Kindle Edition of the Talmud for Rosh Hashanah

Everything you need to know about the Jewish New Year. Perfect for the High Holidays: Kindle edition of the Talmud Rosh Hashanah. Price: 99 cents.

From the book description:

The New Moon of the Jewish seventh month is a Festival of special solemnity known as Rosh Hashanah, New Year's Day.

This is the eighth treatise of the Babylonian Talmud order Mo'ed. It is composed of four chapters with rules for proclaiming New Moon, for the New Year liturgy and the blowing of the shofar (trumpet). It contains (1) the most important rules concerning the calendar year together with a description of the inauguration of the months by the nasi and ab bet din; (2) laws on the form and use of the shofar and on the service during the Rosh ha-Shanah feast.

Is Madonna Jewish?

No, superstar singer and dancer Madonna is not a Jew. She was born and brought up Catholic. However in recent years she has been linked to the Jewish mystical practice called Kabbalah.

On Madonna's 2005 album, "Confessions on a Dance Floor" the tenth track is controversial because it is called Isaac and contains allusions to the Kabbalah. Rabbis in Israel (mistakenly) thought Madonna was trying to cash in on the good name of Isaac Luria, the Ari, the great founder of Lurianic Kabbalah. So those good men condemned the singer and the album.

It turns out that the singer named this song in homage to her quite living London spiritual guide, a Mr. Yitzhak Sinwani - Isaac is his English name. So what do we think? Is Madonna misappropriating the Kabbalah in this song, distorting it in her now-expected sacrilegious manner? (See below for the lyrics.)

A prayer for Israel Independence Day

Here is a poetic prayer for Yom Haatzmaut from Israel. (Hat tip to Menahem Mendel who has links to the other relevant and important sources for the IID liturgy as well.)

Shouting in Shul About the Prayer for the State of Israel

Originally posted 10/30/05...

There was a shouting match this past Shabbat morning at the 8:30 minyan at the Bnai Yeshurun synagogue in Teaneck. The Gabbai added the single word sheteheh to the Prayer for the State of Israel. That meant he said that we prayed that the Lord protect Israel and that the State will be the first flowering of our redemption -- instead of praying that the Lord protect it because it is the beginning of our redemption.

The policy at CBY officially is to add that will be qualifier. The 9:00 minyan always does. The 8:30 has not -- based on a "don't ask, don't tell" understanding. But then recently the Rabbi got wind of this unfortunate laxity. He scolded the Gabbai and insisted that the policy of qualifying the prayer be rigidly enforced. The resultant shouting match followed.

Are iPhones, Android devices, iPads, and Blackberrys Kosher?

David Assaf (in his wonderful Hebrew blog "Oneg Shabbat") writes at some length and detail about how a few 19th century rabbis apparently permitted speaking on a telephone on Shabbat.

He ends up with a "that was then, this is now" contrast citing a rabbinic wall poster that was seen in Givat Shaul in Jerusalem a few weeks ago. The poster warns Jews that "iPhones, Android devices, iPads, Blackberrys, MP4 and the like" and all video players and Internet devices, all of these "endanger the sanctity of the house of Israel" and they are bringing a "spiritual Holocaust" upon those who use them, "G-d Forbid..." 

"It is surely forbidden to own or use these devices" the rabbis warn. 

Just so there is no confusion, we disagree with those rabbis. We rule that these devices are kosher, permitted for use by all Jews. We are sure that is a relief for some of our readers.

Ads: Talmudic Books for Kindle on the Talmud, Bible, Kabbalah and Prayer
The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in English

The Sunrise and the Redemption of the Jews in Yerushalmi Berakhot and in the Book of Esther

Talmudic life extends the space-time continuum with an acute awareness of the physical here-and-now and deepens the spectrum of thought and meaning with trajectories back into the distant past of the scripture and forward to the hopeful expectation for salvation.

This passage below from the Talmud Yerushalmi Tractate Berakhot demonstrates key aspects of the logic of a Talmudic life - what we explore every day in this blog. The rabbis in the passage practice a mindfulness of the natural world on a seamless continuum with thoughtfulness about their textual world, their imagined pasts and futures.

