Category Archives: Talmud

Russia and the United States (with NATO behind it) are eyeball to eyeball, and the world waits to see whether Vladimir Putin blinks, to borrow from Dean Rusks comment regarding the Soviet Union from 60 years ago, or whether he orders his military to invade Ukraine (which, as of this writing, he had not).

Tensions are running high throughout the world because of it.

War, though, is a constant presence these days because of the many ongoing global conflictsin Libya, Syria, the Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea, in various South American countries in one form or another, and even in Ukraine itself, among many others. Ever since Russia illegally seized Crimea in 2014, separatists in Ukraines southeast have been waging war with the regime in Kyiv, often with the help of regular Russian army units.

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History argues that wars are inevitable. All too often, though, God is used as the excuse for those wars. That was the rationale behind the Muslim conquest that began in the 7th Century and the series of Christian crusades that followed beginning in the 11th.

God is often used today to justify conflicts in our world. We saw it in Bosnia in the early 1990s, where Christians waged war on Muslims. We see it today in such places as Nigeria, where Muslims wage war against Christians.

While it certainly can be argued that God approves of war, the evidence in Jewish law is that God in fact disapproves of war outside very limited situations.

Gods views on the sanctity of life are evident in the Torah from the very beginning. Because all humans are created in Gods image (see Genesis 1:26-27), to maim or kill a fellow human is to commit sacrilege against Gods very own likeness. God says as much to Noah after the Great Flood, as will be seen further down.

Clearly, God disapproves of gratuitous physical violence of any kind. When Cain kills Abel, Gods agony is clear (see Genesis 4). Nevertheless, God sets a protective mark upon Cain, lest anyone finding him should kill him. In pre-Flood days, one life was not to be traded for another.

God even tries to keep the pre-Flood humans from killing animals for food. In Genesis 1:29, the First Human is told, I have given you every herb-bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, on which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food.

One verse later, God issues virtually the same command to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to all that creep upon the earth, where there is life.

All life is sacred.

This changes after the Flood, but not because Gods had second thoughts.

In Genesis 9:1-6, God begins by conceding that humans now can eat meat, but only from a dead animal. Human behavior, it seems, had sunk so low that people did not wait to kill the animals to get their meat; they just ripped limbs right off (a practice that still happens in many non-kosher meat packing plants). Gods dispensation recognizes that human nature is baser than God hoped, and that the only way to prevent such bestial behavior by humans on animals requires making some concessions and setting new rules.

Next comes the equating of human life and animal life. Yes, God says, you can eat meat, but your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it. To make the point that taking animal life qualifies for life-for-a-life treatment, this is immediately followed by Whoever sheds mans blood, by man shall his blood be shed. The positioning of these two statements makes clear that if man wants to be a meat-eater, the animal kingdom has the right to become blood-avengers, just as a man may become a blood-avenger for his beloved dead (although God is not keen on blood-avenging).

This message is brought home in Leviticus 17:3-4, where we are told that a person who kills an animal for food without some kind of sacred justification, blood shall be imputed to that man; he has shed blood. In the immediate case, that sacred justification required that the animal be killed within the precincts of the Tabernacle, presumably as a sacrifice of some kind. The late 19th century founder biblical commentator Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch put it bluntly in commenting on those verses. Killing an animal for no sacred purpose is to be taken as murder.

If to all this we add the laws God makes prohibiting murder, severely restricting the taking of human life in general and otherwise protecting the sanctity and dignity of human beings, there should be no doubt where God stands.

On the other hand, God never issued a blanket ban on killing. God never said, Thou shalt not kill, that oft-quoted phrase that is nowhere to be found in the Torah. Murder is the word used in the commandment (see Exodus 20:13).

As God continues to set forth Israels laws in the Sefer Ha-brit, the Book of the Covenant, in the chapters that immediately follow the Ten Commandments, a distinction is made between murder and manslaughter (see Exodus 21:13). Then, in Exodus 22:1-2, God denotes a difference between justifiable homicide and cold-blooded murder.

While God does not like violence and bloodshed, God also is a realist. If someone is coming to kill you and killing that person is the only way to prevent being killed, that is justifiable homicide.

Gods pragmatism is evident in the commandment regarding an unbelievably cruel enemy, Amalek. As we are commanded in Deuteronomy 25:17-19, You shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. Amaleks goal was our annihilation. War against Amalek also is justifiable homicide.

Time and again, God also tells us in the Torah that we will have to go to war against the seven Canaanite nations living in the Land of Israel. And, in Deuteronomy 20:1-18, God sets out some of the rules of war, and even promises to fight for you against your enemies, to save you. It is hard to make a case that God is anti-war given such a declaration. (It needs to be noted, though, that these wars against the Canaanite nations had no religious motivation attached. They made war on us, and we were commanded to fight back, or strike pre-emptively.)

Based on all that the Torah has to say (both pro-life and pro-war), Jewish law deduces the existence of two kinds of acceptable war: the obligatory war and the discretionary, yet divinely sanctioned, one. (Women, by the way, are required to fight alongside men in obligatory wars, according to the Babylonian Talmud tractate Sotah 44b.)

An unsanctioned discretionary war is obviously an illegal war. Davids war of conquest against Syria may be one such, because it was a discretionary war with no divine sanction. (See Sifre to Deuteronomy, Piska 51.) Any deaths that occur in such a war are considered to be outright murder.

The Talmud in BT Sotah 44b attempts to explain the two legitimate categories in this way: The wars waged by Joshua to conquer [Canaan] were obligatory, [while] the wars waged by the House of David for territorial expansion [that did have divine sanction] were discretionary.

