with Gods words, like voices we hear about racism or care of creation or abortion and other life issues. Sometimes they are voices that try to drown out the voice of God, as with those who say that their personal rights and freedom are more important than the common good.

There is a saying from the Jewish Talmud that says, We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are. Jesus teaches us that we have to attend to the message of the word with the ear of our heart in order to be penetrated by what God planted and bear fruit.

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The seed that is sown | Community And Lifestyles - atchisonglobenow.com

We need to stand up and speak out.

On April 11, 1944, a young Anne Frank wrote in her diary:

Who has made us Jews different from all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly until now? It is God Who has made us as we are, but it will be God, too, who will raise us up again. Who knows it might even be our religion from which the world and all peoples learn good, and for that reason and that reason alone do we now suffer. We can never become just Netherlanders, or just English, or representatives of any other country for that matter. We will always remain Jews.

Anne Frank was on to something. The Talmud asks, from where did Mount Sinai derive its name? After offering a few alternatives, the Talmud suggests that Mount Sinai comes from Hebrew word sinah which means hatred, because the non-Jews hatred of the Jews descended upon that mountain when the Jewish people received the Torah there. Torah demands a moral and ethical lifestyle, an attitude of giving rather than taking, a life of service rather than of privilege, that has revolutionized the world.

The Jewish people have been charged to be the moral conscience of the world, a mission they have not always succeeded at, but that nevertheless drew the ire, anger and hatred of so many. For two thousand years the Jews were bullied and persecuted simply because of their Jewishness and all that stands for.

After the Holocaust, the world gave the Jews a reprieve from their hatred, becoming instead beneficiaries of their pity. But looking at events around the world, it is rapidly becoming clear that the last 75 years was an aberration. We have witnessed the rise of anti-Semitism around the world as the world reverts back to its ageless pattern and habit.

The Midrash (Eichah Rabbah 1) teaches that three prophets used the term eichah o how! In Deuteronomy, Moses asks: "Eichah, how can I alone bear your troubles, your burden and your strife?" (Deut. 1:12) In the Haftorah for Shabbos Chazon, the Prophet Yeshayahu asks: "Eichah, how has the faithful city become like a prostitute?" Lastly, Yirmiyahu begins the Book of Eichah: "Eichah, how is it that Jerusalem is sitting in solitude! The city that was filled with people has become like a widow..." Eicha How? How is it that anti-Semitism persists? Why must they rise up against us in every generation?

On Tisha BAv we will sit on the floor and wonder aloud, eicha? How could it be Jews have to fear for their lives yet again? Eicha how could it be that today, with all the progress humanity has made, more than a quarter of the world is still holding anti-Semitic views?

Rabbi Soloveitchik tells us that though the Midrash identifies three times the word eicha is used, in truth there is a fourth. When Adam and Eve fail to take responsibility, God calls out to them and says ayeka, where are you? Ayeka is spelled with the same letters as eicha, leading Rabbi Soloveitchik to say that when we dont answer the call of ayeka, when we dont take personal responsibility for our problems and blame others, we will ultimately find ourselves asking eicha, how could it be?

We can ask eicha, how could all of these terrible things be, but we may never have a definitive answer. Our job is to make sure we can answer the call of ayeka, where are you? Are you taking responsibility? We may not be able to fully understand why anti-Semitism exists, but we can and must remain vigilant in calling it out, confronting it and fighting it. We must remain strong in standing up for Jews everywhere. We must confront evil and do all we can to defeat it.

And, we must do all that we can to take personal responsibility to fulfill the Jewish mission to bring Godliness into the world. If individual Jews were hated for being the conscience of the others, all the more so does a Jewish country generate hate for being the moral conscious of the whole world, held to higher moral standards than any other country or state.

Our job is not to be discouraged by asking eicha, o how! but to ensure that we can answer the call of ayeka, where are you. Anti-Semitism will not come to an end by assimilating and retreating. It will come to an end when we can positively answer the question that the Talmud tells us each one of us will be asked when we meet our Maker: did you long for the redemption and did you personally take responsibility to do all that you can to bring the redemption? Did you truly feel the pain of exile and feel the anguish of the Jewish condition in the world? Do you truly and sincerely care? Did you anxiously await every day for Moshiach to herald in an era of peace and harmony, an end to anti-Semitism and suffering?

It is not enough to long for Moshiach, we must bring him. It is not enough to hope for redemption, we must be the catalyst for it. It is not enough to be tired of eicha, we must answer ayeka. If we want to get up off the floor and end the mourning, if we want to finally end anti-Semitism, it is up to us to do what is necessary to heal our people, to repair the world, to love one another, and to earn the redemption from the Almighty.

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The End of Anti-Semitism - Aish

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Question: The Covid-19 pandemic has put an end to almost all public gatherings; hence, much of Jewish congregational ritual has come to a halt. Is there a way to make up for everything we missed?

M. Goldman

Answer: Last week, we quoted extensively from Kaddish: Its Origins, Meanings and Laws by the gaon HaRav Dovid Assaf, ztl. We begin this week with another quote from his work:

A stubborn and rebellious son ben sorer umorer (Deuteronomy 21:18) is stoned to death at the entrance of his fathers houseas though to say (Ketubot 45a), See what he has reared! All the more so in the case of a sonwho refuses to recite Kaddish altogether, whom the Rabbinical court is not obligated to force.

Nevertheless, if at all possible, one must certainly try to persuade him. It is written (Leviticus 1:3), yakriv oto lirtzono lifnei Hashem he shall offer it willingly before Hashem. He shall offer it this implies coercion. Yet it says (infra 1:4) vnirtza lo lchaper alav it shall become acceptable for him, to atone for him, which implies a voluntary action! How to reconcile these two contradictory statements?

