My Collected Wisdom - Talmudic Advice - updated with my 2016 Jewish Standard columns

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My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy column for November 2016: Deceased friends, Zipper traffic merges and Biased Jewish historians

My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy column for November 2016: Deceased friends, Zipper traffic merges and Biased Jewish historians

Dear Rabbi Zahavy,

Recently a friend and mentor of mine passed away after a long illness. We had been close for many years, but in recent times we were estranged after we had a falling out, precipitated several years ago by my friend’s unethical actions.

I had ample time to make plans to attend his funeral, but it would have meant that I would miss work for a full day. I decided not to go, and then I was not able to go to the shiva. I did send an email and left a voicemail and sent a card expressing my condolences to his wife and children.

Did I act properly?

Chilly Consoler in Cresskill

Dear Consoler,

The conduct in which a person engages related to mourners always is based on complex personal and social issues. It is made more complicated by the specific conditions that you describe. Rest assured that there cannot be absolute requirements about which relative or friend’s funeral you ought to attend, and under what circumstances you should do so. There always are extenuating factors that you have to respect when you make your decision to go or not to go. In this case there are additional items to mull over.

Replay: My China Jewish Studies Lecture Tour of 1991

Several years ago in 1991 I traveled to China and I prayed while touring at the Great Wall outside Beijing.

But that was a sidelight to my China trip. The real purpose of my travel to Beijing was to lecture at the Institute of World Religions of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and conduct other academic meetings throughout China. In Beijing I spoke to the group of fourteen Chinese academics for ninety minutes through a translator. Few of the scholars there spoke much English. I described in some detail my research on the development of Jewish prayer in the time of the Mishnah and Talmud.

Jews: on the Chinese Minds
Who would think that Chinese professors would be interested in Judaism? Professor Kong Fan, director of the Institute, my host, is a specialist in Confucianism. He is also a seventy-fourth generation descendant of that venerable teacher and happy to hear of my admiration for the teachings of Confucius. Professor Zhuo Xinping, deputy director of the Institute and specialist in Christian Studies and Dai Kangshang, specialist in Islamic Studies, and several other scholars and graduate students contributed to the discussion in this seminar.

My essay in honor of the memory of my friend Alan Segal has been published

"Antiquity's Children: History and Theology in Three Surveys" in "Crossing Boundaries in Early Judaism and Christianity: Essays in Honor of Alan F. Segal" by Tzvee Zahavy

Through his publications on ancient Judaism and early Christianity Alan Segal has contributed immensely to clarifying ambiguities, unraveling complexities and recalling half-forgotten adversaries. His writing shows the way to cross many boundaries of thought and methodology. This characteristic of his research reflects the openness and ingenuousness of Alan himself, a direct and honest scholar and a treasured friend.

I here analyze a few aspects of one of Segal’s early books, Rebecca’s Children: Judaism and Christianity in the Roman World.  The book surveys how Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity took shape primarily during the formative age of Late Antiquity. Segal treats the Hellenistic roots of these religions, the social world of first century Israel, Jesus who is called a Jewish Revolutionary and Paul who is described as a Convert and Apostle. Segal moves on in the book to summarize the origins of rabbinic Judaism and discusses how the twin offspring of ancient Israel, the rabbinic and Christian communities went separate ways, as the matriarch Rebecca’s twin children, Jacob and Esau parted ways in the biblical account in Genesis. In comparing the theologies of these twins, Segal insists we, “… must attend to the real social matrix in which the religious thought existed.”

I compare here Segal’s Rebecca’s Children with two comparable books and I ask a few perennial and fundamental questions about religious scholars who write about their own religions. The two other introductory surveys of the Second Temple and Early Rabbinic Judaism by Jewish scholars are Shaye J.D. Cohen, From the Maccabees to the Mishnah, and Lawrence H. Schiffman, From Text to Tradition: A History of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism.