Is the Shroud of Turin a Hoax?

Yes, in our opinion, the Shroud of Turin is a hoax.

The Times now reports on the display of the Shroud of Turin, "Shroud skeptics call on a shopping list of evidence, including traces of paint pigments and carbon-14 dating tests carried out in 1988 that led three independent laboratories to date the cloth between 1260 and 1390, to cast doubt on its sacred origins."

We addressed this issue on 1/31/10, reposted here...

New evidence from Israel leads us to ask if the famous Shroud of Turin, alleged to be from the time of Jesus, is a hoax?

The report in the Archaeology Magazine blog concludes, "No one will be able to draw any definitive conclusions about the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin based on this new study, "Molecular Exploration of the First-Century Tomb of the Shroud in Akeldama, Jerusalem".

The comparative sample size is miniscule, and archaeologists need to see much more in the way of Jewish burial shrouds from the period in order to establish what the customs really were. However, this evidence is the best we have at the moment, and it certainly casts a lot of new doubt on the Shroud of Turin."

What is the new evidence?

In December, Shimon Gibson, an archaeologist and senior research fellow at the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jersualem, announced tantalizing results from a new study that he and Boaz Zissu, an archaeologist at Bar Ilan University, just completed on a 1st century B.C. shrouded burial they excavated in a tomb in Jerusalem. Gibson and several colleagues published the first part of the study in a paper in PLoS One on December 16th.

Not one of our teachers was a champion

Elizabeth Green, a Spencer fellow in education reporting at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, has written a feature story "Building a Better Teacher" in the NY Times Magazine about a book by Doug Lemov to be published in April, “Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College.”

It's an enlightening and stimulating article about what must be an equally challenging new book.

It made us think about how many very poor teachers we studied with over the years. Yes, even some of the teachers whom I have extolled in the past were as terrible at the art of teaching as they were brilliant in their cognitive mastery and presentation of their disciplines.

We don't know if this is part of the Lemov taxonomy, but on occasion we imagined that the champion exceptional teacher will know the interior nature of each of his or her students and teach to them according to their individual styles of learning, to draw out and develop their native talents. (Um, we wonder why it is that we cannot recall meeting such a teacher.) And we wondered how successful we have been at trying to do those champion things.

Review: Yehuda Bauer's Brilliance Shines Light on the Death of the Shtetl

Yehuda Bauer has written a magnificent book of history -- The Death of the Shtetl -- that tells the tragic story of the eradication of the Shtetl, the small Jewish town in Europe, from off the face of the Earth.

The book is researched and organized brilliantly and written convincingly. We right off do note that Bauer is an Israeli scholar so his English is a bit choppy at times. And he also comes across a bit more opinionated than they typical American scholar (and we assume that's after editors toned down his rhetoric).

Bauer's work provides a definitive and focused closure for us on the topic. We taught for years the romantic idealized European shtetl of Zbrowski and Herzog via Life is With People, and we tolerated the Broadway version of the culture in Fiddler on the Roof. (Bauer leaves no doubt in his work that he has no patience for that representation of the shtetl.)

In his meticulous, vivid and argumentative manner, Bauer tells how the shtetls of the kresy region in Eastern Poland were weakened by the Russians and then eliminated by the Germans. "By the end of 1942, most of the shtetlach in the kresy had been decimated...By early 1943 the shtetlach had been annihilated...(page 67)."

Thinking About a Great Hellenistic Jew -- Naomi G. Cohen on Philo Judaeus of Alexandria

H-Net Review: Tzvee Zahavy on Philo Judaeus: His Universe of Discourse: Naomi G. Cohen. Philo Judaeus: His Universe of Discourse. Beitrage zur Erforschung des alten Testaments und des antiken Judentums. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995. xx + 381 pp. Bibliography and indexes. $57.95 (cloth), ISBN 3-820-41650-1. Published by: H-Judaic (June, 1997).

This book takes its place among the classic scholarly treatments of Philo Judaeus of Alexandria by Belkin, Wolfson and Goodenough. With this work, the author achieves distinction as the leading Jewish Philo scholar of this generation.