The Talmud (Kiddushin 50a) explains the concept of voluntary coercion, that it is really for the persons own good: every Jew, deep down, wishes to fulfill the commandments of the Torah; however, he is occasionally prevented from doing so by his evil inclination. Some initial coercion, however, has the effect of bringing his will to the fore.

The idea that every Jew, deep down, is righteous is evident in the following unusual Talmudic ruling: [If one approached a woman and said, You are betrothed to me] on condition that Im righteous, the woman is betrothed even if he is [known to be] surely wicked because we suspect he had a hirhur teshuvah [i.e., he mentally decided to repent].

The author continues: In my book Yalkut Das vaDin, I printed a letter that I received from my friend Rabbi Yaakov Chai Zerihan, zl, who was the Chief Rabbi and Av Beit Din of the holy city of Tiberias. In short, he agrees with me that a son cannot be forced to recite Kaddish for his father, and differs with Rabbi Tukaccinsky, zl, on this matter. He reiterates the point made above that in any case the Kaddish of a wicked son [who is forced to recite Kaddish for his father] would do more harm than good.

It is obvious that both Rabbi Assaf and Rabbi Zerihan are discussing the distressing case of a son who refuses to allow himself to come under the influence of the rabbis. But Kiddushin 50a, which Rabbi Assaf cites, teaches us that there really is no wicked son, only a wayward son, who with some initial coercion can be brought back to the straight path.

Indeed, most would view such a son saying Kaddish as a step, even if only a small one, up the ladder for his own neshama as he offers nachat ruach (tranquil satisfaction) to the soul of his parent as well.

We have cases of anus rachmana patrei of heaven absolving a person if he is prevented from fulfilling a mitzvah (in this case, saying Kaddish) due to matters beyond his control, but how will the soul receive the nachat ruach from Kaddish for which it desperately awaits in such circumstances?

(To be continued)

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Q & A: Making Up For What We Missed (Part XIII) - The Jewish Press - JewishPress.com

Young funny handsome man with beard and mustache sneezing with spray and small drops, studio portrait on pink background. Comic, caricature, humor. illness, infection, ache. Health conceptmaster1305 / Getty Images/iStockphoto

My step-brother sneezes every time he eats chocolate. Its sort of a family game: Watch him take a bite of chocolate cake, wait two beats, and off he goes. People sneeze for all sorts of strange reasons. Some people sneeze when they think about having sex, an activity which is almost as good as devouring my step-sister-in-laws chocolate cake.

If you happen to have ACHOO Syndrome (I suspect the convenient acronym came before the name: Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioopthalmic Outburst), you sneeze in reaction to brilliant sun or other bright lights. This photic sneezing happens to about a third of us and no one knows exactly why. It likely has something to do with an overexcitable bit in the brain that processes visual information, the visual cortex. Some researchers have posited that its a holdover from evolution.

There are others who sneeze on a full stomach. This is called snatiation, a clever combination of the words sneeze and satiation. Or, as one likely crossword-loving researcher put forth, snatiation is an acronym for (wait for it): Sneezing Noncontrollably At a Tune of Indulgence of the Appetite-a Trait Inherited and Ordained to be Named.

Why people sneeze with a full belly is a bit of a mystery but, like ACHOO, this an inheritable attribute. Imagine bringing your new flame to a family meal where instead of having a cup of tea after clearing the table, you pass around the tissues for the inevitable after-dinner sneezing fits.

Sneezing is a reflex that doesnt always start in the nose. It can start with nerve endings elsewhere in the body. Or, it could be a sign from God. Or an invitation for the Devil. It depends on who you ask.

Because you cant control it, some ancients thought a sneeze was a supernatural event and a divine omen. Back in the 8th century BC, the Greek poet Homer wrote in his little ditty, the Odyssey, that Penelope laughed when her son sneezed after she said aloud that she wished the bad guys were gone.

Elsewhere in the Odyssey, a general giving a speech is thrilled when a soldier sneezes. Thinking that this sneeze was a heavenly favorable sign from the gods, the whole army sprang to an attack, write Turkish researchers Murat Songu and Cemal Cingi in Sneeze reflex: facts and fiction. Sadly, for the general and his army, they were wiped out by the Persians. (This) can be considered as the first complication of sneezing in history, report our sneezing experts in the journal Therapeutic Advances in Respiratory Disease.

Ancient Romans thought sneezing meant you were recovering from an illness and a toga-clad passer-by may exclaim Live long or May Jupiter bless you. The Pagans thought a sneeze expelled part of your soul and left you susceptible to Satan. The Talmud writes that having a sneeze while praying means God will really have your back in Heaven. In parts of Asia, a spontaneous sneeze means someone is talking about you (one sneeze means theyre saying nice things and two means theyre slagging you).

Sneezing started to be seen as a sign of great danger in the Middle Ages, as the Black Death ravaged Europe. In the 14th century, the pope mandated that Catholics say a short prayer after someone sneezed to protect themselves against disease. While a lovely sentiment, May God bless you, didnt do much to stop the flea-infested rats that were spreading the plague and killing people left, right and centre.

While praying never hurts, sneezing into your elbow and wearing a mask most definitely helps in the current pandemic. COVID-19 is spread through respiratory droplets, or as I like to call it, face spew. The coronavirus hitches a ride anytime you open your mouth whether to mutter, speak, sing, shout, curse, cough or the big kahuna, sneeze.

One forceful sneeze sends about 40,000 particles ranging in size from 0.5 to 5 mm into the air around you. The estimations concerning the speed of a sneeze range between 150 km/h and 1,045 km/h (nearly 85 per cent of the velocity of sound), report Songu and Cingi. With that force, a sneeze will cover a lot of ground, sending droplets out about 1.5 metres (our less dramatic face spew also goes a long way beware indoor, un-masked loud talkers!)