Obviously, the eternal war against Amalek also is an obligatory war since it is mandated by the Torah. That would seem to shut down the possibility of obligatory wars in the current day, since neither the seven nations of Canaan nor Amalek exist any longer. Maimonides, however, includes as obligatory a war waged to fend off an attacking army (see Mishneh Torah, The Laws of Kings and Their Wars, 5:1). Elsewhere, he refers to the defensive war as a commanded one, perhaps in an effort to distinguish it from an obligatory war. Ostensibly, he bases this on Numbers 10:9, which recognizes the need to go to war in your land against an enemy who oppresses you. Others have argued, however, that obligatory and commanded are synonymous where war is concerned.

Pre-emptive strikes against an enemy who poses a credible and somewhat immediate threat fall under Maimonidess definition of a defensive war.

If Putin invades Ukraine, that war clearly falls under the category of an illegal war, just as Davids war against Syria was illegal.

As for God wanting wars waged for religious reasonsin order to compel the people being attacked to convert or dieGod never said any such thing. In fact, when Moses, speaking for God, warned Israel not to consider joining alien religions, he specifically said that those religions also were given by God (see Deuteronomy 4:19), so declaring war against those religions defies God. While it is true that the Hasmonean John Hyrcanus forcibly converted the Idumeans, that was an exceptionand one of which Judaism disapproved.

God reluctantly approves of war in very limited circumstances, but to use God as an excuse for making war is abject heresy.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is http://www.shammai.org.

Link:

Of God and war - The Jewish Standard

PODCAST Hello Rapids Fans! This week on Holding The High Line, its a new season, new intro, who dis? Rabbi and Red have Rapids CCL Fever. We react to the kit drop and that tweet congratulating the Los Angeles Rams. Also weve got a bunch of stickers you can just have if you message us a mailing address and how many you want.

The guys review the final preseason game, a 1-1 draw with Orlando City. Then we preview the first leg Round of 16 match with Comunicaciones FC. The show ends with an interview with Academy Technical Director Chris Cartlidge.

Heres the link to the armadillo trophy.

Holding The High Line is an independent soccer podcast focused on the Colorado Rapids of MLS and a member of the Beautiful Game Network. If you like the show, please consider subscribing to us on your preferred podcatcher, giving us a review, and tell other Rapids fans about us. It helps a ton. Visit bgn.fm for a bunch of other great podcasts covering soccer in North America.

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Find us on iTunes, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Blubrry, and many other podcatchers. See the full list of podcatchers with subscription links here. For full transcripts of every episode, check out our AudioBurst page. Our artwork was produced by CR54 Designs. Juanners does our music.

We are brought to you by Ruffneck Scarves and Icarus FC. Ruffneckscarves.com is your one-stop-shop for official MLS, USL, and U.S. Soccer scarves as well as custom scarves for your group or rec league team. Icarusfc.com is the place to go for high-quality custom soccer kits for your team or group. With an any design you want, seriously motto, they are breaking the mold of boring, expensive, template kits from the big brands.

Have your team looking fly in 2022 like Andre Shinyashiki with bleached hair with custom scarves and kits from Ruffneck Scarves and Icarus FC.

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Follow us on Twitter @rapids96podcast. You can also email the show at [emailprotected]. Follow our hosts individually on Twitter @LWOSMattPollard and @soccer_rabbi. Send us questions using the hashtag #AskHTHL.

Matt Pollard is the Site Manager for Last Word on Soccer and an engineer by day. A Colorado Convert, he started covering the Colorado Rapids as a credentialed member of the press in 2016, though hes watched MLS since 96. When hes not watching or writing about soccer, hes being an outdoorsman (mostly skiing and hiking) in this beautiful state or trying a new beer. For some reason, he thought that starting a podcast with Mark was a good idea and he cant figure out how to stop this madness. He also hosts Last Word SC Radio.

Mark Goodman, the artist formally known as Rapids Rabbi, moved to Colorado in 2011. Shortly thereafter he went to Dicks Sporting Goods Park, saw Lee Nguyen dribble a ball with the silky smoothness of liquid chocolate cascading into a Bar Mitzvah fountain, and promptly fell head over heels in love with domestic soccer. When not watching soccer or coaching his sons U-8 team, hes generally studying either Talmud or medieval biblical exegesis. Which explains why he watches so much MLS, probably. Having relocated to Pittsburgh in 2019, he covers the Pittsburgh Riverhounds of the USL for Pittsburgh Soccer Now.

Photo courtesy of Colorado Rapids.

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Rapids Podcast: CCL Fever, Chris Cartlidge Interview - Last Word on Baseball

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I caught up with Somerville writer Steven Beeber, author of Heebie-Jeebies at CBGBs: A Secret History of Jewish Punk. This study of the intersection of Punk Rock and Jewish culture must make for a very interesting read. I dont know if any Punk Rock dirges have made it into a hymnal yet or can be interpreted through Talmudic Law but hey, as the Bard wrote, Ah, Sweet mystery of life.

Doug Holder: How has living in Somerville been for your writing life. Do you think it is a good place for creatives?

Steven Beeber.

Steven Beeber: Somerville is an excellent place to be a writer. Ive heard it said that there are more writers here per capita than anywhere else in the country. Im not sure thats true Im not a statistician but I do know that in a field that can often be lonely and isolating, that there is a genuine community here, which is so important. Its not Paris in the 20s, maybe, but the cafes are plentiful and the gatherings regular, so it isnt far off. Also, my wife and I both have writing sheds in our backyard, so thats yet another plus. On a more serious note, it should be said that the institutional support from the city itself is amazing. The Somerville Arts Council, among other institutions, is pivotal to providing not just support, but a forum in which writers can reach an audience.

DH: How in the world is Jewish culture reflected in, of all things, Punk Rock?