Pravda: Hitler wrote the Jews out of the Bible

There is evidence that Adolf Hitler took religion seriously. When he says he remained a Catholic, we need to take that seriously as well and not cloud the issue by speculatively claiming that he secretly planned to destroy religion. This effort described below which Hitler underwrote contradicts that claim.

Pravda: Hitler rewrote the Bible and added two commandments

An institute, founded on Hitler’s command, rewrote Bible texts, eliminating all mentions of the special role of the Jewish people. According to Hitler’s version, Christ was an advocate of Aryan ideas. Sections from the Nazi Bible will be published by German publication Bild on Thursday.

In May 1939, on the Furher’s command, a theological institute was founded in Eisenach with the purpose of contributing to “dejewification”. Its employees edited biblical texts, removing non-Aryan passages. Dozens of works printed by the institute were published in over 100 thousand copies of the new Holy Scripture. It was assumed that this work would become a standard household book amongst Germans.

For a long time, almost nothing was known about Hitler’s Bible, since believers burnt almost every copy. However, a few copies were discovered in German churches at the end of the 1980s, but this was kept hidden from the general public at the time, writes Izvestia.

German biblical archivist Hansjorg Buss has summarized the dubious achievements of Hitler’s myrmidons for Bild newspaper.

“Germans with the Lord – the German book of faith”: the renewed version of the Holy Scripture contained 12 edited commandments instead of 10, as follows:

1. Honor your Fuhrer and master.
2. Keep the blood pure and your honor holy.
3.Honor God and believe in him wholeheartedly.
4. Seek out the peace of God.
5. Avoid all hypocrisy.
6. Holy is your health and life.
7. Holy is your well-being and honor.
8. Holy is your truth and fidelity.
9. Honor your father and mother -- your children are your aid and your example.
10. Maintain and multiply the heritage of your forefathers.
11. Be ready to help and forgive.
12. Joyously serve the people with work and sacrifice.

In the new edition of the psalms, words of Jewish origin, such as messiah and halleluiah, were altered and the city of Jerusalem was referred to as Eternal City of God. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ was presented as resulting from a battle he fought against the Jews.

In the 1940 edition, the following words can be found: “The Evangelical Jesus can only become the savior of our German people, because it does not incarnate the ideas of Judaism, but fights against them mercilessly.”

“The German people fought against the destruction of their life and essence by the Jews”, wrote the director of the institute Walter Grundmann. Hitler personally signed the decree on the appropriation of the awarding of the title of professor to him.

And finally, Jesus’ ancestors, according to the Nazis, came from the Caucuses, therefore there was no way that the savior could have been Jewish.

Original post 10.08.2006

Inspiring Times Obit for a Rockaways Lifeguard who saved drowning orphans

Here is a moving dose of inspiration from the Times.

Mel Cuba Dies at 99; Saved 4 Drowning Orphans in Queens
By DENNIS HEVESI

The winds were whipping toward shore that summer day more than seven decades ago when 105 orphans from the Pride of Judea Home on Dumont Avenue in Brooklyn stepped off buses for what was supposed to be a gleeful romp at the beach in Rockaway, Queens.

It didn’t turn out that way.

And it certainly wasn’t the way that Mel Cuba, a husky 6-foot-tall lifeguard, had planned to mark his 23rd birthday — Aug. 8, 1933.

The tide was coming in and a rather rough surf was running that afternoon, when 40 of the “inmates of the Pride of Judea Home” — as The New York Times then referred to them — waded onto a sandbar, hand in hand and squealing with joy as the breakers rose. Neither they nor their chaperons on shore could have anticipated the huge wave that suddenly swept them away.

Was Adolf Hitler Jewish?

No, Adolf Hitler was not a Jew.

The leader of the Nazi party in Germany who carried out the murder of 6 million Jews in the Holocaust in Europe was a Catholic.

When he was growing up in Lambach Austria in 1897, Hitler attended a Catholic school located in an 11th-century Benedictine cloister.