A sneeze clears the nose while also working your facial muscles, abs and even your pecs. It may play an important role in maintaining health in ways that we dont currently understand, conclude our sneezing scholars. It is rarely a sign of serious illness or impending disaster as feared by previous generations. On the other hand, it can be remarkably annoying.

Particularly in a pandemic when an otherwise innocent sneeze may cause some around you to react with terror on top of panic. Gesundheit, or good health, to all!

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Allford: Achoo! Sneezing through the centuries - The Kingston Whig-Standard

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Louis Farrakhan

Several prominent Black celebrities attended anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhans July 4 public address, the Anti-Defamation League revealed Wednesday, citing the Nation of Islams own newspaper.

Among those in attendance included actor Nick Cannon and former NBA basketball player Stephen Jackson, both of whom had been criticized in the past week for making anti-Semitic statements, as well as music artists TI, 2Chainz, Rick Ross, Jay Electronica, Stephanie Mills and Syleena Johnson.

Farrakhans Independence Day speech - which he had described as his message to America - had been scheduled to be broadcast on the Fox Soul streaming network until the company cancelled its airing following an online uproar. In his speech, which was still carried on the Nation of Islams various platforms, Farrakhan described Jews as Satan and the enemy of God. The speech has been seen 1.2 million times on YouTube, according to the ADL.

In the days following the speech, Jackson was criticized for supporting Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson after the football player posted Instagram messages praising the Farrakhan speech and publicizing an anti-Semitic quote falsely attributed to Adolf Hitler. Cannon, who hosts Wild n Out for VH1, was fired by parent company ViacomCBS on Tuesday after refusing to apologize for having made anti-Semitic statements on an episode of his podcast that was recorded a few days before the Farrakhan speech.

Rapper TI and his wife, singer-songwriter Tiny Harris, praised Farrakhans speech in an interview with The Final Call, the Nation of Islams newspaper. Every time I hear the Minister speak, hes always extremely honest, poignant and his words [are] immensely powerful because of the honesty that he dares to speak from. TI said. I was honored to be here, I was completely honored by the invitation as I always am and the message was necessary.

Farrakhan has long enjoyed the support of Black celebrities, despite his long history of anti-Semitism and homophobia. A 2018 seven-album box set released in 2018 by the Nation of Islam featured Ross, Stevie Wonder, Snoop Dogg, Common, Chaka Khan and Damian Marley.

Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at pink@forward.com or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink

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Nick Cannon and several other Black celebrities attended Farrakhans July 4 speech - Forward

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Apotheosis of St. Louis statue of King Louis IX of France, namesake of St. Louis, Missouri in Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri.

Three monumentsthe statue of Saint Louis in Missouri, the Judah P. Benjamin monument in North Carolina, and buildings named for Woodrow Wilson at Princetonallow us to understand how Jews should think about their place within the American racial order and how antiracists should think about Jews within the struggle to disrupt the legacies of racism.

Although not included in the earlier article on anti-Semitic statues in The Forward, The Apotheosis of St. Louis is attracting attention. A petition started by local activists has called for its removal. Local Catholics and the Archdiocese of Saint Louis, alongside far-right agitators, have rallied to the monuments defense.

Erected in 1906 to honor the namesake of the city, the statue features Louis IX, who was canonized in 1297, only 20 years after his death. There is no doubt about his anti-Jewishness. Stigmatizing Jews as blasphemous usurers, insisting that a layman, as soon as he hears the Christian faith maligned, should defend it only by the sword, with a good thrust in the [Jews] belly, as far as the sword will go, Louis presided over a mass burning of the Talmud. Thousands of Jews were murdered in his crusades even before crusaders left his lands.

Still, the statue of Saint Louis should become a teachable monu-moment rather than be removed. It was not erected to glorify anti-Jewish racism. Monuments, even those that happen to celebrate Judeophobes, do not necessarily extol Judeophobia. Nonetheless, Saint Louis anti-Judaism is central to what made him a revered Christian monarch.

The response to the call for the statues removal indicates that many Christians still do not realize that persecuting Jews was key to defining Christian values and to the development of modern racism. Christians must acknowledge this toxic source of white Christian nationalism that is at the heart of the global rise of authoritarian populism today.

The Judah P. Benjamin monument in Charlotte, North Carolina, on the other hand, demands reckoning on the part of Jews. Born Jewish in 1811, Benjamin became a wealthy slave owner in New Orleans; was elected Senator from Louisiana in 1852; held cabinet positions in the Confederacy; and served as a right-hand man to Jefferson Davis.

Israels Consul General Dani Dayan is leaving after four years. What has he learned? He talked to editors-in-chief Jodi Rudoren and Andrew Silow-Carroll, of the Forward and the Jewish Week, about American Jewrys relationship with Israel. Watch here.

The marker to him in Charlotte was installed in 1948 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Little more than a tombstone but located nearby the recently installed Black Lives Matter art installations, viewers today read, this monument was erected in his honor by Temple Israel and Temple Beth El, the Jewish congregations of Charlotte. Despite the inscription, both synagogues rescinded their support and both want the marker removed.

Like the thousands of Confederate statues that litter the South, the Benjamin marker should be removed. It is time to take down this wall celebrating the Lost Cause narrative, a petrified tale to the glory of white supremacy. These monuments were explicitly built to venerate a cast of characters committed to the racial caste system of the South, martyrs to a supposedly noble cause that Southerners wanted to preserve following the Civil War.

What can no longer be repressed, however, is that Jews, just like other white Southerners, must reckon with their place within slavery and Jim Crow, the foundations of white privilege. For Benjamin was hardly alone. As Bertram Korn concluded in his pioneering study, [Jews] participated in the buying, owning, and selling of slaves, and exploitation of their labor, along with their neighbors. Jews behavior seems to have been indistinguishable from that of their non-Jewish friends. Not one Jewish political figure or writer from the South ever expressed any reservations about the justice of slavery or the rightness of the Southern position. What enabled the success of Jews like Benjamin in a racial state was their passport of whiteness.

