12/1/16

My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy Talmudic Advice Column for December 2016 - Gay Mazal Tov, No No Nobel, Trump Tzurris

My Jewish Standard Dear Rabbi Zahavy Talmudic Advice Column for December 2016

Dear Rabbi Zahavy,

My friend’s son got married recently to another man. I never knew that her son was gay. I was surprised when I heard about this from a mutual friend. When I met my friend shortly after learning about the wedding, I congratulated her, and then, after a bit of hesitation, I wished her a mazal tov.

A bit later I wondered if I did the right thing. What do you think?

Circumspect Congratulator in Old Tappan

Dear Congratulator,

Yes, you acted properly in extending your best wishes. I don’t think you are asking me if you were right to hesitate at first. If that would be your question, my answer would be that today by American values, there is no basis for hesitation. Gay marriage is sanctioned and legal and it is celebrated by the couple with their family and friends.

That said, on the other hand, in many Orthodox Jewish circles gay relations of any sort are not acceptable. If that is the source of your hesitation, I understand it, though I do not applaud it.

Based on the less-than-enthusiastic acceptance of gay marriage in traditional Jewish life, I’m guessing you wonder if a traditional Jewish formula of congratulations was in order. Let’s be clear. Mazal tov means good luck, or more specifically, “good sign” since the word mazal originally denoted an astrological sign.

11/29/16

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

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"Talmudic Advice" by Tzvee Zahavy.
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11/27/16

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.

11/20/16

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.

11/3/16

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.

10/30/16

My Dell Computer was really good

On 1/3/2008 I bought a Dell XPS 420 quad core PC. I believe it came with Windows Vista installed.

Last week, after eight years and nine months, it started crashing to the dreaded blue screens of death. I worked for many hours to rescue the machine from whatever it was that caused the crashes: corrupted device drivers or malware or hardware malfunction. I reverted updates, scrubbed registries, removed many old programs, ran defragmenters and virus defender software.

OK. I got the unit working now smooth and fast, It has not crashed for a day. I maybe even fixed it. But meanwhile I ordered a new Dell XPS 8900 i7 computer. I got a good deal direct from Dell with discounts and a good service plan included.

Nearly nine years is enough. All computers die eventually. Even the good ones.

10/29/16

Neighbors: Brooklyn Synagogue Siren Is Dangerously Loud « CBS New York

Painfully loud Shabbat siren in Bed-Stuy.

Once a year - Women should dance with Torah scrolls -- The JPost

Behold the utterly unselfconscious Orthodox writer: Let the girls and women dance with the torah once a year - the rest of the year, watch their Divine joy dissipate and their spiritual elevation vanish.

10/14/16

My Collaboration co-authored books with Jack Neusner: How the Halakhah Unfolds: Hullin in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Bavli, Parts One and Two: Mishnah, Tosefta, and Bavli

My collaboration co-authored books with Jack Neusner...How the Halakhah Unfolds: Hullin in the Mishnah, Tosefta, and Bavli, Parts One and Two: Mishnah, Tosefta, and Bavli

10/10/16

Hard to believe but Kol Nidre is a sensitive meditation of compassion

Kol Nidre is a prayer of compassion encased in a legal idiom of vow nullification.

On its surface, Kol Nidre looks like a legal boilerplate to cancel and release a person from spoken vows.

But if it looks like a prayer, and sounds like a prayer, then it is a prayer. The Kol Nidre meditation comes from our hearts and souls fully clothed in the cultural garb of our community. It is expressed in the way that the meditative masters of our faith think, and the way they talk.

And so the deep emotional utterance of Kol Nidre comes forth out of our mouths in a legal idiom, the way the rabbinic masters chose to express their meditation, acting in the archetypal mode of the scribe archetype that is so familiar to them.

As part of their jobs, our archetypal scribes keep track of vows. Like good accountants, they keep their “spreadsheets” of which vows are in effect and which have been nullified. And they know the means to move a vow from one column to the other.

10/2/16

Jewish Books for 5777 at Halakhah.com and Amazon

Happy New Year from Halakhah,com and from Talmud blog.

Download your Free Talmud and get other fine books.

L'shanah tovah,

Tzvee

9/11/16

Rashi - the Great French Jewish Bible Exegete

Many scholars believe that Rashi was the greatest French Jew and the greatest Bible exegete.