Below, in this passage that we cite, they want to understand the dynamics of sunrise, part of their everyday natural lives. They need to know when day begins so they can start to say their daily prayers at the correct hour.

On their way to determine this they talk about visual observation and use poetic terms from scripture. They measure the elapsed time of a pre-dawn period by specifying durations for physical activities of walking. But their walking has no physical or temporal boundaries. The dusty roads of the Land of Israel in late antiquity lead them directly into the book of Genesis.

The four miles that the rabbis might walk to determine a period of elapsed time are the same four miles that Lot and his wife and daughters would walk at the behest of heavenly angels. And if those biblical four miles were really not four miles, miracles made them so.

And yet the passage tells us, when rabbis Hiyya and Simeon once were walking in a real valley at daybreak, they were not satisfied to speak about the technical definitions of the durations of the pre-dawn periods, though they surely could have done just that and stopped.

They instead looked at the rays of the dawn and launched their time machine into the future, into a peroration on the redemption of the Jewish people. As they mindfully noted the real rays of that dawn, they pondered the equally real rays of the prophetic words of Micah and of the melodramatic story of biblical Esther.

Link to the Reformatted Soncino Talmud in English Online at Halakhah.com

The Reformatted Soncino Babylonian Talmud English translation is online.

Download this newly reformatted edition of the Talmud in English free at http://www.halakhah.com/indexrst.html

This new edition was reformatted by Reuven Brauner of Raanana Israel in 5771. It is in PDF file format in two-column pages.

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

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

The site has the entire Soncino Talmud edition in the newly reformatted easy to read PDF format.

The earlier edition in one-column format in PDF and HTML is also available on the site.

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

"God's Favorite Prayers"

Is the Orthodox Spell Broken? Is Haredi Gender Segregation Harrassment and Self-defeating?

Is the Orthodox spell broken? Is in fact Haredi gender segregation in Israel both illegal sexual harassment and also totally self-defeating?

Such is the claim of Zvi H. Triger of Israel's College of Management Academic Studies (COMAS) School of Law. He has published a closely argued and well documented 49 page paper with 244 footnotes that you can download and read at SSRN.

He examines numerous sides of the question: the historical, the ideological, the complicity of women in the segregation, and closely parses the legal modes of sexual harassment that the practices entail. His logic and rhetoric seem to us to be impeccable.

"Gender Segregation as Sexual Harassment" appears in the Tel Aviv University Law Review, Vol. 35, 2012. The abstract explains:

Talmudic Video Clips: Yossi Cedar and Footnote at Lincoln Center and Our Non-video Comments about Daniel Boyarin

Yossi Cedar came out on stage to introduce his film at the screening at the New York Film Festival on 10-10-11. He was funny. That is the first clip above. (The clips are from our Samsung smart phone Epic 4G.) He then came out on stage to answer questions after the film was shown. In our second clip (below), Cedar explained where he got the idea for the core concept of the film (the father-son prize mix-up).

In our third clip (below), he explains where he got the notion for one of the funniest scenes in the film (the meeting at the ministry office).

In the beginning of the film itself, Cedar creates a scene at a cocktail party in Jerusalem where in the background conversation you can hear professors discussing the merits of the scholarship of "Boyarin". This is a reference to Daniel Boyarin's work going back twenty plus years that ostensibly tried to combine trendy literary and gender critical methods with the study of Talmud and Midrash. That is the antithesis of the kind of work that Talmudic philologists at the Hebrew University considered to be proper scholarship.

We reviewed a book by Boyarin many years ago and had some strong sentiments of criticism at the time. Our negative judgements did not stem from a premise that Hebrew University style criticism was the proper model for Talmudic scholarship. We did not see Boyarin's work as an intelligible advance in knowledge in the field. Others do. We still don't.

Here is what we said back then. This assessment applies as well to the new Hebrew edition that is now being published 20 years after the original book appeared.

Talmudic Film: Seeing Yossi Cedar and Footnote at Alice Tully Hall

A. O. Scott in the Times is clever when he says about Yossi Cedar's film at the New York Film Festival, "The fantastic Israeli film “Footnote” will also show up in theaters, and if you see only one movie about Talmudic scholarship this year, make it this one. "

The gravitas and seriousness of the NYFF just added to the wonderful and bizarre experience that we had Monday night as we watched a brilliant film about Hebrew University Talmud professors, a father and son, and their relationship, explored through a drama about the award called the Israel Prize.