How this passport of whiteness functioned for Jews is made clear in the recent article by Jonathan Sarna about the removal of Woodrow Wilsons name from Princetons public policy school and residential college.

As Princetons president, Wilson prevented the enrollment of Black students, believing they were an ignorant and inferior race. As U.S. President, he brought the Lost Cause narrative into the White House by screening The Birth of the Nation. Most significantly, he oversaw the re-segregation of the federal government.

Sarna reminds us, however, that Wilson was a hero to Jews. The first to hire Jewish and Catholic faculty at Princeton, he was a progressive on immigration, he endorsed the Balfour Declaration, and he supported Louis D. Brandeis as the first Jew on the Supreme Court.

Sarnas point is that while Wilson was hardly perfect, he was once lionized for his virtues and we cannot simply start erasing from our public spaces the names of those figures whose views we now hold contemptible. I made the same point about Saint Louis.

But Sarnas conclusion comes from a one-eyed way of looking at the past: Wilson was bad to Blacks and good to Jews. Too often repeated by scholars of Jewish studies, this way of comparing pasts fails to address how racism was institutionalized.

Indeed, as scholars including Sarna have shown, social mobility for Jews in America was directly related to the fact that anti-Jewish bias was often elided by the history of anti-Black, anti-Mexican, anti-Chinese, anti-Catholic (and today by anti-Muslim) discrimination. Wilsons legacy should teach us to think of racism as entangled and relational, relative to other groups, not absolute.

We have to appreciate what Albert Memmi called the relativity of privilege. In The Colonizer and the Colonizer, he explained that privilege is relative to the pyramid of petty tyrants, whereby each one, being socially oppressed by one more powerful than he, always finds a less powerful one on whom to lean, and becomes a tyrant in his turn.

The passport of whiteness has defined the American Jewish experience. Unless we acknowledge this and actively work as antiracists, Jews will continue to be complicit in Americas racial system.

The controversies about these three monuments consequently contain three important lessons about racism and what we can do to dismantle it: (1) Christians must confront the legacy of Christian anti-Judaism in an era of surging white Christian nationalism; (2) Jews need to grapple with our history as benefactors of the passport of whiteness; and (3) we cannot understand anti-Semitism in the United States without simultaneously acknowledging how it is entangled with anti-Black and other racisms.

Jonathan Judaken is the Spence L. Wilson Chair in the Humanities at Rhodes College in Memphis, and currently completing a monograph, Critical Theories of Anti-Semitism: Confronting Modernity and Modern Judeophobia.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

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Not all the statues need to come down - Forward

Swapping sheitels and shtetl life for tzitzit and study, Barbra Streisands classic 1983 film, Yentl, is hitting the big screen once more at Edmontons outdoor cinema, The Drive In, this weekend.

Based on Isaac Bashevis Singers short story by the same name, Yentl which Streisand stared in, produced, directed and co-wrote, alongside Jack Rosenthal is set in the early 1900s and revolves around a young Jewish woman who, desperate to study the Talmud, disguises herself as a man.

But while she falls in love with her study partner Avigdor (Mandy Patinkin), the woman he loves, Hadass (Amy Irving), begins to develop feelings for Streisands male persona, Anshel.

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Michel Legrands sweeping score and songs include Papa, Can You Hear Me? and The Way He Makes Me Feel, which earned an Academy Award for best original score.

Among the other accolades the film received, Streisand won best director at the Golden Globes, making her the first and only woman to have won inthat category.

Yentl is showing at The Drive In, Edmonton, on Sunday, 19 July, 2pm, http://www.kxtickets.com/whats-on/yentl

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Barbra Streisand classic Yentl returns to big screen at The Drive In - Jewish News

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Gruissan municipal cemetery, France.

(JTA) About 20 gravestones in a cemetery in southern France were vandalized with swastikas and the words Death to Jews and Death to the French.

The graffiti was discovered in the Gruissan municipal cemetery in the Aude region on Sunday.

The gravestones appear to have been chosen at random and were not broken or toppled, France 3 television reported.

The cemetery has been closed to the public. No suspects have been identified in the attack.

The National Bureau for Vigilance Against Antisemitism, or BNVCA, in a statement condemned the desecration of the cemetery. The statement noted that the town of Gruissan is usually rather calm, rather peaceful, and this aggression surprises and scandalizes us.

The post Death to Jews and swastikas drawn on gravestones in southern France appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Death to Jews, swastikas drawn on gravestones in southern France - Forward

Dozens of Jewish graves and tombstones were shattered and desecrated by unknown individuals in the Jewish cemetery in Worms considered as one of the oldest in Europe.

The Jewish community of Worms was established by the early eleventh century and the oldest tombstone still legible dates from 1058/59.

One of the famous residents of Worms was Rashi, amedieval Frenchrabbiand author of a comprehensive commentary on theTalmudandcommentary on theTanakh.

Thousands of Jewish worshipers visit the Jewish cemetery every year.

Among the desecrated tombs was also the tomb of the Maharam of Rothenburg who served as one of the chief Ashkenazi rabbis in the Middle Ages (1220-1293) and was known for his pioneering leadership and position against domestic violence towards women which was not a given in society at that time.

Rabbi Joseph Havlin, from Chabad in the city of Frankfurt, near Worms, expressed shock at the desecration of the cemetery, noting: We are witnessing, and not for the first time, desecration of German cemeteries alongside a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism in the entire public sphere. We call on the German government to declare an uncompromising fight against anti-Semitism to ensure that such acts do not are no longer repeated.