SB: Jewish culture, as opposed to Judaism the religion, is deeply embedded in Punk, especially the original version of Punk that came out of New York City. Needless to say, New York is home to many Jews, and this was especially true in the 1950s and 60s, the period during which the Punks came of age. The character of Jewish culture ironic, humorous, attuned to the injustices inflicted upon the marginalized is all but synonymous with Punk. Add to that a preoccupation with neurosis, anxiety, and, above all, Nazis, and you have all the ingredients to birth a new rock movement. Ultimately, I would say that Punk was a reaction to the Holocaust by the first generation that was raised in its aftermath.

DH: Did the Ramones, John Zorn, Lou Reed, the Dictators, etc., ever talk extensively about their Jewish background in regard to their music?

SB: Only John Zorn did before I approached them about my book. His Radical Jewish Culture movement took the unspoken elements of NY Punk to an explicit level, which makes sense since he is categorized as Post-Punk more than Punk. But in regard to the others, all of them did speak about their backgrounds extensively on record for my book.

Tommy Ramone (born Tamas Erdelyi), for instance, was raised in anti-Semitic Hungary until coming to NY as a child, and his idea for what became the Ramones bore all the hallmarks of his conflicted feelings about being an outsider. In many ways, Tommy was the mastermind behind the band, the original manager who insisted that they look and behave a certain way, the one who came up with their signature drum sound and joined the band because no one else could be taught to play it, the one who, most pivotally, insisted against the other members protests, that Joey be the lead singer. While Dee Dee and Johnny felt that Joey was the opposite of what a rock star should look like, Tommy knew that it was this very quality that made Joey perfect. As I say in my book, this look was about as Jewish as it could be, to the point where Joey could have passed for an anti-Semitic caricature in the official Nazi newspaper Der Sturmer.

In regard to The Dictators all of whom were Jewish the lead singer, Handsome Dick Manitoba, and the original songwriter, Richard Meltzer, were especially forthcoming about the connection, though others such as the producer, Sandy Pearlman of Mo cowbell fame and lead guitarist and band founder, Andy Shernoff, were clearly influenced by their backgrounds.

Lou Reed, of course, wrote indirectly about his Jewishness from the beginning and more explicitly about it near the end. The Black Angels Death Song, from the Velvet Undergrounds debut, appears to be about the killing fields of Holocaust-ravaged Poland, and Egg Cream, from one of his last albums, extolls the magic of that Jewish elixir that was so much a part of his New York Jewish boyhood. Reed also took part annually in the gathering known as The Downtown Seder, a hip Passover gathering organized by the Knitting Factory founder Michael Dorf, in which Reed would read the traditional Four Questions attributed to the Wicked Child.

Many other members of the Punk scene also spoke at length about their Jewish backgrounds, including, among others, Lenny Kaye of The Patti Smith Group, Tuli Kupferberg of The Fugs, Alan Vega of Suicide, and Punk manager and impresario, Danny Fields, to whom Legs McNeil dedicates his oral history of Punk, Please Kill Me. My book, The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGBs: A Secret History of Jewish Punk, contains profiles based on extensive interviews with almost every early Punk rocker of importance.

DH: The Punk Rock scene originated in the Lower East Side of New York City, once the home of many Jewish immigrants in the early part of the last century. This was fertile ground for the Jews starting out in America. How did this neighborhood help to birth this new genre of rock music?

SB: I actually published an essay about this very subject in a collection called Jews: A Peoples History of the Lower East Side. In it, I posited that the LES was pivotal to the burgeoning Punk scene. Not only did Hilly Kristal born Hillel Kristal on a Zionist Socialist collective in New Jersey choose that location for CBGB, the club that became ground zero for the scene.

Tuli (Naphtali) Kupferberg of The Fugs and Lou Reed of The Velvet Underground both performed there regularly during the late 60s when future punks such as Chris Stein of Blondie religiously went to see them. Tuli remained there most of his life, and Richard Hell (Richard Meyers) fled there from anti-Semitic Lexington, Kentucky as a teenager. I could go on, but the bottom-line is that many of those who laid the groundwork for Punk and many of those who brought it to fruition, both lived and worked there, and even if they didnt, they were influenced by its volatile mix of gritty urban drama and theatrical liberal schmaltz. Its no mistake that CGBG was within spitting distance of Ratners, Katzs and the Second Avenue Deli.

DH: I am Jewish, and have a weakness for the Concord, Grossingers style of Jewish Borscht Belt humor. How did this play out in this music scene?

SB: The Borscht Belt is at the heart of everything. The Punk rockers as teens idolized Lenny Bruce, who began in that world before becoming too risqu to continue there. But other Borscht Belt comics, while tamer on the surface at least in terms of four-letter words still held the same attitudes as Bruce and dealt with them in the same way. So much of Borscht Belt humor is a coded attack on the mores of polite society, a sendup of the stuffy, hypocritical world in which Jews found themselves.

Think, in an earlier era, Groucho doing his number on society doyenne Margaret Dumont. At the same time, this humor was also self-directed, a way of defusing the attack through self-deprecation that at times hinted at genuine internalized self-loathing. Jerry Lewis and his arrested development act, Henry Youngman and his take my wife, please. Groucho himself and his, I wouldnt belong to any club that would have me as a member. Remember too, though, that Groucho is also renowned for his reply to a restricted club that denied his half-Jewish daughter admittance: If she keeps out of the water from the waist up, maybe you could let her in the pool?

DH: I dont know if my old Rabbi would agree with your thesis. Has the book been used for serious study in the Jewish academy?

SB: Yes. But I wouldnt say its limited to the Jewish academy. I have been asked to speak on the topic at conferences and universities around the world, and in fact am pretty well known in Germany. You know the phrase, Im big in Japan? I often say Im big in the other former Axis power.