We will have more to say in due time about this rich and nuanced and funny and quirky film. Yes, it is quirky, just like the Talmud is quirky.

The great treat of the event was the appearance of Yossi Cedar on stage, before and after the screening. He was kind enough to answer questions. His work continues to define him as a major talent of international caliber in the film industry.

We left the theater after personally greeting the director and just walked around for an hour saying wow, what a bizarre and wonderful film. Who would ever imagine that a film could be made about Talmud professors, and then, that it would garner international recognition?

Book Recommendation: Avodah - Ancient Poems for Yom Kippur edited by Michael D. Swartz and Joseph Yahalom

The dead tree edition of the book is $65.95 at Amazon but... the Kindle edition is $9.99.

The rich and informative introduction is worth the price of the book. And if you are teaching a course on the "Liturgy of the Days of Awe," then you must have this book.

In the Kindle edition the Hebrew follows the English, they do not line up side-by-side, and that may account for the discount. Just guessing. Here is the publisher's description.

Avodah: Ancient Poems for Yom Kippur is the first major translation of one of the most important genres of the lost literature of the ancient synagogue. Known as the Avodah piyyutim, this liturgical poetry was composed by the synagogue poets of fifth- to ninth-century Palestine and sung in the synagogues on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Although it was suppressed by generations of Rabbis, its ornamental beauty and deep exploration of sacred stories ensured its popularity for centuries.

Talmud - Daf Yomi - Bavli Hullin 2 and 3 - Translation of Tzvee Zahavy

                                                                 1:1 A-D

                A.            (1) All may slaughter,

        (2) and their act of slaughter is valid,

                B.            Except for a deaf-mute, an imbecile, and a minor

                (C.           lest they impair [the fitness of the carcass] through their act of slaughter).

                D.           But all of them [=B] who performed an act of slaughter, with others watching them — their act of slaughter is valid.

I.1

A.            [The Mishnah presents us with a contradiction.] All may slaughter, [implies that they may do so] to begin with. And their act of slaughter is valid, [implies that they may not do so to begin with but if they already performed the act of slaughter] after the fact [their actions are deemed proper].

Forward Writer Attacks Hebrew Language Charter Schools

We read the article, "Hebrew Language Charter Schools Are a Bad Bargain: Why They Are Not the Path to the Jewish Future," on Forward.com and we thought it was a travesty.

This article is disappointing and misleading because of its false assumptions. Not a single parent believes that a charter school is a one-for-one replacement for a day school. The writer would have you believe that was the case. Nobody believes that it is a "potential magic bullet" for Jewish education. A Hebrew charter school is an alternative and different in obvious ways from a day school. Nobody thinks that this new kind of school is a replay of the Talmud Torah schools of the 20th century. And when the writer says for Jewish education these schools take "erosion to a new, dangerous, level" we cringe. The assertion that one model works and others lead to peril is just ignorant patent alarmist rhetoric with no substance at all.

There are many paths to the Jewish future and charter schools represent one innovative alternative, nothing more, nothing less. These schools are not bad and are not bargains. They are based on many good ideas and they are  full service government funded schools. Lots of hard work goes into founding a charter school or any school.

It's a mean and nasty cheap shot directed at Hebrew charter schools to dismiss such worthwhile efforts with this sort of op-ed essay by Jerome A. Chanes and published by the Forward.

YouTube: Explore Ancient Synagogues in Israel with Tzvee

Here are two levels of archaeology . First, our video presents our commentary to our visits in 1983 to ancient synagogue sites in Israel. We broke the video into three segments so that we could post it to YouTube.

We undertook a second archeological "expedition" in August 2009 to unearth and recover the video itself. We had to find the ancient video tape so we could use it as a supplementary resource for our course on Jewish liturgy at JTS. Then when we had it in hand, it would not play properly on one VCR so we tried it on another. To capture and convert the images we sent it through our wireless Hava device to our desktop and then we worked some magic on the capture. Enjoy. Zahavy's Channel. (repost)

Is Plácido Domingo Jewish?