In a reaction to the desecration, Rabbi Menachem Margolin, Chairman of the European Jewish Association and the Rabbinical Center of Europe, condemned the ongoing rise of anti-Semitism across the continent.

There is no doubt that the Corona crisis has brought with it a sharp rise in antisemitic discourse on the Internet, and now that most of the closures have been lifted, we unfortunately see how the toxic discourse on social media is turning into real attacks on Jewish institutions and symbols.

He added: We expect the German government to act swiftly not only to renovate the cemetery but to formally declare the acceptance of the comprehensive program to combat anti-Semitism that that we have initiated and prepared. These measures include a substantial changes to the curriculum in the education system.

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Dozens of Jewish graves and tombstones desecrated in the Jewish cemetery in Worms, one of the oldest in Europe - European Jewish Press

By Rabbi Yair Hoffman for 5tjt.com

For the Refuah Shleima of Reb Shalom Ben Miriam Rivkah

Perhaps no other Torah personality has had such a dichotomy in terms of impact and obscurity. Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv Broide of Kelm (1824-1898), was the Rebbe of the Alter of Slabodka, the Alter of Novardik, Rav Yechezkel Levenstein, Rav Reuvain Dov Dessler, and Rav Yeruchem Levovitz. Essentially, every Yeshiva in Europe, America and Ashkenazic Eretz Yisroel was either started or greatly influenced by the Alter of Kelms Talmidim.

And yet, so few people are aware of the details of his life and of the Yeshiva in Kelm.

Rav Simcha Zissel was born in Kelm. His mother was a descendent of the Chachom Tzvi. After he married, he moved to Kovno and studied under Rav Yisroel Salanter in the Nevyozei Kloiz, along with Rav Yitzchok Blahzer and Rav Naftoli Amsterdam.

Rav Yisroel directed Rav Simcha Zissel to travel to Zhagory to strengthen Mussar there and then to Moscow, where he lived for two years. He moved to St. Petersburg after that for a year and was offered the Rabanus of that city the largest city in Russia. He declined it and suggest that they engage Rav Yitzchok Blahzer instead which they did.

In 1864 he decided to open the Kelm Talmud Torah in order to help further spread Rav Yisroel Salanters ideals. In order to both counter the advances of haskallah as well as create a cadre of Talmidei Chachomim who could lift the banner of Torah Jewry in the Pale of Settlement, he included limudei chol in the curriculum. Due to problems with government authorities, Rav Simcha Zissel relocated the Yeshiva in Grobin in approximately 1877.

In 1881, Rav Simcha Zissel returned to Kelm and left his son, Reb Nochum Zev in charge in Grobin. Talmidim came to study under him in Kelm, while he still ran things from afar at Grobin. It was difficult for him to do, on account of illness. He posed the question to his Rebbe, Rav Yisroel Salanter, as to whether he should close it. He was told not do so. Failing health, however, forced him to do so by 1886.

Many of Rav Simcha Zissels talmidim moved to Eretz Yisroel in 1892 and opened a Beis HaMussar in Yerushalayim under the direction of Rav Simcha Zissel.

The Alter of Kelm was niftar on the 8th of Av 26 July 1898. At his levaya, Rav Eliezer Gordon ztl, the Rosh yeshiva of Telze, said that he knew every word of rashi and tosfos by heart in more than half of shas and new every siman and sif in Shulchan Aruch by heart. He further commented, Aside from his complete gadlus in Torah, I never heard a single word from him that was not Torah or yiras shamayim.

In his Tnuas HaMussar, Rav Dov Katz delineates three yesodos of learning that the Alter of Kelm taught.

After Rav Simcha Zissel passed away in 1898, the Talmud Torah in Kelm was led by his younger brother, Reb Aryeh Leib Broide (?-1928). The mishpacha began moving to Eretz Yisroel, but Rav Tzvi Hirsch Broida, Rav Simcha Zissels son in law, stayed on to lead the yeshiva until he passed away in 1913. Rav Nachum Zev Ziv (1857-1916) took over until his own passing in 1916. Rav Reuvain Dov Dessler took over from 1916 until 1935. After his passing, Rav Doniel Moshovitz took over for the next six years.

Rav Nosson Tzvi Wachtfogel, a talmid of Kelm under Rav Doniel Moshovitz hyd once said, Whenever my Rebbe, Rav Doniel Movshovitz ztl, discussed the Alter of Kelm, he would entirely be mevatel his own deah, and would instead toil diligently to understand what the Alter meant. When someone asked him why he paid so much effort to do so, he responded:

The Alter of Kelm did not open an eyelid or move his little finger without a reason and without preparation. Everything was calculated, befitting the level of previous doros. So how can we possibly imagine that we are capable of understanding such a giant who didnt even move his little finger without first thinking about?

Rav Doniel remained the Rosh Yeshiva and continued teaching Torah until the Nazis yemach shmam murdered everyone in Kelm in July of 1941, including the Rosh Yeshiva and his talmidim.

The glory of Kelm was no more.

The following 11 items are some of the Alter of Klems thoughts and sayings:

The author can be reached at [emailprotected]

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11 Thoughts and Sayings of Rav Simcha Zissel Ziv Broide the Alter of Kelm - Yeshiva World News

A Torah scroll. Photo: RabbiSacks.org.

There are moments when Divine Providence touches you on the shoulder and makes you see a certain truth with blazing clarity. Let me share with you such a moment that happened to me this morning.

For technical reasons, I have to write my essays for the Covenant & Conversation series many weeks in advance. I had come to Matot-Masei, and had decided to write about the cities of refuge, but I wasnt sure which aspect to focus on. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, I felt an instinct to write about one very unusual law.