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Somerville writer Steven Beeber: Finding the bagels, knishes and schmaltz in Punk Rock - The Somerville Times

Wed, 9 Feb 2022 18:00 - 19:00 Greenwich Mean Time (UTC0)

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Ancient rabbinic advice about mad dogs

About this event

This lecture will discuss some significant passages from the early (Mishnah/Tosefta) and late (Palestinian/Babylonian Talmud) rabbinic traditions of late antiquity that deal with so-called mad dogs (kelev shote). The texts introduce different classifications or taxonomies of this condition and elaborate on theoretical and practical knowledge about appropriate cures and remedies. These therapeutic advices, embedded in a religious-normative discourse, contain unexpected and sometimes puzzling details and terminology. Moreover, they display conceptual structures and literary techniques that point to a certain familiarity with technical or epistemic genres (e.g., recipes, diagnosis, incantations), while deploying also traditional rabbinic discursive forms.

The regionally diverse Talmudic texts from Palestine and Babylonia seem to reflect different assumptions and medical approaches of their surrounding cultures. The analysis will shed some light on possible interactions with and transfers of medical and cultural concepts from ancient Graeco-Roman, Byzantine-Christian, Mesopotamian, and Persian-Zoroastrian traditions. Moreover, the discussion will provide some keys to the specific ways in which the rabbis adopted, integrated and authorized such knowledge.

The speaker is Lennart Lehmhaus (PhD), lecturer at the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Tbingen (Germany). Before that he held positions as research fellow and lecturer at Martin-Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), Freie Universitt Berlin (as a member of the research center SFB 980 Episteme in Motion), The Katz Center for Judaic Studies- University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. His research and teaching interests comprise ancient Jewish cultures and literatures, specifically rabbinic and Talmudic; premodern knowledge and sciences; trajectories of Jewish traditions, motifs and customs into contemporary Jewish and Israeli culture.

He has published widely on the so-called late Midrash texts in their early Islamicate contexts. His monograph on discursive features and cultural backgrounds of the ethical work Seder Eliyahu Zuta is currently in press and will be published in the Text and Studies in Ancient Judaism series with Mohr Siebeck.

In his current research, Lehmhaus works on Talmudic discourse on medical knowledge and practice in comparison to Graeco-Roman and Ancient Near Eastern medical traditions. As publications from this project will emerge the Sourcebooks of Medical Knowledge in Talmudic Literature (Mohr Siebeck, 202225) and Talmudic Bodies of Knowledge Jewish Discourse on Health, Illness, and Medicine in Late Antiquity (forthcoming 2023).

Besides several peer-reviewed articles, he has edited the volumes: Collecting Recipes. Byzantine and Jewish Pharmacology in Dialogue. De Gruyter, 2017 (with M. Martelli), Defining Jewish Medicine Transfers of Medical Knowledge in Jewish Cultures and Traditions. (Harrassowitz, 2021), and Female Bodies and Female Practitioners in Ancient Mediterranean Cultures (Mohr Siebeck, 2022).

Lehmhaus is the founding editor of the series ASK Ancient Cultures of Sciences and Knowledge (Mohr Siebeck, 2022-).

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Rabbinic Rabies and Rabid Rabbis the 'Mad Dog' in Talmudic Texts - The Media Line

The Torah begins with the world being created by words. Let there be is the recurring refrain. God names each item Light. Day. Night. Darkness. Earth. Sea. Heaven. From this emerges the concept that words can build or destroy.

Words matter. Every letter in the Torah is believed to have significance, and every word is essential. There are no errors. The idea of precision is so important in the Jewish origin story that we have pages of commentaries, stories, explanations and laws when an extra letter is added onto a phrase. While some critical readers of the Torah define extra letters, words and redundancy as scribal errors, there is a deep spiritual practice in combing through phrases, repetitions and words. We find meaning to justify each phrase; each phrase justifies its meaning.

It is difficult to reconcile this deep relationship between word and meaning with a 21st-century culture of using words as if they do not matter. Last week the Jewish world erupted after Whoopi Goldberg, a co-host of The View, used ill-informed words on the show to describe the Holocaust, saying the genocide was not about race and was, instead, essentially a case of infighting between two groups of white people. A flurry of conversations, articles and rage emerged in response. The words evoked fear and reflections on antisemitism, and revealed ignorance of the history of race (and genocide).

The Talmud teaches, The world exists only in the merit of the person who restrains him or herself at the time of an argument (Chullin 89a). Words create narratives. Words have the ability to disrupt, provoke and uproot, and in a world that is divided, they can cause terrible harm. Building false narratives about Jews or any other group for that matter can destroy. In Nazi Germany, Jews were dehumanized first by words as they were described as rats, defiling society. Dehumanizing another by using words can help categorize a people as less than, thus normalizing horrific acts. Of course Jews are not the only people to have been leveled by words. Indeed throughout history, efforts to separate cultural, religious, ethnic or racial groups from one another consider Rwanda or the Balkans have often begun with dehumanizing descriptions and unraveled from there. Words can highlight vulnerability and trigger attack.

Though Ms. Goldberg had no intent to deny the Holocaust, the gaps in knowledge she was forced to reconcile exposed a different lack of understanding: the degree of trauma Jews carry around all the time.

Since the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018, the need for heightened security has increased the feeling among Jews that we are in existential danger. We have a history as a people of not being fully accepted into the places we call home. There is a weariness and a wariness in the Jewish community; much like for other minority groups, there is a feeling of never quite being able to rest.