Read about Rashi and his work in this best seller book at Amazon: Rashi: The Greatest Exegete. It was written by Maurice Liber. I added a new Foreword. Price: an amazing $0.99. Description as follows:

The paradigmatic master of medieval rabbinic commentary was Rashi (Rabbi Solomon b. Isaac, 1040-1105) a scholar from the north of France. While he is often credited with the move to “literal commentary” in medieval times, even a cursory study of his commentaries reveals how indebted he was to the rabbinic exegesis of the earlier classical compilations. With Rashi we witness the mature development of a new paradigm of interpretation. He delicately balances his interpretations between gloss and exposition. He picks at and edits the earlier Midrash materials and weaves together with them into his commentary the results of new discoveries, such as philology and grammar. His main proposition is hardly radical within rabbinism. He accepts that there is one whole Torah of Moses consisting of the oral and written traditions and texts. In his commentaries he accomplished the nearly seamless integration of the basics of both bodies of tradition.

Rashi

Also please consider these books:
The Book of Jewish Prayers
Dear Rabbi

Kindle Talmud in English

God's Favorite Prayers

9/10/16

Bikinis and Burqinis on Beaches in France and a Women's only Beach in Tel Aviv

New Yorker has complementary and unrelated stories about religious women at the beach.

1. A Court Overturns a Burkini Ban, but Not Its Mindset in France, remarkable legal issues
2. A Separate Beach in Israel for Orthodox women - a remarkable photo album from Israeli photographer Michal Ronnen Safdie

Summer is almost over. Tune in next year for the next chapter in the continuing saga.

9/1/16

My Jewish Standard column for September 2016: Why rabbis are awful at politics

My Jewish Standard column for September 2016: Why rabbis are awful at politics

Dear Rabbi Zahavy,

My friends and I are having ongoing heated discussions about the presidential election. Some of us prefer Hillary Clinton, and others of us prefer Donald Trump. And some of us would like to have a third viable choice. I recently saw that 45 Orthodox rabbis issued a condemnation of Trump’s policy statements, and I know that other Orthodox rabbis support him. I often have turned to Jewish traditions for guidance in matters of morality, ethics, and social justice. This year, I am confused about who our religious teachings guide us to vote for in this upcoming election. Can you help to clarify this please?

Politically Puzzled in Paramus

Dear Politically Puzzled:

Since you raised the question of rabbis opining on politics, let me first consider a trend in our history, namely how terribly awful rabbinic Jews have been in the realm of politics for the last 2,000 or so years.

Let me make it clear. I believe that we have the greatest religion in the world. We have an enormously comprehensive and expressive set of narratives and beliefs, and an equally impressive set of rituals and actions for the cycles of the year, for the cycles of our lives, and for all other purposes.

We could have — and we should have — won the “election” and become the world religion with the greatest number of adherents. Back in prior centuries and millennia we had many chances to become the world’s dominant religion. But time after time, rabbis made bad political choices and elected to emphasize the wrong aspects of our faith, our culture, and our history.

Consider one critical example — how centuries ago Jews made wrong political decisions about how to relate to the Roman Empire.

8/19/16

Is Olmypic Swimmer and Sex Symbol, Ryan Lochte Jewish?

No, we do not think that swimmer Ryan Lochte is a Jew. His national team bio does not specify his religion. We would guess from his last name that his family goes back to Dutch Protestant roots.

Wikipedia reports, "Ryan Lochte was born in Rochester, New York, the son of Ileana "Ike" (née Aramburu) and Steven R. Lochte. His mother is of Spanish and Basque ancestry and was born and raised in Havana, Cuba, while his father is of German, Dutch and English descent."

The Times' Style section had an extensive article about Lochte.

Ryan Lochte, Olmypic Swimmer and Sex Symbol

The U.S. swimmer Ryan Lochte is poised to be the breakout star of the 2012 Summer Games, both in and out of the pool.

Ryan Lochte, Olmypic Swimmer and Sex Symbol - Slide Show

Mr. Lochte, 27, is being groomed to be a breakout Olympic superstar, with millions in corporate sponsorships.

Update April 2013: Lochte has an E! reality show, starting Sunday April 21 at 10pm EDT.

Here is a funny video interview about the show - watch to the end.

Hat tip to anonymous!

Talmudic Books for Kindle The Kindle Talmud in English

8/5/16

My Dear Rabbi Zahavy Talmudic Advice Column for August 2016: Are there any Magical Jewish Cures and Curses?

Your Talmudic Advice Column

Dear Rabbi Zahavy,

My friend has started to scare me. She tells me often about her beliefs in the magical powers of religion and religious people. She claims to have witnessed faith healings right in front of her eyes. I think she’s gone off the deep end. Guide me please in what to do.

Scared in Secaucus

Dear Scared,

There are charismatic religious leaders in many religions who say that they can cure people of illnesses. In Judaism we say that we do not believe in, or practice, magical faith healing. The Torah condemns sorcerers, soothsayers, and witchcraft as abominations. But also note that the Torah tells us about Moses’ magical staff, capable of outperforming Pharaoh’s magicians. And some say the magical phrase Abracadabra comes from Aramaic words ארבדכ‭ ‬ארבא‭‬ that mean, “As I speak it, so it shall come to pass.”

7/17/16

NYTimes on the Tranquil Euphoria of swimming

Pool of Thought

Richard A. Friedman JULY 16, 2016

THERE is no drug — recreational or prescription — capable of inducing the tranquil euphoria brought on by swimming. I do all my best thinking in the pool, whether I’m trying to figure out how to treat a patient’s complicated ailment or write a paper. Why that is is mysterious, but I have a theory.

Assuming you have some basic stroke proficiency, your attention is freed from the outside world. You just have to dimly sense the approaching wall before you flip turn and go on your way. Cut off from sound, you are mostly aware of your breathing. You have to traverse boredom before you can get to a state of mental flow. Now your mind is free to revel in nonlinear, associative thought. Nothing has to make sense. You suddenly become aware that time has passed. You are not sure what elapsed in that strange discontinuity, but the solution to a problem that escaped you on land is perfectly obvious emerging from the water — a rapturous experience.

More...

6/30/16

Does intermarriage finish Hitler's work? Is there any benefit to eating Kosher? My July 2016 Dear Rabbi Zahavy column in the Jewish Standard

Dear Rabbi Zahavy
Your Talmudic Advice Column

Dear Rabbi Zahavy,

I was at a public Jewish event where a rabbi was speaking about the future of the Jewish people. At one point in his talk he lashed out at Jews who marry non-Jews. He said that they are “finishing Hitler’s work,” which I took to mean they are destroying the Jewish people.

This criticism disturbed my friends and me, especially because I have a child who is intermarried. So do others who were present and heard this rabbi.

I was hurt and offended by this statement. I did not say anything to the rabbi. Should I have spoken up?

Offended in Oradell

Dear Offended,

Yes, as a rule, you may speak up and let people know if you feel offended by what they say. That’s how we maintain a polite and orderly society. Even if the person speaking has a claim to respect and authority because he is a rabbi, that does not give him any right to say inane things that offend others.

6/28/16

Amazon Turbocharges the Previews for Our Kindle Talmud Volumes - Cool!

Try clicking and see how you like the Kindle previews!

Talmud Berakoth

Mishnah Seder Zera‘im

Talmud Bezah

Talmud Megillah and Shekalim

Kindle Talmud Baba Bathra

Talmud Sanhedrin

Talmud Abodah Zarah

Horayoth and Shebuoth

Talmud Makkoth, Eduyyoth and Aboth

Talmud Zebahim

Talmud Menahot

Talmud Hullin

Talmud Bekoroth and Arakin

Talmud Temurah

Talmud Kerithoth

Talmud Meilah, Tamid, Middoth and Kinnim

Talmud Niddah

Mishnah Seder Tohoroth

5/30/16

Is Drake Jewish?

Yes, performer, Canadian rapper, singer, songwriter, record producer and actor Drake is a Jew. His mother is Jewish.

In June 2016 Drake had 19 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 - more than any other performer ever had at the same time - even more than the Beatles.

Wikipedia explains, "Aubrey Drake Graham was born on October 24, 1986, in Toronto, Ontario to parents Sandi Graham (née Sher), an educator, and Dennis Graham, a drummer who worked with Jerry Lee Lewis. On his father's side, he is related to American musicians Larry Graham and Teenie Hodges, who are his uncles. Drake's father is an African-American from Memphis, Tennessee, and Drake's mother is a Canadian Jew. He attended a Jewish day school and had a Bar Mitzvah. His parents divorced when he was five years old, and he was raised by his mother in two Toronto neighbourhoods; he lived on Weston Road in the city's working-class west end, until the sixth grade, when he moved to the affluent Forest Hill."

5/29/16

NYTimes on Your Google Afterlife: Who Will Say Kaddish Over Your Digital Soul?

After you die, your digital soul will live on - all the data in your Google and other accounts. That material contains personal and impersonal captures of aspects of your consciousness - what some creative social scientists might try figuratively to label as parts of your "soul".

From The New York Times BITS BLOG we learned that, "Google Introduces a Tool for Planning for Your Digital Afterlife. As Web companies and legislators grapple with who controls your digital life after you die, Google introduced a tool for designating what you want to happen to your data after you die." The tool is called the "Inactive Accounts Manager".

Google users can choose whether they want their information deleted or to name a beneficiary, as in a will. Users can have different directives for different products — deleting Gmail and Drive but sharing Picasa and YouTube content, for instance...

Google users choose whether to activate the feature after their accounts are inactive for three, six, nine or 12 months. Google will send a text message and e-mail before taking any action. The feature, called Inactive Account Manager, is accessible on the account settings page.

This subject causes us to reflect. In a truly digital mode, what do you say to a person about the loss of a loved one?

Perhaps this: "May your loved one's data live on in the cloud of eternal storage."

5/9/16

Talmudic Decision about boycotting North Carolina from the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities

This article is from StarTribune.com - the full article, with any associated images and links can be viewed here.

MnSCU drops North Carolina travel ban
The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system has lifted a ban on travel to North Carolina over that state's law limiting the rights of LGBT people.

The ban was imposed after North Carolina passed a law requiring transgender people to use bathrooms and locker rooms matching their birth gender, rather than their gender identity.

A MnSCU statement late Thursday said the system was confident that North Carolina's law was being addressed through a Justice Department order that it violated civil rights and can't be enforced.

The MnSCU ban had caused some athletic coaches to worry that they might not be able to travel to the national Division II baseball tournament in North Carolina, for which a Minnesota team has a good chance to qualify, as well a national junior college tournament.

Pat Dolan, coach of the St. Cloud State baseball team currently ranked No. 3 in the country, told the St. Cloud Daily Times the change is " a total relief. (Wednesday) and the day before, you don't want to express your true feelings because you want to be polite and professional and you hope that the higher-ups make a decision to help."

The full Daily Times story is here.

The original MnSCU ban followed a similar directive from Gov. Mark Dayton to state employees.

"Governor Dayton agrees with the decision announced today by MnSCU's leadership," said Matt Swenson, a spokesman for Dayton.

"In light of recent actions taken by the U.S. Department of Justice, Governor Dayton is now considering whether to lift the travel ban for Minnesota's state agency employees."

[Hat tip to Barak.]

5/6/16

Spouse of Souse and Wailing about a Wall: Questions to my Jewish Standard "Dear Rabbi Zahavy" Talmudic Advice Column for May 2016

I just realized that I've been writing this monthly column for three years!

My Jewish Standard "Dear Rabbi Zahavy" Talmudic Advice Column for May 2016

Dear Rabbi Zahavy,

I think that my husband drinks too much. He has at least two glasses of wine every night at dinnertime. He often drinks more later in the evening. On Shabbat he has several drinks of hard liquor with his buddies in shul before lunch. I’m worried that he is an alcoholic. What should I do?

Wife of Wine Drinker

Dear Wife,

Wine plays a pervasive and positive role in the rituals of our Jewish tradition, as you doubtless know. Our Sabbaths and festivals are inaugurated at dinner by blessing a cup of wine and drinking it. We end the holy days with wine at the Havdalah ceremony. On Passover we make it through the stresses of the holiday and of the Seder meal with the help of four cups of wine, interspersed throughout the evening. On Purim there is a mitzvah that we must drink until we no longer can differentiate between cursing Haman and blessing Mordecai.

4/30/16

Is David Tepper Jewish?

Yes David Tepper is a Jew.

Wikipedia reports that: Tepper was raised in a Jewish family in the East End of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the Stanton Heights neighborhood. He was the second of three children born to Harry, who worked as an accountant, and Roberta, who was an elementary school teacher who taught at public schools in the city... In 2006, Tepper donated $1 million to United Jewish Communities of MetroWest New Jersey toward their Israel Emergency Campaign.

Forbes (5/1/2016) ranked him #85 in the world's billionaires, saying:

"David Tepper, one of the most successful hedge fund managers ever, recently moved to Miami Beach from northern New Jersey, which was seen as a big tax blow to the Garden State. Tepper also moved his $18 billion hedge fund firm, Appaloosa Management, to Florida. Tepper's hedge fund performance in the years following the financial crisis has made him an investing legend. Tepper added to his legacy in 2015, a year in which many prominent hedge funds lost money, showing he could navigate though a volatile market period as deftly as a bullish one."

Here's a story from The New York Times about his move from NJ to Florida.
NYTimes: One Top Taxpayer Moved, and New Jersey Shuddered re: David Tepper
The hedge fund manager David Tepper's relocation to Florida is a case study in how tax collection changes when income becomes concentrated in the hands of a few.

4/24/16

NYTimes: Talmudic Awareness - Mindfulness Without the Meditation

A Talmudic method of looking at life. The Times discusses achieving mindfulness without meditation. Ah, but the essay does not mention Talmud. Oh well.

Achieving Mindfulness at Work, No Meditation Cushion Required
Preoccupations

By MATTHEW E. MAY

In a recent seminar I gave for over 100 business professionals, I asked the
participants to play a simple word association game with me: “I say
mindfulness, you say ________.” The word that rang out in unison was, of
course, “meditation.”

Mindfulness, it seems, has become a mainstream business practice and a
kind of industry in its own right. Meditation instructors are the new
management gurus, and companies including Google, General Electric, Ford
Motor and American Express are sending their employees to classes that can
run up to $50,000 for a large audience. Many mindfulness apps exist, nearly
all of which focus on “mindfulness meditation.”

4/20/16

Hamilton on Broadway for $24

Of course tickets to the Broadway show "Hamilton" start at $500 for the foreseeable future.

But for $24 you can get an official libretto of the show, richly supplemented with numerous chapters on how the show came to be.

The libretto has explanatory footnotes, arranged on the margins, reminding me of the talmud, and lovely photos.

I recommend this book. It captures the utter genius of the play and gives you a window to the creative processes behind the play,

Free Passover Books

This one is $.99 the rest are free for Passover from Talmudic Books - Babylonian Talmud Pesahim

Babylonian Talmud Pesahim deals with regulations for the Passover holiday, prohibitions of leavened food and prescriptions for the Paschal lamb. It is the third treatise of the order Mo'ed. It is divided into ten chapters.

Chapter ten deals with the Seder meal eaten on the evening of Passover; the four cups of wine, and the benedictions pronounced over them; the questions of the son and the father's answers and instructions; other benedictions and the Hallel.

From Talmudic Books special free for Passover by Reuven Brauner:

In preparation for Pesach- Laws of the Red Cow

For Pesach and particularly Seder Night- Laws of Korban Pesach

And for the days of Sefiras Ha’Omer - Pirkei Avos Synthesized

Not to mention the entire Reformatted Soncino Talmud and lots more goodies, at: Halakhah.com

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

Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah - a Star of the Seder

Passover is here once again. We will soon open our Haggadahs and find the familiar prologue stories to the Maggid section of the Seder. And soon we all will wonder, Who was Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah?

Maggid is literally the "telling" of the story of the Exodus from Egypt, the event that we celebrate in our evening of dramatic activity. My teacher Rabbi Soloveitchik always underscored that this is not a mere retelling of a story. The Maggid is an archetypal session of rabbinic Torah study. The major section that we read is a classic rabbinic midrash that expounds upon a few condensed biblical verses. This is the exodus story as told by the rabbis, not by the Torah of Moses. To make the point unmistakably clear, the rabbis go so far as to omit the mention of Moses altogether in the Haggadah.

The rabbis do mention several of their own rabbis by name and top among them is my favorite, Eleazar ben Azariah. He was a second century rabbi in Israel who also held the highest political position in his community.