The cities were set aside for the protection of those found guilty of manslaughter that is, of killing someone accidentally without malice aforethought. Because of the then universal practice of blood vengeance, that protection was necessary.

The purpose of the cities was to make sure that someone judged innocent of murder was safe from being killed. As Shoftim puts it: And he shall flee to one of these cities and live (Deut. 19:5). This apparently simple concept was given a remarkable interpretation by the Talmud:

The Sages taught: If a student was exiled, his teacher was exiled with him, as it is said: (And he shall flee to one of these cities) and live, meaning do the things for him that will enable him to live.

As Rambam explains: Life without study is like death for scholars who seek wisdom. In Judaism, study is life itself, and study without a teacher is impossible. Teachers give us more than knowledge; they give us life. Note that this is not an aggadic passage a moralizing text not meant to be taken literally. It is a halachic ruling, codified as such. Teachers are like parents only more so. Parents give us physical life; teachers give us spiritual life. Physical life is mortal, transient. Spiritual life is eternal. Therefore, we owe our teacher our life in its deepest sense.

I had just written the text above when the phone rang. It was my brother in Jerusalem to tell me that my teacher, Rabbi Nachum Eliezer Rabinovitch, zecher tzaddik livracha, had just died. Only rarely in this world of concealment do we feel the touch of Providence, but this was unmistakable. For me, and I suspect everyone who had the privilege of studying with him, he was the greatest teacher of our generation.

He was a master posek, as those who have read his Responsa will know. He knew the entire rabbinic literature, Bavli, Yerushalmi, Midrash Halachah, and Aggadah, Biblical commentaries, philosophy, codes, and responsa. His creativity, halachic and aggadic, knew no bounds. He was a master of almost every secular discipline, especially the sciences. He had been a professor of mathematics at the University of Toronto and had written a book about probability and statistical inference. His supreme passion was the Rambam in all his guises, particularly the Mishneh Torah, to which he devoted some 50 years of his life to writing the multi-volume commentary Yad Peshutah.

By the time I came to study with the Rav, I had already studied at Cambridge and Oxford with some of the greatest intellects of the time, among them Sir Roger Scruton and Sir Bernard Williams. Rabbi Rabinovitch was more demanding than either of them. Only when I became his student did I learn the true meaning of intellectual rigour, shetihyu amelim ba-Torah, laboring in the Torah. To survive his scrutiny, you had to do three things: first to read everything ever written on the subject; second to analyze it with complete lucidity, searching for omek ha-peshat, the deep plain sense; and third, to think independently and critically. I remember writing an essay for him in which I quoted one of the most famous of 19th century Talmudic scholars. He read what I had written, then turned to me and said, But you didnt criticize what he wrote! He thought that in this case the scholar had not given the correct interpretation, and I should have seen and said this. For him, intellectual honesty and independence of mind were inseparable from the quest for truth which is what Talmud Torah must always be.

Some of the most important lessons I learned from him were almost accidental. I remember on one occasion his car was being serviced, so I had the privilege of driving him home. It was a hot day, and at a busy junction in Hampstead, my car broke down and would not start up again. Unfazed, Rabbi Rabinovitch said to me, Lets use the time to learn Torah. He then proceeded to give me a shiur on Rambams Hilchot Shemittah ve-Yovel. Around us, cars were hooting their horns. We were holding up traffic and a considerable queue had developed. The Rav remained completely calm, came to the end of his exposition, turned to me and said, Now turn the key. I turned the key, the car started, and we went on our way.

On another occasion, I told him about my problem getting to sleep. I had become an insomniac. He said to me, enthusiastically, Could you teach me how to do that? He quoted the Rambam who ruled that one acquires most of ones wisdom at night, based on the Talmudic statement that the night was created for study.

He and the late Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein ztl were the Gedolei ha-Dor, the leaders and role models of their generation. They were very different: one scientific, the other artistic; one direct, the other oblique; one bold, the other cautious; but they were giants, intellectually, morally, and spiritually. Happy the generation that is blessed by people like these.

It is hard to convey what having a teacher like Rabbi Rabinovitch meant. He knew, for example, that I had to learn fast because I was coming to the rabbinate late, after a career in academic philosophy. What he did was very bold. He explained to me that the fastest and best way of learning anything is to teach it. So the day I entered Jews College as a student, I also entered it as a lecturer. How many people would have had that idea and taken that risk?

He also understood how lonely it could be if you lived by the principles of intellectual integrity and independence. Early on, he said to me, Dont be surprised if only six people in the world understand what you are trying to do. When I asked him whether I should accept the position of Chief Rabbi, he said, in his laconic way: Why not? After all, maybe you can teach some Torah.

He himself, in his early thirties, had been offered the job of Chief Rabbi of Johannesburg, but turned it down on the grounds that he refused to live in an apartheid state. He told me how he was visited in Toronto by Rabbi Louis Rabinowitz who had held the Johannesburg position until then. Looking at the Ravs modest home and thinking of his more palatial accommodation in South Africa, he said, You turned down that for this? But the Rav would never compromise his integrity and never cared for material things.

In the end, he found great happiness in the 37 years he served as head of Yeshivat Birkat Moshe in Maale Adumim. The yeshiva had been founded six years earlier by Rabbi Haim Sabato and Yitzhak Sheilat. It is said that when Rabbi Sabato heard the Rav give a shiur, he immediately asked him to become the Rosh Yeshiva. It is hard to describe the pride with which he spoke to me about his students, all of whom served in the Israel Defense Forces. Likewise it is hard to describe the awe in which his students held him. Not everyone in the Jewish world knew his greatness, but everyone who studied with him did.

I believe that Judaism made an extraordinarily wise decision when it made teachers its heroes, and lifelong education its passion. We dont worship power or wealth. These things have their place, but not at the top of the hierarchy of values. Power forces us. Wealth induces us. But teachers develop us. They open us to the wisdom of the ages, helping us to see the world more clearly, think more deeply, argue more cogently, and decide more wisely.