How can we? Just two weeks ago a man walked into a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, and terrorized a rabbi and three congregants for 11 hours. The next week, in Washington, D.C., the city where I live and worship, the citys landmark train station was defaced by swastikas, and two Chicago synagogues and a Jewish high school were vandalized. Each incident pulls us back, echoing darkly for us the racist narratives that targeted Jews through history, and in the not-so-distant past, causing us, at various times, to lose our right to citizenship, our right to work and finally our right to live. This year the Church of England has promised that a formal apology is forthcoming to the Jews for the medieval antisemitic laws that led to their expulsion in 1290. Groups in Britain say the history of antisemitism in that country, set in motion 800 years ago, cast a shadow to this day.

Let me be clear: We are, thank God, certainly not in a time resembling 1937 Germany or medieval England. But there is good reason our community has never quite been able to calm our instinct toward fight or flight. That is why moments of misunderstanding projected from a national platform let alone having synagogues terrorized are never just about that one incident. They evoke a traumatized past that has never healed.

Jews care about not just the words that hurt, but also those meant to mollify. Ms. Goldbergs apology I said the Holocaust wasnt about race and was instead about mans inhumanity to man. But it is indeed about race because Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race has itself been dissected and analyzed. Has it gone far enough? Had her original words had more impact than her apology could? Did it represent real teshuvah, a real desire to atone, through understanding? I believe it did. I believe there needs to be a space for error and apology in our society.

Teshuvah is the process of regretting, renouncing, confessing, reconciling and making amends. Ms. Goldberg regretted her words, renounced what she said, confessed in public, reconciled by educating herself on national television and sought to make amends. Teshuvah shleimah a complete teshuvah is when we are in the same situation again and we choose to act differently. Then we know that our internal work has taken effect.

The Jewish tradition asks me to guard my tongue, to be careful of what I say, of promises I make. If these promises are said with Gods name, I must carry out the actions promised by my words. In this time of social platforms that influence millions, pausing before we speak and taking words seriously might not be such a bad thing. Indeed it might do the work of repairing the world.

Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt is a co-senior rabbi at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C.

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Opinion | In the Jewish Tradition, the Words We Choose Matter - The New York Times

NINETEENTH-CENTURY RABBI Simcha Bunim of Peshischa told one of his followers to transcribe a quotation from the Talmud The world was created for me onto a slip of paper to keep in his right pocket. Whenever he felt sad or distraught, the man could pull out the words to remind himself that his life was of boundless value. When he was feeling powerful or important, he should instead read the words in his left pocket I am nothing but dust and ashes which would point out the humbleness of his true state. By reading these reminders, suggested the rabbi, human beings can maintain balance in their daily lives. While there are times when people might need one particular message more than the other, fundamentally both truths are always in our pockets: we are everything and we are nothing, at the same moment.

In her new book Lost & Found, Pulitzer Prizewinning essayist Kathryn Schulz comes to an understanding similar to the rabbis: the experience of grief and sadness and the experience of love and joy always happen at the same time, even when we are not fully aware of how much they are connected. In her lyrical and deeply thoughtful memoir, Schulz recounts the emotional confluence of grieving for her father following his death and falling in love with a woman, whom she soon married.

Schulzs title, Lost & Found, establishes the structure of the three-part memoir. In Lost, the books first section, the author expresses her resistance to euphemisms for dying such as passing away. Such metaphoric language, she feels, turns away from deaths shocking bluntness and instead chooses the safe and familiar over the beautiful or evocative. Despite her rejection of such evasive language, she finds herself turning to one particular phrase after her father dies: I have lost my father. The idea of losing a loved one rang true to Schulz. As she writes, these particular words seemed plain, plaintive, and lonely, like grief itself.

Schulz spends much of the Lost section exploring not the details of her fathers death or her own grieving, but the multiple meanings of the word lost. She first recounts its etymology, discovering that the word emerged from the Old English verb meaning to perish. For Shulz, to lose has its taproot sunk in sorrow. Over time, the word lost began to take on a wider variety of usages. We can lose our keys or lose a game. We can be lost in thought, or lost in a book. And we can lose our minds and lose our hearts.

As Schulz begins her intensely logical analysis of the words implications in various circumstances, the reader might be tempted to wonder if the authors riff into these abstractions is simply its own kind of evasiveness another way of looking away rather than reading the words in the pocket filled with grief. But Schulzs intellectual meditation on the language of loss is not an effort to pivot away from pain. Instead, it is an effort to open grief up to a larger and deeper kind of engagement.

Schulz returns to her familys story with a broadened perspective. Long after the familys decision to stop treatment and begin hospice, Schulz comes to the awareness that part of her loss was that everything that happened in my life from that point on would be something else my father would not see. That is, the loss she felt most acutely was that she knew she and her father would no longer be able to share in an ongoing life together. He would not see whatever might be newly found.

Schulz experienced intense grief at the loss of her father, but one thing above all others made it bearable, she says: [T]he year before he died, I fell in love. So begins the early pages of the books second section, Found, which details how Schulz initially fell in love with C. and how their relationship grew. These scenes are full of sweet romance, starting with the story of how, shortly after their first meeting, her mind underwent a life-altering reorganization as she imagined their future together. Next, she gives her account of an evening stroll during an early date: I can still remember the exact route we took, writes Schulz, and also the wending way we walked, now closer and now farther, the shifting amount of space between us suddenly uppermost in my mind. She recounts the magic of making pancakes together in the middle of the night, and the mornings reality of seeing her new partner settling down with a mug of coffee and a legal pad to start her work day. In its own way, this everyday scene was equally magical: [T]here she was, going about her life in my home, realizes Schulz, going about her life in my life.

Just as Schulz does in the previous section, in Found she considers the variety of meanings and usages of the word that makes up the sections title. She analyzes the difference between finding that is recovery and finding that is discovery. Recovery essentially reverses the impact of loss. It is a return to the status quo, a restoration of order to our world, she explains. Discovery, by contrast, changes our world. Instead of giving something back to us, it gives us something new.