Despite understandable efforts by the Vatican to hide the facts, historians have documented that Hitler had ongoing connections to the Catholic Church  (condensed here from Wikipedia):

Times' David Brooks on Evolution and the Survival of the Fittest Jews

An op-ed in the Times, "The Tel Aviv Cluster," By DAVID BROOKS is a glowing love letter to Jews and Israelis - so what Jew or Israeli could criticize it? Wait. You will see the Times fill with letters. Jews is News.

"No single explanation can account for the record of Jewish achievement." We agree. That does not mean you shouldn't try. So we are writing a new book about how Jewish religious culture contains some of the DNA that makes Jews the special folk that they are.

We also are reading Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, and cannot resist the temptation to make evolutionary speculations about our people. Like this rumination Brooks doesn't mention, but we make.

We Jews were faced with serious predators over the centuries. Via cultural and historic natural selection, we developed the smarts to elude them and then we embedded our fittest genes back into our national DNA. Brooks doesn't go this way.

We are not big Brooks fans because he is so simplistic and predictable. And yes he is the Grinch who ruined Hanukkah this year. But again, how could you not like a column with all these glowing details about your people?

Jews are a famously accomplished group. They make up 0.2 percent of the world population, but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates and 31 percent of the medicine laureates.

Jews make up 2 percent of the U.S. population, but 21 percent of the Ivy League student bodies, 26 percent of the Kennedy Center honorees, 37 percent of the Academy Award-winning directors, 38 percent of those on a recent Business Week list of leading philanthropists, 51 percent of the Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction.

Cat Fight! Halkin's Indecent Review of Sand's Book in The New Republic

Hillel Halkin is an angry man.

He has written an indecent review of Shlomo Sand's book The Invention of the Jewish People, which he titled, Indecent Proposal, in The New Republic.

We didn't like Sand's book either. And really it's not so surprising that an obnoxious book gives rise to an obnoxious review in return.

Halkin begins by opining that Invention is, "...a book so intellectually shoddy that once, not very long ago, it would have been flunked as an undergraduate thesis by any self-respecting professor of history." And he concludes his lengthy essay with the assessment that aside from Sands' call for a liberalization of conversion, the materials in the volume constitute, "an otherwise deplorable book."

Given that our current book project asserts that Jewish liturgy contains the secret sauce that defines Jewish identity, we love it when Halkin, backed up against the wall, pressed to prove the Jewish people existed, resorts to invoking of all things JEWISH PRAYER as the proof of his position, along with Jewish food and the Jewish tribal ban on intermarriage. As Halkin says it charmingly,

...Besides attending practically identical synagogue services on Saturday morning (and even all week long) and then making the same blessings and singing more or less the same hymns around the Sabbath table, a nineteenth-century Polish and Moroccan Jew also ate a very similar long-simmering stew--called cholent in Poland and dafina in Morocco--whose method of preparation was dictated by the same ritual laws. And though few Frenchmen were so attached to being French that they would have forbidden a son or daughter to marry an otherwise eligible and attractive foreigner, Jews everywhere broke off all relations with children who married non-Jews. To say that Jewish national identity was rooted in religion is not to say that it was merely religious....

Anyhow, sure, both men represent with vigor the two diametrically opposing sides of Zionist political philosophy.

But when they have to stoop so low to make their cases, they lose me.

Regarding this battle between the author and the reviewer, I feel like someone shouted out, "Cat fight, ssssss." And now that the crowd has gathered to witness the clawing scholars go at it, I'm going home. It's not my preferred form of entertainment... today anyway.

How Ancient Religious Bureacracies (and modern scholarship) Muffled Jewish Worship (and what we can do about it)

Here is part I of our series, "How Ancient Religious Bureacracies (and modern scholarship) Muffled Jewish Worship (and what we can do about it)."

Our work is cited in a new article in JSIJ (7-2008) by Ishay Rosen-Zvi, "Responsive Blessings and the Development of the Tannaitic Liturgical System" --ברכות הראייה והופעת המערכת הליטורגית בספרות התנאית

Rosen-Zvi summarizes the thesis that we advanced in several articles with some, but not total, accuracy on page 11 (e.g., with our name misspelled as Zehavy -- corrected below in the copied excerpt).

