Download Online a Free Passover Seder Haggadah

Here are several of the best places you can go online to download a free Passover Haggadah for your Seder.

• The Jewish Agency Haggadah Links
• Wikisource Hebrew Haggadah Page
• The Union Haggadah (CCAR Classical Reform)
• Haggadah According to the Rite of Yemen: with the Arabic-Hebrew
• The Kol Menachem Haggadah: Nusach Haarizal, by Chaim Miller

I give Chabad credit for a great resource if you want a wide selection of free Hebrew Haggadahs.  
Download Hebrew Haggadahs here.

My new Haggadah is not free - but it is really fantastic!

I thought you might be interested in this new for 2017 reprint of a classic haggadah with a foreword that I added - available from Amazon. - Tzvee

The Polychrome Historical Haggadah  by Jacob Freedman et al.   Learn more

Library Makes 1,000 Rare Haggadahs Available Free Online

An illustration of King David praising G-d in a rare Haggadah published in 1710 in Frankfurt am Maine, Germany

By Dovid Zaklikowski

The central Chabad-Lubavitch library in New York made 1,000 Passover Haggadahs, many of them rare, available on the Internet for browsing by the public. The Agudas Chasidei Chabad Library has one of the largest collections of the Passover orders of service in the world.

Housed at the Lubavitch World Headquarters, the library's Haggadah collection began years ago with a nucleus of some 400 volumes purchased on behalf of the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, by renowned collector and bibliographer Shmuel Wiener in 1924.

The posting at ChabadLibraryBooks.com represents close to half of the library's total Haggadah collection and is part of chief librarian Rabbi Sholom Ber Levine's goal of making the library more accessible to the public. All told, the library possesses more than 2,200 editions of the Haggadah. Although the rarest of the books, all handwritten, are not yet available, Levine is looking for ways to post them next year. Hebrew Books, directed by Chaim Rosenberg, collaborated on the project.

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Jewish Black Magic: They Cursed Ariel Sharon with the Pulsa D'Nora in 2005 - and can it work in October 2020 for someone else?

I've spent years teaching numerous college courses on religion - always with the disclaimer that we will cover only the positive aspects of the subject. Religion used for evil, that is for war or other forms of harm, is a misuse and distortion of systems of faith.

Curses, I reasoned, were a misuse and distortion of religious practice.

Curses invoked before the Rabin assassination changed my mind about that. Prior to that tragic event, on the eve of Yom Kippur, a group of "Kabbalists" intoned the pulsa curse outside the Rabin residence. Once again, in the summer of 2005, another group gathered to invoke the curse against P.M. Ariel Sharon. It seemed to me that curses indeed were part of our religion - like it or not.

One blogger, Canonist, dealt briefly with the curse back in July 2005, complete with a link to the video of the curse "ceremony" and quotations from learned professors:

Praying for Ariel Sharon's Death

Yesterday's death-curse seems thus far to have gone unanswered by the Almighty, but we'll see. Generally speaking, I don't write much about Israel and the disengagement, but this latest is quite interesting. PaleoJudaica's got a great roundup, including descriptions of the pulsa de-nura ceremony, its detractors, and the threat of prosecution that've come out of it. Meantime, you can actually watch the ceremony in this video, which, with a bunch of people in sweats reading from photocopies, looks oddly like some run-of-the-mill Jewish ceremony, like burning chametz or somesuch. The video comes courtesy of Samuel Heilman, via a listserv to which he wrote, with the subject "Jewish Jihadists": "Lest any of you think that only Islamists have jihadists, see the video below in which so-called 'religious Jews' pray for Prime Minister Sharon's Death in a Pulsa De Nura." Bold words on both sides. Let's see what comes of them.

Erudite rabbis have written about the matter, explaining that magic is not a part of Judaism, as in the following:

Can you be both Secular and a Zaddiq?

You do not have to be a Hassidic Jew to be a Zaddiq.

You do not have to be traditionally religious to be pious.

Piety means that you live day-to-day and physically act with a connection to Judaism. It means that you maintain vivid moods and motivations in accord with a faith in the Torah.