Unlike in the first section, however, in the books second part Schulz has a constant awareness of how grief is always waiting for her in her other pocket. Lost and found are opposing concepts, just as grieving and falling in love are, yet both change our perception of our place in the world: What an astonishing thing it is to find someone. Loss may alter our sense of scale, reminding us that the world is overwhelmingly large while we are incredibly tiny, writes Schulz. But finding does the same; the only difference is that it makes us marvel rather than despair.

The stunning final section of the memoir is a description of what lies for Schulz between grief and joy, between what is lost and what is found: the symbol of union the author uses in the middle of her title, &. She points out that until almost the 20th century, the end of the English alphabet was not the letter Z but the ampersand symbol. When schoolchildren recited the alphabet, it was the last symbol they pronounced. And is not an ending, writes Schulz; it is a word that leaves us hanging, waiting for what is yet to come.

Schulz finds a series of deeply touching ways to honor and celebrate both the conjunction and continuity that her entwined experiences of losing and finding love have shown her. Life, she realizes, is clearest in the forward-moving union that and promises: that moment when were alive with both grief and joy, both the knowledge that we are nothing and the awareness that the world is waiting for us. This gorgeous memoir is heartbreaking and restorative all at once.

Hannah Joyner is a freelance critic and an independent historian. She is the author of Unspeakable(with Susan Burch) andFrom Pity to Pride.

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Written in the Book of Life: On Kathryn Schulz's Lost & Found - lareviewofbooks

In ancient times the holy Torah was a manuscript that Jews would write upon a parchment scroll.Once printing was invented they divided all its verses and its chapters in an annotated book,but always their interpretation of the words made their imagination play a greater rolethan the printed or handwritten text on which they hung their own ideas like an imaginary hook,

and fill up to the brim,like vavei amudim,ideas that link like hookshiddushim in their books,to ands in columns ofthe Torah where a vavstarts each page with an and.A maskil will understand,thanks to his eruditionthe process of addition.Like vavei amudimit generates hiddushim,thereby enabling Torahto glow, and grow its aurajust like the Torahs vavim,lead-letters of its qelaphim,no less important thanits leading words which fanthe texts and make them coolfor those who use this tool.

The practice of starting every Torah column with a vavwas frowned on by great Rabbi Meir, known as Maharam,and on top of Torah columns showing as little loveas what all great rabbis showed to halakhic decisions that are dumb.

Theres more: another function that each vav not just a hookthat links all Torah columns in the parchment scroll, by signifying addition implies that, like the columns of the tabernacle, all the verses of the bookare templates of reversal of the tense into a non-linear edition.

The second verse of this poem was inspired by David Z. Mosters article inthetorah.com, Scribing the Tabernacle: A Visual Midrash Embedded in the Torah Scroll :

https://www.thetorah.com/article/scribing-the-tabernacle-a-visual-midrash-embedded-in-the-torah-scroll

Moster writes about the custom of beginning each amud, column, of a Torah scroll with a vav, the sixth letter of the alphabet, which means hook, and points out that the practice follows a paradigm that was applied to the building of the tabernacle. The columns of the Torah scroll are called (ammudim), the same term as the columns of the Tabernacle, and the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, a (vav), denotes each hook that was attached to the columns of the Tabernacle to become one of the vavei hamishkan, the hooks of the tabernacle, adding that the scribal practice of the vavei haammudim is not mentioned by theTalmud or Maimonides and was attacked by Rabbi Meir ben Yekutiel HaKohen (d. 1298) and his famous teacher, Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg (d. 1293).

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Scrolls, Books, Hooks and Ands - Jewish Journal

This op-ed was first published on eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

Last week, a 26-year-old Jewish educator named Jessie Sander filed a lawsuit against her former employer, a flagship Reform synagogue, claiming she was fired because of her anti-Zionist beliefs, in violation of New York State law.

While I cannot speak to the legal claim, I have been thinking about the value of inclusivity which many Jewish organizations espouse. Lately, one would be hard pressed to find a synagogue, JCC or federation whose mission statement does not include words like welcoming, inclusive, everyone. Westchester Reform Temple itself, the synagogue that dismissed Sander, expresses on its website its intent to create a warm and welcoming community.

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I believe our institutions are sincere in wanting to create a community where diverse kinds of people feel included. Many of our communal organizations welcome with open arms a full spectrum of people with various racial or gender identities, sexual orientations, religious practices or beliefs. Many of these organizations proport but one acceptable form of ostracism, and that is toward those who express anti-Zionist viewpoints.

The number of Jews who think like Sander is not insignificant. A June 2021 poll by the Jewish Electoral Institute found that 34% of American Jews agreed that Israels treatment of Palestinians is similar to racism in the United States, 25% agreed that Israel is an apartheid state and 22% agreed that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. The percentages are even higher when you isolate adults under age 30.

The above data should give us pause. Across our communal landscape, donor bases of legacy institutions are shrinking. Synagogue membership is dwindling. Is it wise to shun Jews like Sander, at a time when Jewish affiliation and literacy are at an all-time low?

To be sure, opposition to Israel can sometimes overlap with antisemitism. But the profile of anti-Zionist Jews is not uniform, and some participate actively in Jewish life. They can be found devoting significant hours to Talmud study (at yeshivot like SVARA), to social justice learning (at organizations like Repair the World), and to training for the rabbinate (at several seminaries). They can also be found in some Haredi communities. Jessie Sander appears to be passionate about Judaism. She is pursuing a masters degree in Jewish professional studies. She is a co-founder of the startup Making Mensches, whose goal is to create Jewish communities that explore Jewish values within the context of our daily lives. Jews like Sander find inspiration from Jewish heritage and teachings. In fact, they approach the ethical questions of Israel/Palestine through the lens of the very Jewish values they were taught at our schools, camps and JCCs .