No, Plácido Domingo is not a Jew. He did live in Israel early in his career

YouTube has a video of ISRAEL MUSIC HISTORY in which Domingo shares his memories of Tel Aviv and speaks some Hebrew. Hat tip to Bella via Bernice.

Is Justin Bieber Jewish?

No, teen singer Justin Bieber is not a Jew. He is a devout Christian.

However JTA reports - in one of the strangest stories that we can recall - that at the encouragement of his Jewish manager, Scott Samuel "Scooter" Braun, Bieber says the Jewish prayer, the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4: "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One."

We doubt the veracity of the story. We think it is as phony as a three dollar bill. And even if true that he says this verse, so what? It is bizarre that JTA makes a news story because a pop singer maybe says one verse from the Bible, in addition to whatever else he says in his Christian prayers.

For Justin Bieber, ‘Scooter’ and the Shema play a major presence
By Edmon J. Rodman
LOS ANGELES (JTA) -- Is “Never Say Never,” the biographical documentary and concert film that recounts the rise of Justin Bieber, also a message film of “Hear O Israel"?

The film, which opens Feb. 11 in wide release, has a genuine Jewish backstory due to the onscreen presence and production involvement of Bieber’s Jewish manager, Scott Samuel "Scooter" Braun.

By all accounts Braun, who discovered Bieber on YouTube -- a site where the teen sensation now has several songs with more than 100 million views -- plays an important role in Bieber’s life both on stage and off.

“On the road I take responsibility for him,” Braun, 29, told JTA in a recent interview, relating that his Jewish background helps Bieber to maintain a sense of balance.

Off stage, Braun also is a presence -- a kind of a Jewish road dad helping the 16-year-old Bieber face the challenges.

“The girls chase the car, they’re in the lobby,” Braun said. “They know where we’re going before we know.”

On stage, as reported by various sources, Braun, Bieber and some of the crew members say the Shema before beginning a concert.

"Originally Justin and the crew just did a prayer circle before the show that ended with Jesus Christ. I wasn’t into that,” said Braun, who grew up in Greenwich, Conn.

With another Jewish member of the crew, “we started saying the Shema. About the third time, Justin chimed in,” Braun recalls. “He had memorized it. Now others say it with us, too....more...

Jews Study Jesus on Christmas Eve: Scholars Discuss the medieval Hebrew Toldot Yeshu at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton

In some Jewish communities, they have the custom to read this booklet on Christmas eve - instead of studying Torah. A strange ritual indeed.

My thanks to Professors Peter Jeffery and Carol Bynum of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton for inviting me a while back to a Medieval Table at lunch to discuss the Toldos Yeshu, the medieval Hebrew "Adventures of Jesus" pamphlet.

The brilliant young Israeli scholar Professor Yaacov Deutsch presented some of the results of his research on the document. A lively discussion of manuscripts, culture, context and content ensued.

FYI: Toledot Yeshu, Toledoth Yeshu, translation of Morris Goldstein (Jesus in the Jewish Tradition) and Alan Humm, The Sepher Toldoth Yeshu and it's Links to the Gospel Jesus.

Added for 2009: Slate: Holy Night, The little-known Jewish holiday of Christmas Eve. Seriously. By Benyamin Cohen //repost from 12/10/08//

Does Google Docs OCR work?

Google announced in June that you could perform OCR - optical character recognition - on files when you upload them to Google Docs (as shown above, just check the box).

Does Google Docs OCR work? Yes, but we recommend it with serious qualifications.

We've tried the feature now and have a brief report. Our test was on 22 pages scanned into a pdf from a book. Our scans contained two pages side by side with one side in Hebrew, except for some footnotes on the bottom in English, and the other side in English.

We chose to upload the pages individually, a single page in each PDF file. Google imposes a 10 page limit so that you cannot just upload a large book and have google scan it.

Our test pages were admittedly more complex than average. The results were acceptable but not great.

The original scan was replicated as an image at the top of each resulting page in Google docs. Just above that Google inserted the disclaimer, "This document contains text automatically extracted from a PDF or image file. Formatting may have been lost and not all text may have been recognized."