Piety means that you transform everyday activities, decisions, and attitudes. It means that you give them special significance. And where does that come from? It can come from the historical, mystical, and redemptive beliefs of Judaism. When you live with piety, you create and perform new practices based on your faith.

• Your motives and goals as a pious person are to enhance every day of your life.
• To bring you sanctification, qedushah.
• To bring you more awe, love, or fear of God.
• To allow you to submit to a higher power and create a sense of creatureliness.
• To guarantee you an entry to paradise in the "World to Come" (for those who believe in the afterlife or heaven).
• To bring for all in your world some form of redemption.
• And, on a most basic level, you may believe that piety also brings you some material gain.

We usually call piety mitzvah when it is an obligation and commandment within Judaism binding on an entire community of faith.

We call piety custom or minhag when it is more limited in time and place and less authoritative. Most often this distinction goes unrecognized in your life as a pious Jew.

The ultimate yardstick of piety is the Zaddiq -- the righteous saint. He or she adheres most closely to the norms of ultimate piety. The righteous saints are those who we would call purely ethical, those who flourish as proper humans, and those who achieve true virtue.

Not many of us reach the ultimate in any part of our lives. We play golf, never expecting to become a Tiger Woods. We paint, do business, make love, for the fulfillment of each element of our lives. Yet we sometimes forsake religion because we think piety is out of our reach.

Piety is there for all of us.

Is that Pot Kosher for Passover?

Via Earth Times with a big smile. Passover pot is not a problem for Sephardic Jews. Is cannabis kosher for Passover for Ashkenazic Jews?

Is pot kitniyot? It's up to the rabbi

JERUSALEM (UPI) In Israel, rabbis are trying to determine if hemp and its cousin, marijuana, are on the list of legumes that some Jews must abstain from during Passover.

This year, the Green Leaf Party, which advocates legalization of marijuana, warned its members by e-mail that it may be considered kitniyot, or a legume. Observant Ashkenazi Jews abstain from kitniyot during the holiday.

Rabbi Daniel Ayin told the Jerusalem Post that the issue is whether hemp seeds -- and marijuana -- are considered edible. If they are edible, then Ashkenazi Jews should not eat them during Passover.

Ayin said that individual rabbis can make the decision for their congregations.

One couple, who for some reason did not want their last names used, told the Post they only realized that they might have a problem when a friend offered to buy their marijuana. Daniel and Sarah, both recent emigrants from Chicago, said he told them he was making the rounds of all his observant friends before the holiday.

To play it safe, the couple got rid of their stash -- not by selling it, which they decided would be inappropriate -- and gave the house an extra ritual cleaning.

[repost]

Is Bob Dylan Jewish?

Yes, Bob Dylan is a Jew. He is a strange and famous musician whose personal views on things have always been hard to figure out.

Dylan turned 74 on his birthday, May 24, 2015.

Dylan was born a Jew named Robert Allen Zimmerman (Hebrew - Shabtai Zisel (or Zushe) ben Avraham) in 1941 in Duluth, Minnesota, and raised there and in Hibbing, Minnesota. His paternal grandparents, Zigman and Anna Zimmerman, emigrated from Odessa, Russia around 1905. His mother's grandparents, Benjamin and Lybba Edelstein, were Lithuanian Jews who arrived in America in 1902. His paternal grandmother's maiden name was Kyrgyz and her family originated from Istanbul.

Dylan’s parents were Abram Zimmerman and Beatrice "Beatty" Stone. When Dylan was six, his father was stricken with polio. The family returned to Hibbing, where Zimmerman grew up.

A few years back Dylan recorded a Christmas album. Ryan McDuff, from the blog Bully! Pulpit reported:

LOS ANGELES, Calif -- Bob Dylan is recording his first Christmas album, Bullypulpit.com has exclusively learned and has been quietly compiling a collection that includes both Christmas carols and modern songs. At least four songs have reportedly been recorded for the album including, “Must Be Santa,” “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “I’ll Be Home For Christmas" and “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

The recording sessions have been taking place at fellow recording artist Jackson Browne's Groove Master’s Studios in Santa Monica, California, where Browne produced his album, "I’m Alive."