Of course, our synagogues and organizations are fully entitled to hold Zionism and support for Israel as core values. Millions of Jewish philanthropic dollars go to support The Jewish Agency for Israel, along with a variety of social service programs within the state. Jewish educational institutions from day schools to youth groups to camps highlight Zionism in their curricula. We cannot expect our institutions to abandon their core principles. But neither should we keep all anti-Zionist Jews outside the tent, while at the same time claiming to be inclusive and welcoming.

In the Talmud we learn that Jews who have been excommunicated cannot cut their hair or launder their clothes. Nor can their relatives perform acts of mourning after they die. But excommunicated Jews are allowed to teach Torah (Moed Katan 15b). Even though they are shunned in several ways for their wrongdoing, they are nevertheless permitted to teach Torah to others, and we are permitted to learn from them.

Our institutions have to wrestle with the reality that increasing numbers of passionate Jews do not support the State of Israel. Is it in our best long-term interest to be welcoming to everyone but them? I propose that we spend less time labeling all anti-Zionist Jews as antisemitic, and more time figuring out how to be truly inclusive. PJC

Amy Bardack is a rabbi in Pittsburgh. The views expressed here are her own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.

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How inclusive are we willing to be? | The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle - thejewishchronicle.net

A new exhibit at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe takes a page from Jewish graphic novels and comics. Showcasing 12 projects that recount biblical tales, rabbinic writings and personal biographies, the exhibit pairs image and text to spark conversation.

When Ben Schachter and Andrew Julo began work on People of the Book & the Storyboard nearly two years ago, neither of the Saint Vincent staffers considered their efforts particularly prescient. Yet, in recent weeks, Jewish graphic novels have gained national attention. Just before Jan. 27 International Holocaust Remembrance Day a 10-person school board in McMinn County, Tennessee, voted unanimously to remove Art Spiegelmans Maus from its curriculum, saying the work contained language and imagery unsuitable for students.

Along with depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, Maus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book written in the graphic style, describes the authors relationship with his father, a Holocaust survivor.

As news of the school boards decision traveled nationwide, the conversation and debate around Maus grew. During an on-air discussion about the books banning during The View, co-host Whoopi Goldberg ignited new controversy by claiming the Holocaust was not about race. Goldberg later apologized but received a two-week suspension from ABC. Meanwhile, the uproar spurred by the Tennessee school boards decision generated new interest in Maus and sales of the book exploded. The Complete Maus, which contains volumes 1 and 2 of Spiegelmans work, has remained the third-most-sold book on Amazon Charts since the controversy began.

Schachter, an art professor at Saint Vincent, said he never imagined Jewish graphic novels would feature so prominently in national discourse.

Ben Schachter. Photo courtesy of Ben Schachter

It was Schachters contribution to the genre that originally prompted the push for an exhibit about Jewish graphic novels, Julo said.

In 2020, Schachter completed Akhnai Pizza, a graphic novel that reimagines a Talmudic dispute regarding the ritual purity of an oven. But as opposed to offering readers a black-and-white page of Aramaic language in which rabbis debate Jewish law, Schachter departed from the traditional Talmudic style and set his story in Pittsburgh, with illustrated characters arguing, in English, about which pizza is the citys best.

With Akhnai Pizza, Schachter tapped into a growing trend, according to Julo, director and curator of the Verostko Center for the Arts at Saint Vincent. During the past several decades, authors and illustrators have created a really interesting subset within graphic arts, he said. And the new exhibit offers recent examples of sophisticated ways of telling stories to lots of audiences, regardless of age group.

Among the 12 items within the exhibit is an illustrated Haggadah, a graphic novel of Pirkei Avot and a visual adaptation of Anne Franks diary.

Part of the exhibits uniqueness, Schachter said, is that it provides visitors three distinct ways to experience the materials. Attendees can see images displayed in a traditional gallery style, but theres also space set up like a living room, where people can take any of the 12 works and sit down and enjoy the books in a casual, natural way. People can also experience the exhibit virtually by watching and listening to several upcoming lectures on Zoom.

Page 24 and 25 from Passover Haggadah Graphic Novel by Jordan B. Gorfinkel, illustrations by Erez Zadok. Published by Koren Publishers, Jerusalem: 2019. Images courtesy of Jordan B. Gorfinkel

On Feb. 10, at 6:30 p.m., Samantha Baskind, a professor of art history at Cleveland State University and author of several books on Jewish American art and culture, and comic artist JT Waldman will discuss the impact of Jewish illustrators, authors and publishers on 20th-century American sequential art. On Feb. 23, at 3 p.m. Nina Caputo, an associate professor of history at the University of Florida, will discuss her visually-narrated book Debating Truth: The Barcelona Disputation of 1263, A Graphic History and the historic exchange between Rabbi Moses ben Nahman and Catholic priest Pablo Christiani.

Rabbi James Gibson, a Saint Vincent professor and rabbi emeritus at Temple Sinai, participated in a Jan. 27 lecture to open the exhibit. Following the talk, Gibson told the Chronicle that he encourages Allegheny County residents to trek eastward to Westmoreland County to see People of the Book & the Storyboard and that those who live in highly-populated Jewish areas should appreciate the exhibits regional significance.

I think the fact that the exhibit is in rural western Pennsylvania, in a Catholic institution, underscores the attempt of Saint Vincent to bring the Jewish experience to people who may have never met Jews, and we should support that effort by our presence and attendance at that exhibit, Gibson said.

Pages 14 and 15 from Opening the Windows: A Readers Guide to The Prophetic Quest The Stained Glass Windows of Jacob Landau by JT Waldman. Published by Temple Judea Museum Congregation Keneseth Israel, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania: 2015. Image courtesy of JT Waldman

Julo agreed, saying that he hoped the exhibit would serve as a bridge-builder between communities and that the exhibit and recent Maus-related controversies highlight the role of graphic novels as critical educational tools, especially when it comes to the Holocaust.

Theres revisionist history going on right now, and a widening of narratives about World War II, but we need to keep [clear] that this was an attack on Jews first and foremost,Julo said. And as a Catholic school, it is important for us to say that this was an attack on Jews and that an attack on any faith group is unacceptable.

Although several items within the exhibit including the Holocaust Center of Pittsburghs Chutz-Pow! focus on World War II and the Holocaust, the exhibit functions as a commentary and conversation starter on events and periods apart from those occurring last century, Schacter said.

The comic book page and graphic novel, he said, is a way to engage those difficult topics in a way that is approachable.

People of the Book & the Storyboard, at the Verostko Center for the Arts at Saint Vincent College, runs through March 11. The center is open Wednesdays 1-4 p.m., Thursdays 1-7 p.m., and Fridays 1-4 p.m. Those looking to visit the center outside its normal hours can make an appointment by emailing verostkocenter@stvincent.edu. The exhibit and its programs are free and open to all. Masks are required for in-person events. PJC

Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

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'People of the Book': The Jewish graphic novel on exhibit at Saint Vincent College - thejewishchronicle.net

Andy Doctoroff| Detroit Free Press

Seniority entitled him to move his chambers to the seventh or eighth floor of the Theodore Levin United States Courthouse with its marbled hallways, mahogany paneled walls, and ceilings rich with relief. But U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn stayed put, decade after decade, opting to remain in Room 219, his tired, less grandiose chambers on the second floor.

That Judge Cohn had no need for judicial opulence was easily discerned from the hundreds of books lining his office and the quirky bric-a-brac testifying to his myriad passions, like passenger trains and Jewish history.

Obituaries often read like curriculum vitae; so, I expect that notices of Judge Cohns passing Friday evening, at the age of 97, will be chockablock with references to decisions rendered, offices held, and awards garnered. But these impressive litanies miss the essence of the man we just lost.

Judge Cohn enjoyed wealth and power, but they were not the forces that animated him.

More: Iconic federal Judge Avern Cohn dies at 97: 'He was a unique figure'

More: District court will close Monday for funeral of Judge Avern Cohn

Charles Francis Adams rebuffed protestations by his father, John Quincy Adams, that he lacked worthy ambitions by say[ing] with the poet, My mind a kingdom is.

Judge Cohns mind was his kingdom, a vast realm he continued to explore until his final days, a blast furnace of erudition, conviction, and curiosity.

Out-of-state co-counsel with whom I tried a patent infringement case before Judge Cohn were nonplussed by the childlike wonder that compelled him to descend the bench, squint his eyes, and tinker with the subject matter of the lawsuit, a refrigerator shelf.

I last lunched with Judge Cohn at his Birmingham home in the fall. His legs had long since failed him. He received visitors less frequently, and his physical world had grown almost infinitely small, like a star collapsing into a black hole. But, as always, he continued to plow intellectual fields.

Just before our interview ended, Judge Cohn handedme a copy of the Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society, suggesting I read the article about Talmudic perspective on rent regulation in 16th CenturyRome.

Dont forget to return it, he admonished, handing me the volume.I want it back.

Perhaps Judge Cohn lived as long as he did, as richly as he did notwithstanding physical infirmities, because of the intellectual fires that burned within him, the same fires that drove him to become the rare jurist who, in Richard Hofstadters words, relishe[d] the play of the mind for its own sake, and f[ound] in it one of the major values in life.

The two years I spent as Judge Cohns elbow clerk (his term) ended in 1992.But he has beena singular presence in my life ever since, someone who has influenced me more positively than any person outside my nuclear family.I will soon enter my own seventh decade, but recent memories of his affectionately calling me kid cause my eyes to fill.

An easy mark for those soliciting charitable gifts, Judge Cohn was no saint.His enthusiasms could alienate colleagues, and resulted in lapses in decorum.He had no need for office intercoms; his vocal cords served perfectly well, thank you.He suffered neither fools nor unprepared attorneys appearing before him.

But his capacity for self-growth was unbounded and endeared him to his staff.Age and self-reflection tempered his excesses, a process facilitated by notes, written in his own hand and taped to his courtroom desk,enjoining him to be courteous: "Keep cool!!! Always remember the lawyers have as much rig[h]t to be in the courtroom as the judge!!!

I myself suffered Judge Cohns tetchiness (Youre the law clerk, Im the judge, goddamnit!).But such was the happy cost of a beautiful, fertile mind that has yielded rafts of scholarly, precedent-setting opinions and letters-to-the-editor,and uplifted our justice system in ways small and large but too numerous to count.

Coming so close on the heels of the death of his cousin, Sen. Carl Levin, the loss of Judge Cohns life presages the sad end of an era populated by ambitious but menschy public servants who were born and raised in Detroit during the 1920s and 1930s and obeyed a demanding code of ethics that now too often seems to have lapsed.

A world without Judge Cohn is more than personal misfortune for his family, friends, and members of the legal community.It raises a disconcerting question:Who among us willcarry on his timeless legacy?

Andy Doctoroff, a Huntington Woods attorney, served as law clerk to the Hon. Avern Cohn from 1990 to 1992.

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Opinion: 'A blast furnace of curiosity and conviction': Remembering Avern Cohn - Detroit Free Press