In our earliest work on Mishnah and Tosefta Berakhot we too validated the rabbinic amalgamation of its liturgy as a system. Rosen-Zvi endorses the apologetic in support of the rabbinic systematizing steamroller. He refers in his notes to our subsequent work where we sought to recover some characteristics of the structures of the liturgies prior to their bulldozing by the rabbis.

We are working now in new examinations at this same task from another vantage, the fruits of which will appear in forthcoming publications.

Coincidentally, Judith Shulevitz remarks in her review today in the Times of, The Faith Instinct, by Nicolas Wade, about how, "Church bureaucracies created crucial social institutions but also suppressed the more ecstatic aspects of worship, especially music, dance and trance."

We agree. We know that this suppressive process exists and, taken too far, that it stifles not only the threatening ecstatic aspects of worship but also many needed creative and imaginative aspects of that religious practice.

No question. The rabbis suppressed the independence of the elements of Jewish liturgy to minimize the dynamics of the parts in favor of a "system" of a whole.

In his current article, Rosen-Zvi merrily argues the specifics of some of the ways that they did that and in doing so, he extends them further.

Here is the part of his essay that quotes us along with the extrinsic way he smoothes over the seams that we had exposed in our articles:

צבי זהבי אף הציע בכמה מאמרים שמשנת ברכות מחברת יחד מוסדות ליטורגיים שלא זו בלבד שהם שונים בטיבם, אלא עצם מקורם בשלוש קבוצות שונות מימי הבית: ק"ש אצל הסופרים (שעל כן התורה במרכז), ברכות סעודה אצל הפרושים (המקפידים גם על אכילת חולין בטהרה) ותפילה כהנית (ולפיכך ירושלים והמקדש עומדים במוקד). ראו

T. Zahavy, ‘Three Stages in the Development of Early Rabbinic Prayer’, in: a professor et al. (eds.), From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism, Atlanta 1989, pp. 233-265; idem, ‘The Politics of Piety: Social Conflict and the Emergence of Rabbinic Liturgy’, P.F. Bradshaw and L.A. Hoffman (eds.), The Making of Jewish and Christian Worship, Notre Dame 1991, pp. 42-68

להלן: זהבי, שלבים; זהבי, פוליטיקה; על דרכו של זהבי בחקר הליטורגיה ראו רייף, יהדות, עמ' 7. אמנם אין שחזורים אלה ורבים אחרים ממין זה יוצאים מגדר השערות בעלמא. יהיו אשר יהיו הגלגולים הקודמים, הניצנים והמבשרים של הברכות הללו, בצורתן שבמשנה (ק"ש וברכותיה, שמונה עשרה ברכות תפילה ושלוש ברכות לאחר סעודה) אלו הם חידושים תנאיים המרכיבים מערכת ליטורגית שלמה, שכל מרכיביה דומים בצורתם ובנויים כצירופי ברכות, כדלהלן. ההתעלמות של רוב רובו של המחקר הקיים על הליטורגיה הקדומה מן המבנה התנאי הייחודי של שלושת קובצי ברכות אלו יסודו במגמה הרווחת להתחקות דווקא אחר המקור הראשון, הקדום, של הליטורגיה, מגמה ששיאה בסדרת מאמריו של לואיס פינקלשטיין על הנוסחים ה'מקוריים' של ברהמ"ז, שמו"ע, ק"ש וההלל. ראו רייף, בית שני, עמ' 134 135. כאן יפים דבריו של סת' שוורץ שנאמרו אמנם במקורם על חקר בית הכנסת

“there is something disquieting in allowing narratives of origins to dominate accounts of the history of an institution or an ideological system” (S. Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, Princeton 2001, p. 215).

הדומיננטיות של 'חיפוש המקור' (גם) בחקר הליטורגיה עולה בבירור מתוך הסקירה של סאראסון, מתודות.

More to follow on this issue... stay tuned to this channel.

Should Popes be made into Saints?

There will be controversy about every move by the Vatican to make Pope Pius XII a saint. The discussion should be conducted in a substantive manner within the Vatican on the criteria that exist for this process. We Jews ought to have input - if letters of recommendation from outsiders are taken into account in the "sainthood" evaluation.

We suspect such input is not officially welcomed. Catholics ask other Catholics who to make a Catholic saint.