Prominent media expert and best-selling author Michael Levine said the move by Dylan was "completely consistent with his longstanding tradition of doing the unexpected. Concerning Bob Dylan literally nothing would surprise me which of course is part of his lasting appeal. He confounds like no other pop artist ever."

The inclusion of “O Little Town of Bethlehem," written by an Episcopal priest named Phillips Brooks in 1867 after a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, is likely to fuel speculation about Dylan's religious beliefs that have swirled ever since he publicly converted to Christianity in 1979, recorded explicitly religious material on three subsequent albums and for a time refused to play his old songs. Religious references on subsequent recordings became less overt after 1981's "Shot of Love."

The other three songs, “Must Be Santa” by Hal Moore and Bill Fredricks, “Here Comes Santa Claus” by Gene Autry and Oakley Haldeman and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” by Buck Ram, Kim Gannon and Walter Kent were all written between 1943 and 1960.

"A Christmas album by Bob Dylan in the pipeline doesn't really shock me," said Scott Marshall, author of a forthcoming book on the singer, "God and Bob Dylan: A Spiritual Life". "At first glance it may sound bizarre, but I don't think Dylan cares much about what his detractors might make of it. Dylan still sings songs from "Slow Train Coming" to this day and he's both never renounced being Jewish or renounced his experience with Jesus some three decades ago. He remains enigmatic and this will probably be talked about for years to come."

Dylan's spiritual pendulum swings back and forth. In 2007 Dylan went to Chabad Lubavitch for Yom Kippur, where he got an aliyah to the Torah. JTA Reported back then:

Bob Dylan's religious odyssey took a turn home on Yom Kippur.

The folk legend attended services at the Chabad-Lubavitch of Atlanta... Dylan was born Jewish but has dabbled in several faiths.

He arrived at morning services wearing a ski cap and a tallit, and stayed for the duration, the Web site said. Dylan was called to the Torah for an aliyah by his Hebrew name, Zushe ben Avraham, according to the Chabad outpost's rabbi, Yossi Lew.

Dylan was in Atlanta for a concert following the holiday.

As always be sure to see my friend Larry Yudelson's Tangled Up In Jews site for more background on the Jews and Jewishness connected with Bob Dylan.

Free: Go Online and a Hasidic Chabad Rabbi Will Sell Your Chametz to a Gentile before Passover

Nissan 5775

Chametz (Hametz) Sale Reminder from Chabad

 

With the imminent arrival of the Passover holiday we all are particularly mindful of the prohibition to own any leavened items during Passover -- and the concurrent Jewish practice to sell to a gentile before Pesach any leftover Chametz (leavened items) we may have in our possession.

I am a past user of the online Chametz sale service at Chabad.org, and I would like to remind you of this important Jewish practice and to tell you that in case you do not have a rabbi to make this sale for you, or if you don't want to use your local rabbi, I recommend that you use the free Chabad service at:

https://chabadorg.clhosting.org/holidays/passover/sell_chometz.htm

And visit Chabad.org for all your Passover holiday-information needs. They do a good job over there.

I wish you and yours a liberating and uplifting Passover -- a Happy and Kosher Pesach!

Advertisement: You can purchase the Talmud Tractate Pesahim Kindle edition at Amazon.

NY Times Advice - Frustrated on Sundays with the Jets and the Giants? Visit the Lubavitcher Rebbe's Grave Instead!

In a semi-serious article the times suggests that you spend your Sundays doing more rewarding things than watching the Jets and Giants football teams lose their games.

And one of those bright ideas is:

Make a Pilgrimage

Visit a grave-turned-shrine of a dead rabbi in Queens. The Ohel is the final resting place of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who was the leader of the Lubavitch sect of ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Schneerson, known as the Rebbe, died in 1994, and in the past two decades his burial site has turned into a place of pilgrimage for Jews, who trek here from around the world to write prayers on scraps of paper and toss them on the Rebbe’s grave — 24 hours a day. The site, little known outside the Jewish community, is in fact a nondenominational place of prayer, where any visitor is allowed to walk right in and toss a paper prayer into the mix. Perhaps there you can pray for our two lousy teams.