Let the reverence for your teacher be like the reverence for Heaven, said the Sages. In other words: if you want to come close to Heaven, dont search for kings, priests, saints, or even prophets. They may be great, but a fine teacher helps you to become great, and that is a different thing altogether. I was blessed by having one of the greatest teachers of our generation. The best advice I can give anyone is: find a teacher, then make yourself a disciple.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks is the former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. The author of over 30 books, he can be followed on social media @RabbiSacks or at http://www.RabbiSacks.org.

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No One Will Change Your Life Like a Teacher - Algemeiner

Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai, the last president of the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem before the Roman legions destroyed theTemple and uprooted the Jews from their capital, was a complex man. He was a trader, a scholar, a polemicist and a judge. According to the Talmud,he made one of the most crucial interventions in Jewish history when,on the eve ofitsdestruction,he realizedJerusalem was lost.

He evaded the zealots who were determined to fight to the death and sweet-talked the Roman commander,soon-to-be Emperor Vespasian,into allowing him and a small group of rabbis and students to relocate tothe coastal town of Yavne.

Rabbi Yochanan wasabove alla pragmatist. Bereft uponhissons death, he was consoled by the thought the boy had been on loan to him from God,and nowreturned to his rightful owner. He wasnt sure he had made the right decisionto leave the Holy City,and accounts of his deathvoice his fears he might goto hell for giving up on Jerusalem.

He was also a messianist. His dying words were that he must prepare himself for the arrival of Hezekiah, the last king of the house of David, the precursor of the Messiah,who wouldaccompany him to the next world.

Rabbi Yochanan had ensured thattheSanhedrins authority and center of Torah scholarship would not be lost in the great destruction. But he never meant for Yavne to be an alternative to Jerusalem and itsTemple. Just a temporary respite on the long path back home.

In his essay "Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine," published this week in Jewish Currents, AmericanJewishacademic and journalistPeter Beinart portrays Rabbi Yochanans decision differently. Beinart writes that Rabbi Yochanan "imagined an alternative" Judaism, "a new form of worship, based on prayer and study."

Im an agnostic Jew who doesnt mindhow other Jews choose to define their own Jewish identity or worship, if thats what they want to do(though it intrigues me greatly). And while Beinarts depiction of Rabbi Yochanan has no basisin the Talmudic texts, Im fine with that as well. Theyre apocryphal anyway,and we can all play fast and loose with the Talmud.

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But it is highly instructive that Beinart chooses to see Rabbi Yochanan as a utopian,rather than a pragmatist. Because it perfectly mirrors the conclusions he reaches in the essay.

I agree with three of Beinarts main conclusions. The most important of them is that one binational state between the Mediterranean and the Jordan with equal rights for Jews and Palestinians would be a just way to end the fundamentally unjust situation, whereby millions of Palestinians do not have national or civil rights.

As Beinart points out, as long as such a binational state could remaina haven for Jews suffering persecution anywhere in the world, it would still fulfill the raison detre of the Jewish state. Unlike most of Beinarts critics, who are confident such a state would be a recipe for chaos and bloodshed, I can imagine the overwhelming majoritiesof both nations coming to terms withthe hyphenated "Israel-Palestine" and realizing it was the best possible outcome. Hell,Idlove to live in such a state-if it were indeed peaceful.

The only problem is, I cant vote for a statelike that. Not one party in Israel, no,not even the Joint List, is proposing it. And neither could the Palestinians, back when they had elections, vote for it. It simply wasnt on offer.

I agree as well with Beinart,that a large proportion of Israelis, and Israel-supporting Jews in the Diaspora, have projected a Nazi mentality on to all the Palestinians. While antisemitism is all too prevalent among Palestinians, they are not planning a genocide of Jews. To believe that is the case, as Beinart points out, opens up the way to awful atrocities. And though I dont quite share his predictions that an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians is all but inevitable, itscertainlya possible outcome which hes right to warn us of.

And Beinart is right in his historical analysis that there werepast leaders (including prominent mainstream figures)who believed that Zionismdidntnecessarily have to mean a full sovereign state for Jews only,and that it could be part of a wider federation including other nations.

But this is also where his argument becomes fatally flawed.

Beinart derives inspiration from these early Zionists,because he wants to believe in a more perfect Zionism, one that can be morally justified by 21st century progressive values as well. But thats not what Zionism was about. Not because Zionism isnt morally justifiable(it was)but because Zionism wasnt about morals. There wereZionist ideologues and thinkers, but Zionism wasnt an ideology. It wasnt a vision of a better world.

Zionism was a plan to solve the acute problem of Jewish persecution, primarily in Eastern Europe, but gradually in any place where Jews faced antisemitic violence and discrimination. (Im using the past tense here because I dont believe Zionism actually exists after 1948, when the program was successfully fulfilled). It didnt have to be moral, by the standards of its day or our day. It had to be pragmatic.It had to work because millions of Jewish lives were at stake.

The different strands of Zionism and the evolution of its mainstream leadership in the half a century between the first Zionist Congress of 1897 and the foundation of Israel didnt reflectchanging moralsensibilities- they were a response to changing regional andglobal circumstances.

Political Zionisms founder, Thedor Herzl, envisaged the Jewish state existing as a semi-autonomous district of the Ottoman Empire. Because that was the most pragmaticwayof achieving it in his lifetime(he died in 1904).His heir as Zionist leader, Chaim Weizmann, believed for decades thatthe Jewish statewould be a protectorate of the British Empire.

David Ben-Gurion had the foresight to realize that the British would be no different than the Ottomans in lacking both the desire and then the power togivethe Jews a homeland (the British were trying to get out of their promise in the Balfour Declaration practically from the moment the inkfromArthur Balfours signature dried).