The text that was recognized appeared below it. Not surprising - none of the Hebrew text was recognized. Somewhat disconcerting, in the English blocks, whole lines were skipped in no apparent pattern about 5-10% of the time. About 5% of the time individual words were skipped. Some paragraphing was preserved. But the remainder of the formatting, including bold and italics, was gone.

To begin with, we did have easy access to a copier with a feeder that scanned and mailed the 22 pages to us in PDF format. So that part of the process was not onerous. Our investment in time and effort to get the pages scanned out of the book was not immense. Still the question is did using this facility result in any net gain in time or effort for us?

We had to go over all of the text and edit it with some care, comparing it against the original. Could we have saved time by just sitting down and brute force typing in the text? For this sample, we think the answer is yes.

A larger question comes to mind, based on this small experiment. If for its own Google Books scanning, Google uses the same technology that it makes available to us end-users, then we are missing lots of text when we do a search on the scanned Google books. That's not good.

GigaOm: The Eight iPad Apps of Hanukkah

GigaOm's Dave Greenbaum recommends these Eight iPad Apps for Hanukkah:

1. Siddur HD ($19.99)
2. Dreidel HD ($0.99)
3. Jewish Radio ($0.99)
4. Torah for iPad ($7.99)
5. 123 Color (Hanukkah Edition, $1.99)
6. Synagogues ($0.99)
7. iTalmud – iPad Edition ($29.99)
8. Talking Hebrew ($5.99)

We have reviewed the Torah for iPad and we like it.

Dave instructs: To gift an app, click the triangle next to the price on the app’s iTunes Store page and choose “Gift This App.”

A Breathtaking Rabbinic Bestseller: Avigdor Shinan's Pirkei Avot, A New Israeli Commentary

Avigdor Shinan's Hebrew volume, Pirkei Avot, A New Israeli Commentary, is a breathtaking rabbinic bestseller. The publication of this book was supported by the Avi Chai foundation. We've know professor Shinan for over thirty years. He is a leading Israeli scholar both of rabbinics and of Jewish liturgy.

The most common English renderings of the title of this tractate of the Mishnah are, "Ethics of the Fathers" or "Chapters of the Fathers." We've always preferred to render Pirkei Avot a bit more elastically as "Outline of the Primary Principles" since Av in classical rabbinic usage often implies a primary category.

That is what the tractate is about - the primary principles of rabbinic etiquette and daily wisdom. The book is a diverse collection of sayings about how to be a good Jew according to the rabbinic view of life. It's also been the subject of many previous commentaries, as is the case for every rabbinic primary text.

Why is this commentary different from all the others? The reviewers emphasize that it is more accessible in its presentation and more aesthetically attractive. Each mishnaic pericope is accompanied by two pages of textual commentary and an appropriate artistic illustration chosen by David Sperber.

It's what we in the USA call a coffee table book in the best sense of the idea. And we are told that Israelis do not have a comparable concept. Books are for reading. Who would buy a book, to put it out on a table in the living room to display it?

Zvia Walden in Haaretz ("The art of succinct statements") summed up the reasons for the book's success:

How can one explain the suc­cess of a volume such as Shinan's? Is it due to the ever-growing thirst to "preserve the spiritual and moral image of the individual and society in Israel," as Dinur had it? Or is it due to the acces­sible writing style of the editor, a professor of Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University? Or, per­haps native Hebrew speakers are attracted to this edition because Shinan chose to devote much at­tention to the Hebrew text and to connecting the tractate to names, places and landscapes in Israel, while sufficing with only a brief survey of Pirkei Avot's tradi­tional commentators? Certainly, one factor behind the volume's popularity is the abundance of artwork, carefully and wisely chosen by David Sperber, with the goal of not only providing an aesthetic accompaniment to the text, but also -- and perhaps main­ly -- to foster an ongoing dialogue between the text and contempo­rary readers.

It is interesting that the num­ber of artists and works of art in the book nearly equals the num­ber of sages whose words appear in Pirkei Avot. The book's success can also be attributed to its el­egant design, which is the work of Dov Abramson: easy-to-read fonts printed in green and pages laid out in columns, inviting readers to stroll briskly through the text.

Others have given the book good notices.