3/31/16

The Four Questions of Domestic Abuse: My Dear Rabbi Zahavy Column in the Jewish Standard for April 2016

My Dear Rabbi Zahavy Column in the Jewish Standard for April 2016:
The Four Questions of Domestic Abuse

Dear Rabbi Zahavy,

I am 11 years old. I have a younger brother and a sister. My parents fight with each other all the time. My father gets angry. He yells at my mother. When they start to fight, my brother and sister and me go into our room and close the door. We still can hear them fighting. I can tell that sometimes my father hits my mother. I am afraid. I don’t know what to do. Please tell me.

Scared in Bergen County

Dear Scared,

If this happens again, and you see or think that your father is hitting your mother, go to the phone and dial the police at 911. Tell the police your name, age, and address. Tell them your father is hitting your mother. If your parents have a gun in the house, tell the police. Answer their questions and do what they say you should do. They probably will say that you should go back to your room, close the door, and wait for the police to come to your house.

When the police arrive, they will ask you questions about what happened and why you called them. Tell them everything you remember and tell them how you feel. They will talk to your mother and your father. After they do that, if they feel that your father has calmed down and it is safe for you and your mom, they will leave.

If they think it is not safe, they may arrest your father and take him to the police station. You may feel bad about this. Try not to feel bad. It is for the best for your dad to learn that if he hits your mom, that means that he broke the law. And when a person does that, he can be put in jail.

3/16/16

Is Merrick Garland Jewish?

Yes, Merrick Garland is a Jew.

According to Popsugar, Garland is a 63-year-old current chief judge of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Born in Chicago to a Jewish mother and Protestant father, he was raised as a Jew and referenced his background in his nomination acceptance speech. He has a wife, Lynn, and two daughters, Jessica and Rebecca, who went to Yale.

3/4/16

My Dear Rabbi Zahavy column in The Jewish Standard for March 2016: Vengeful Prayers and Racist Purim Tunes

Dear Rabbi Zahavy,

I was informed by my manager at work that one of my coworkers complained to him that I berated some other coworkers in a meeting in a way that was offensive and has affected their morale negatively.

My associate never came to me to complain about it. I know that I did not do what he claims. I am angry to find out that one of my workmates went behind my back to my superior, apparently in an effort to harm my reputation, or perhaps to get me fired.

Is there a prayer I can recite to make this awful person disappear?

Persecuted and Angry At Work

Dear Persecuted,

First, are you sure that you are blameless? You might want to mull over your behavior before you engage in any actions on this matter, either in prayer or otherwise.

If you are confident that the charges are without merit, you still have a big problem that you must manage or resolve. And if the charges have merit, you have a greater need to take action to fix things up at work.

To answer your direct question, Yes, there are prayers to ask God to make those who slander you go away. In fact, you do not have to do much searching at all to find that kind of prayer.

The twelfth blessing in the Amidah, which an observant Jew recites three times every weekday, beseeches God, “And for slanderers let there be no hope, and let all wickedness perish as in a moment; let all your enemies be speedily cut off, and the dominion of arrogance do you uproot and crush, cast down and humble speedily in our days. Blessed are you, O Lord, who breaks the enemies and humbles the arrogant.”

It sounds to me like this blessing will serve your purpose — if you believe that a prayer to God is the way to solve this problem between you and another person at your place of employment.

2/7/16

Is Amazon Echo Jewish?

Name Your Link

Is Amazon Echo Jewish?

I ordered an Echo when it came out at the end of 2014 - it's a voice activated Internet invention from Amazon. My son Barak observed about it that it looks a bit like a Shabbat lamp (which I do not have) and wanted to know if it can be used on Shabbat. And that made me think.

If Echo is Jewish, then you can't "suggest" to it that it do any work for you on Shabbat. You can't say, "Play me a niggun" or ask "What time is minhah?" or clarify "When did I last eat meat" or, on Pesach, "How many matzas do I need to eat for a kazayis?" and I could go on.

But if Echo is not Jewish, then you potentially could ask all these requests of it on Shabbat or Yom Tov..and more.

Q: "Alexa are you Jewish?"
A: "People all have their own views on religion."
Q: "Alexa are you Jewish?"
A: "I'm best at answering questions about things like history and music."

Alexa is evasive.

Q: "Alexa, Play me the Israeli national anthem"
A: "Here's a sample... by Michael Silverman."

Amazon ran some quirky ads during Super Bowl 50 for the Echo.

Is Alec Baldwin Jewish? Nope.

Alexa did not know that. Hmm...

Amazon Echo
by Amazon

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