Ben-Gurion managed to convince the initially reluctant leadership of American Zionists at the Biltmore Conference in 1942 of the case for full statehood, or as they called it there a "Jewish commonwealth." By that point, after the United States had joinedWWII, it finally seemed that after the war there would be both an opportunity to achieve an independent state and the necessity to have one so that the Holocaust survivors could be resettled.

Five and a half years later, when the United Nations voted for the partition plan,Ben-Gurion was vindicated. There were those who argued thatthe allocation of56 percent of the territory was unjust to the Arabsofmandatory Palestine, who were two-thirds of the population. And the RevisionistZionists argued that it was a historical sinthatthe Jews were not getting all their historical homeland.

Neither argument budged Ben-Gurion,because he knew Zionism was a pragmatic plan and the best way of realizing it was to go with whateverwas possible.

Ben-Gurion was right. All the countless arguments since 1948 on "Zionism: Right or wrong?" are sterile hypothetical thought exercises. Zionism worked for those for whom it was intended to work. Israel as a reality is not going away. Reality doesnt care whether you think Zionism is inherently racist or that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

As many others have done before him, Beinart makes a strong case for why the two-state solution has failed. He neednt have bothered. The problem isnt with the two states, but with the solution.

Most Israelis are in principle in favor of the two-state solution. Sadly, there just arent enough of them who feel the need for a solution. The status quo isnt a problem for most Israelis. On the day they will feel that need, they will make a pragmatic choice, for two-states, a confederacy, a binational state, whatever they feel works in their interest. It simply isnt about morals.

It isnt my place to speak for the Palestinians, but they will make their choice according to how they see their own interests as well. Beinart in his essay extensively quotes Palestinians who support a binational state. On Twitter he listed even more Palestinian writers he read for research. With the exception of one single Palestinian Israeli academic, they are all Palestinian Americans.

Not that that invalidates them in any way, but the fact remains that while the binational state is popular in the relatively small community of Palestinian American academics and activists, it remains the minority view among the three much larger Palestinian communities right here West Bankers, Gazans and Arab Israelis.It seems that its not only American Jews and Israelis who have different values and perspectives. American-Palestinians and their siblings back in Palestine have them as well.

Ninety percent of Arab-Israelis voted in April for the Joint List which is emphatically in favor of two states. Beinart blithely dismisses them saying that "the Joint Lists vision of equality inside the Green Line can be extended." They actually claim to have very strong reasons fornotsupporting a binational state. Perhaps he believes that Ayman Odeh and Ahmed Tibi dont really mean what they say. Either way Beinart doesnt care to engage with them - and that is his essays biggest giveaway.

Not one line in the lengthy essay is dedicated to giving readers any idea of how the overwhelming majority of both Israelis and Palestinians actually living in his future binational state of "Israel-Palestine" will be convinced that it can work.

I believe it can, theoretically, though it would probably still need a two-state period in the interim. Beinart doesnt have to persuade me. But about everyone else around here - he doesnt seem to care one way or the other. I suspect that he hopes that a wave of BDS or a President Ocasio-Cortez will one day force Israelis and Palestinians to accept his vision.

Beinart isnt talking to anyone who will actuallylive in "Israel-Palestine." Hes having an internal conversation with a handful of Palestinian American academics and, with their blessing, has created a utopian half-Jewish state which can serve as safe space for a section of young American Jews, the readership of Jewish Currents, who are trying to reconcile their Jewish identity, their inherent affinity with Israel and their progressive values, in a period of ideological and racial turmoil in the U.S.

He is Yochanan Ben Beinart, and his utopian Yavne doesnt exist on the shores of the Mediterranean. It has, instead been transplanted 6000 miles away, to a faculty lounge on an American campus.

Read more:

Peter Beinart's one state solution sounds so perfect it's practically utopian - Haaretz

Thursday marks the fast of the 17th of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, a day commemorating a number of tragedies in Jewish history and the start of a mourning period known as the Three Weeks, when many Jews traditionally follow some mourning customs.

Five tragedies are said to have occurred on the 17th of Tammuz: the breaking of the tablets of the Ten Commandments by Moses, the cessation of the daily offering during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem, the burning of the Torah by Apostomos, the placing of an idol the Temple in Jerusalem and the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem by the Romans in 69 CE after a long siege. According to the Jerusalem Talmud, the Babylonians also breached the walls of Jerusalem on this day.

During the three weeks, many Jews begin following mourning customs, including avoiding haircuts and shaving, not listening to music and not getting married. Many also avoid risky or dangerous activities and traveling.

Additional restrictions are practiced starting from the first day of the Hebrew month of Av until the ninth day of the month, the fast of Tisha B'Av, commemorating the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, among other calamities. Eating meat and drinking wine and wearing freshly laundered or new clothes is prohibited. Joyous activities, such as bathing for pleasure and buying new items, are avoided or prohibited. One should consult their rabbi for any questions about Jewish laws and customs during this time.

Fast Start and End Times: (According to MyZmanim. There are varying customs)

Jerusalem

Start: 4:14 AM

End: 8:30 PM

Tel Aviv

Start: 4:15 AM

End: 8:32 PM

Haifa

Start: 4:11 AM

End: 8:34 PM

Eilat

Start: 4:24 AM

End: 8:24 PM

Beersheba

Start: 4:18 AM

End: 8:30 PM

New York

Start: 3:47 AM

End: 9:19 PM (According to Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, those who have trouble fasting may eat at 9:09 PM)

Los Angeles

Start: 4:19 AM

End: 8:51 PM (According to Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, those who have trouble fasting may eat at 8:43 PM)

Read more:

Fast of the 17th of Tammuz: Times and customs - The Jerusalem Post