We sure can and should express our outsider's opinion that Pius XII was not a hero because of his refusal to condemn Hitler and in his non-existent opposition to Holocaust.

From our talmudic vantage we see a deeper problem for the church.

We all know that by definition a pope is a political appointee, not chosen for his distinctive inherent saintliness, but on the basis of other and more complex criteria. Accordingly, even to consider a pope for sainthood creates a category confusion. To an objective outsider, one who is a great political leader in the church is not to be confused with one who is a great religious saint.

Plainly put our common sense tells us that if the pope is good at politics, that means by definition that he is  no saint.

Now Catholics will disagree and say that being a good pope is exactly what they mean by being a saintly person. We just don't buy that kind of muddled thinking.

We think that by rule no pope should ever be considered for sainthood. It's a category and archetype confusion of serious magnitude. The archetypal saint is a person who is a pure and elevated homo religiosus, a person of miracles, and not a political animal and a maker of deals.

If they insist that a pope can be a saint, then the only real solution for Catholics is to create another category of saint - a "papal saint." That way their other saintly saints will not be subjected to the papal taint and its concomitant controversy.

Vatican says steps to sainthood for Pope Pius XII are not anti-Jewish

The Vatican, fighting a public backlash from some Jewish groups, says the pope's decision to move controversial Pope Pius XII closer to sainthood is not an act of hostility toward Jews...more...

What is Hanukkah?

As the Talmud asks, What is Hanukkah?

David Brooks in the Times gives the holiday some sort of odd spin (pun intentional) as if it was an allegorical foreshadowing of the politics of our times.

If you are wondering what is the official meaning of Hanukkah as presented in our Jewish liturgy, here is the text we insert for the holiday, no spin added,

And [we thank You] for the miracles, for the redemption, for the mighty deeds, for the saving acts, and for the wonders which You have wrought for our ancestors in those days, at this time.

In the days of Matityahu, the son of Yochanan the High Priest, the Hasmonean and his sons, when the wicked Hellenic government rose up against Your people Israel to make them forget Your Torah and violate the decrees of Your will.

But You, in Your abounding mercies, stood by them in the time of their distress. You waged their battles, defended their rights, and avenged the wrong done to them. You delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak, the many into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure, the wicked into the hands of the righteous, and the wanton sinners into the hands of those who occupy themselves with Your Torah.

You made a great and holy name for Yourself in Your world, and effected a great deliverance and redemption for Your people Israel to this very day. Then Your children entered the shrine of Your House, cleansed Your Temple, purified Your Sanctuary, kindled lights in Your holy courtyards, and instituted these eight days of Hanukkah to give thanks and praise to Your great Name.

Six People You Meet in Synagogue

I got a call in August (2009) from the dean at the Jewish Theological Seminary inviting me to teach a liturgy course at the school. He was confident that I was qualified and prepared to do this because he knew my published work in the field. I was not so sure because that work was written for scholars, not for theological students.

I accepted the assignment and then set out to re-purpose and refocus my previous research so that it could serve to prepare students to engage in meaningful constructive theology, not in the dispassionate history of religions.

The result – instead of teaching my abstract speculations about the origins of prayer in this or that presumed social milieu of a distant time and place, I created a new framework of present and personal entities. I taught that davening originates in a timeless minyan of archetypes. My students were able to leave behind some echoes of a positive historical vision of Judaism and were quick to accept a clear and vivid, present and personal liturgical reality.

I've started writing up the course for publication and presentation in a variety of media and venues.

I've given the project a working title, "Six People You Meet in Synagogue."

In this regard I apologize to and thank the writer Mitch Albom. This project's title is a play on that of his inspiring book, The Five People You Meet in Heaven, (New York, 2003) though my content bears no similarity to that work.

I do owe a debt to him for his subsequent and current work, Have a Little Faith, (New York, 2009) which confirms my esteem for what I call the seventh archetype, the community organizer.

In a narrative with archetypal impact, Albom reverentially describes in this book how two heroic characters, Rabbi Al Lewis in South Jersey and Reverend Henry Covington in Detroit, sustained and inspired their respective faith communities.

You will find a community organizer in every liturgical culture. He may come from the ranks of the laity or from the clergy. That person will rarely get formal recognition. In the synagogue, a single Sabbath prayer asks for a blessing for him from God, “May he bless those who unite to form synagogues for prayer … and all who faithfully occupy themselves with the needs of the community (Koren, p. 518).”

The Talmud Yerushalmi in its own idiom, praises the sanctity of this work:
R. Jeremiah said, “He who is involved with communal needs is like one who is involved in the study of words of Torah.” [By stipulation, he has the suitable disposition out of the context of his activities to go ahead and engage in prayer.] (Y. Berakhot, Chapter 5, Mishnah 1).

The task of the community organizer archetype is to facilitate the social order of the synagogue, the society out of which our liturgy comes and within which we need to address those urgent theological notions of how to conduct liturgical discourse, how to foster Jewish culture.

Speaking of synagogues, there is a powerpoint of the Acco synagogue circulating in email. It is dynamite. Get a taste of it here.

Barack Obama Wins the Nobel Peace Prize - Is it good for the Jews?

We have been a supporter of Obama from day one because he is a visionary, a progressive and a man of peace.

His award of the Nobel Peace Prize confirms that others consider his record thus far astonishing. Just winning the election - that alone changed the landscape of our world. A black man is president of the United States.

If he did not one more thing, if he sat in office for 4 or 8 years on his hands, his accomplishment of being there more than merits the prize.

As the Passover prayer proclaims, Dayenu, that miracle would be enough. It says to every person in the non-white world that they can ascend and achieve. It empowers multitudes and changes human destiny.

This award to Obama is good for the Jews and good for all peace loving people on this planet.

We recall in this context just one event, his courageous speech in Cairo which we wrote about on June 4, 2009 as follows:

President Barack Obama cited the Talmud in his Cairo speech. Obama may be the first US president to cite the Talmud in a major international address.

It was not a particularly deep, meaningful or well-known citation. It was a passage from Gittin 59b, that was tacked on to his speech at the end, along with miscellaneous quotes from other religious texts. He said,

The Holy Koran tells us, "O mankind! We have created you male and a female; and we have made you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another."

The Talmud tells us: "The whole of the Torah is for the purpose of promoting peace."

The Holy Bible tells us, "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God."

Soncino translates the citation as: "But the whole of the Law is also for the purpose of promoting peace, as it is written, Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace?" (Prov. 3:17).

כל התורה כולה נמי מפני דרכי שלום היא דכתי׳ דרכיה דרכי נועם וכל נתיבותיה שלום

It looks like Obama obtained his quote from a quick google search.

This was a long and content-rich address that needs to be studied and scrutinized, indeed like a Talmudic text, as a Time magazine writer suggested yesterday for another Obama document.

In the address, Obama enunciated clearly the basis for his support of Israel and reiterated his aversion to antisemitism and Holocaust denial:

America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.

Around the world, the Jewish people were persecuted for centuries, and anti-Semitism in Europe culminated in an unprecedented Holocaust. Tomorrow, I will visit Buchenwald, which was part of a network of camps where Jews were enslaved, tortured, shot and gassed to death by the Third Reich. Six million Jews were killed – more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, ignorant, and hateful. Threatening Israel with destruction – or repeating vile stereotypes about Jews – is deeply wrong, and only serves to evoke in the minds of Israelis this most painful of memories while preventing the peace that the people of this region deserve.

More to follow.... (such as now, the award of the Nobel Peace Prize....)

Galilean Synagogue at Migdal excavated by archaeologists Dina Avshalom-Gorni and Arfan Najar of the Israel Antiquities Authority

This looks like a breathtaking new-ancient synagogue site at Migdal beach.

From the IAA release:

One of the Oldest Synagogues in the World was Exposed in the Israel Antiquities Authority Excavation

A synagogue from the Second Temple period (50 BCE-100 CE) was exposed in archaeological excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting at a site slated for the construction of a hotel on Migdal beach, in an area owned by the Ark New Gate Company. In the middle of the synagogue is a stone that is engraved with a seven-branched menorah (candelabrum), the likes of which have never been seen. The excavations were directed by archaeologists Dina Avshalom-Gorni and Arfan Najar of the Israel Antiquities Authority...

Don't miss our 1983 video of ancient synagogues on YouTube.

What is the purpose of “Mishkan T’filah” - the newest Reform Jewish Prayerbook?

The Jewish Reform movement published a new prayerbook two years ago. At the time the NY Times reported...

The movement’s leaders hope the new prayer book will help revive a worship experience that many Jews avoid.

Scott A. Shay, the author of “Getting Our Groove Back: How to Energize American Jewry,” said, “Let’s not forget that more than three-quarters of American Jews don’t go to any synagogue on a regular basis.

“Each movement realizes that the real struggle for the future and soul of American Jewry are those who are outside of the synagogue today,” said Mr. Shay, a banking executive who has been active in Jewish organizations.

“Each movement is really struggling with, ‘How do you bring them in?’ ” he said. “This prayer book is an attempt toward that for the Reform movement.”

That conclusion to that article is silly. Prayerbook reform in Reform Judaism has a long and venerated history that has more to it than just "bringing them in" to the Temples.

It reflects a consensus of the real beliefs and thoughtful considerations of the movement.

The editor of the siddur is more authentic and accurate in her description (yes, a woman is the editor):

“It reflects a recognition of diversity within our community,” said Rabbi Elyse D. Frishman, the editor of the prayer book. “We have interfaith families. We have so many visitors at b’nai mitzvah ceremonies that I could have a service on Shabbat morning where a majority of people there aren’t Jewish,” she said, referring to bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies on Saturday mornings.

“There are even those in my community who come to Shabbat worship each week who don’t believe in God,” said Rabbi Frishman, who leads the Barnert Temple in Franklin Lakes, N.J. “How do we help them resonate with the language of prayer, which is very God-centric and evokes a personal God, a God that talks to you in a sense? There are many, many Jews who do not believe in God that way.”

Unlike the Reform movement’s last prayer book, “Gates of Prayer,” which was published in 1975, the new prayer book has a Hebrew title, “Mishkan T’filah” (which means a sanctuary or dwelling place for prayer). And it reads from back to front, like a traditional Hebrew text, which was only an optional format when “Gates of Prayer” was published.

It was Rabbi Frishman who thought up the innovative layout for the new prayer book, or siddur.

There are four versions of each prayer laid out on a typical two-page spread. (Since the book is read back to front, the right page is read before the left one). On the right page is the prayer in Hebrew, the transliteration of the Hebrew prayer into phonetical English, and a more literal translation. On the left-hand page is a more poetic translation of the prayer, followed by a metaphorical or meditative passage reflecting on the prayer, sometimes by a well-known writer like Langston Hughes or Yehuda Amichai.

Rabbis who prefer to lead a more traditional service can choose a prayer from the right-hand side of the page, while those who prefer a more alternative approach can choose from the left side.

“This is a way of having the best of both worlds,” said Rabbi Peter S. Knobel, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the association of Reform rabbis, which is publishing the book. “You have the possibility of doing, if you want, an entire service in Hebrew, as traditional as you can be within the Reform movement. At the same time, you can do something extremely creative.”

We believe all those who publish prayerbooks deserve a loud Bravo! for the valiant efforts they have put in. You can buy it here.

Times 1952: Rabbi Zev Zahavy Named Rabbi of Zichron Ephraim (Park East) Synagogue

About 57 years ago, the Times published this news about my father's appointment as rabbi at Zichron Ephraim, now called the Park East Synagogue.

Over the next few years The Times went went on to publish accounts of about 200 of my dad's sermons.

He spoke out frequently and eloquently on how he thought the world ought to confront contemporary issues of his day from a progressive Biblical and Jewish point of view.

I collected the Times' reports. You can read them online here.

May Orthodox Jews pray in a basement?

We raise this Talmudic question after hearing a fine presentation last week by Professor David Ellenson, president of Hebrew Union College, which touched on many subjects including an analysis of a famous statement by Rabbi Israel Hildesheimer.

The 19th century Orthodox leader wrote an essay in which he replied to Hungarian Orthodox rabbis who forbade a whole bunch of synagogue innovations such as sermons in the vernacular, robes, choirs, spires, weddings in the shul, or pretty much any change in the synagogue from what they liked. Rabbi Hildesheimer pointed out that these edicts had no basis in Jewish law and took issue with his Orthodox adversaries.

An irony of the lecture apparently went right over the heads of all 50 or so people in attendance in Teaneck.

The sponsor was Davar, an alternative Orthodox minyan group that meets in the finished basement of a local home in the town. Although all speeches are offered in the vernacular, there are no spires, choirs or spiffy robes to be found anywhere in sight. No danger of the aesthetic innovations of other religions influencing this venue. It is a spacious and pleasant basement, but it was not designed originally to be a spacious and pleasant sacred space of worship.

This big question has always nagged at me. If you have an beautiful synagogue facility nearby - designed to be a sacred space - are you permitted to pray in a basement?

True, there is nothing rancid or offensive in such a venue. But the setting of Judaic prayer is part of the performance of the mitzvah - so should Jews not build and use the most aesthetic places that they can for prayer?

And given the choice of praying in an alleyway, a basement or a nice synagogue, is it not obvious that one should opt for the more classy locale?

Just a Talmudic inquiry tinged with irony.

Is that nefarious Barack-Obama-is-anti-Israel-Urban-Legend Still Circulating?

Yes. The urban legend that Barack Obama is anti-Israel is still circulating widely on Internet blogs, discussion boards and through forwarded emails.

Reputable sources of information have been directly debunking this legend since at least February 2008.

Periodically this urban legend circulates - emanating from right wing sources within the Jewish community and the fundamentalist right wing Christian community.

President Barack Obama in fact is staunchly pro-Israel. The prospects for peace in the Middle East between Israel and its neighbors have improved since Obama took office.

George Bush was the president who oversaw an American foreign policy that tolerated a terrible violent intifada. Bush enthusiastically supported the election that led to the rise of Hamas.

We believe this Obama urban legend is part of a panoply of apocalyptic fantasies that finds an audience as the radical right wing loses its influence within the sphere of political power and discourse in this country.

The echoes of urban legends like this one will reverberate periodically until they ultimately fade from the scene because they lack credibility and have no factual basis.

Bottom line, if you get an email that tells you Barack Obama is anti-Israel, pay it no attention, just delete it.

Talmud and Taboo

Several years back I translated Bavli Hullin in three volumes for the Brown Judaic Studies series, The Talmud of Babylonia: An American Translation. While I was working on that project, I had the opportunity to present a paper at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in New Orleans (November, 1990). I titled the article, "Talmud and Taboo: Kosher Laws and Sexual Restrictions in the Talmud." I had a sizable audience. The version that I read dealt mainly with animal slaughter and eating meat and began as follows:

Freud in Totem and Taboo describes in Kroeber's words how, "The expelled sons of the primal horde finally banded together and slew their father, ate him, and appropriated the females." Later in remorse and guilt, "They undid their deed by declaring that the killing of the father substitute, the totem, was not allowed, and renounced the fruits of their deed by denying themselves the liberated women." All of "socio-religious civilization" stems from these psychological mechanisms according to this metaphoric theory.

Even Freud himself later allowed that the event he described was "typical" rather than historical. Yet in his imaginative exploration of the mechanisms uniting of personality and culture Freud cited two, actually three, basic institutions of religion: sacrifice, sexual taboo and, of course, the festive meal.

Ancient Israelite religion, according to the sources we have, paid fair attention to sacrifice and sexual taboo. Leviticus associates the preparation and consumption of meat with ritual, theology and taboo. Permitted and forbidden sexual unions are spelled out by the Torah, and in subsequent practice they are singled out to be recited in public on the solemn Day of Atonement.

Later rabbinic Judaism devotes an extraordinary ongoing scholastic interest in the sacrificial rite of Israel. The rabbis construct their own a highly complex system of food taboos and ritual of cuisine. They continue many of the scriptural inhibitions and legislate new agglomerations of ritualized prohibitions for sexual relations... (you can read the article here.)