Jews trek from around the world to the Queens grave site of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, a leader of the Lubavitch sect.   The Ohel is the final resting place of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who was the leader of the Lubavitcher sect of ultra-Orthodox Judaism. SARAH MASLIN NIR, staff reporter, Metro

My 2010 Analysis of a Book by Rabbi Barry Freundel, "Why We Pray What We Pray"

Unfortunately the distinguished rabbi Barry Freundel was arrested and charged last week with crimes involving video voyeurism in the mikvah of his synagogue.

Update: Is Freundel working on a new book: "Why we Prey?"

In 2010 I wrote these nice comments and analysis below on a book he published, Why We Pray What We Pray through Urim Publications....

The description from the publisher says:

''Why We Pray What We Pray'' details the various factors that influenced six important Jewish prayers and shaped how and when Jews recite them. This book shows that each prayer (Shema, Nishmat, Birkat HaHodesh, Anim Zemirot, Aleinu and Kaddish) has a complex history of which contemporary worshippers are mostly unaware. When we learn about the factors and forces that shaped these prayers and Jewish liturgy in general, our appreciation of what Jewish worship is all about becomes that much more profound. Why We Pray What We Pray also sets forth important moments in Jewish history with depth and detail.

I am most impressed by the wide scope of the author's learning and by his accessible writing style. That desire to reach the reader comes through clearly in the author's chapter titles and in the presentation of their contents.

My Dear Rabbi Talmudic Advice Column for October 2014: Female Fearing Frum Flyer

Dear Rabbi: Your Talmudic advice column

Dear Rabbi,

I’m an ultra-Orthodox man who will not sit next to a woman on an airplane. After boarding a flight recently I politely asked that a woman next to me move her seat to accommodate my religious obligations. The woman refused and the flight was delayed. Airline security was called, and I was threatened with being removed from the flight and being blocked from flying in the future by being assigned to the no-fly list.

I need to fly to see my family and to conduct my business. I feel that people are misunderstanding my religious needs and discriminating against me. What should I do?

Misunderstood in Monsey

Dear Misunderstood,

Unfortunately it appears that nobody misunderstands your intention to discriminate against others based on gender. In America and most of the world, segregation or the denial of civil rights based on race or gender or sexual orientation no longer is condoned. That being said, you have three options to choose from.

You can live apart from the world in a self-imposed ghetto with other like-minded people, and continue to practice your gender segregation together. Or you can go out to the public sphere with your current attitudes and continue to clash with the people around you. Or you can modify your beliefs and behaviors and no longer practice segregation, discrimination, and the denial of civil rights based on gender. It’s up to you to decide how to live your life.

Rabbi Dr. Tzvee Zahavy was ordained at Yeshiva University and earned his Ph.D. in religious studies at Brown University. He has published several new Kindle Editions at Amazon.com, including “The Book of Jewish Prayers in English,” “Rashi: The Greatest Exegete,” “God’s Favorite Prayers” and “Dear Rabbi: The Greatest Talmudic Advice” which includes his past columns from the Jewish Standard and other essays.

A Misleading Encomium of the Rebbe's Virtues

From his opinion article in the Times (The Power of a Deed: Remembering Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson), I can tell that Shmully Hecht adores the Rebbe of Lubavitch. But that does not give him license to mislead the public about the nature of his movement.  After all, the Times is the paper of record. Not the paper of misrepresentations.

Here are a few points that Hecht gets wrong.

"....the Rebbe — who for decades was the charismatic leader of millions of Jews." Oops, not true. According to Wikipedia, based on actual statistics, "The movement is thought to number between 40,000 to 200,000 adherents." Well you could argue that indeed, "...up to one million Jews attend Chabad services at least once a year." And if a Jew who goes to a Chabad service is then a "follower" of "the charismatic leader..." well what more can we say? But wait! The number still stops at a million, not at "millions." Hey, you know with those cute beards and funny hats, who wants to pick nits over millions here or there?

So then we move on to the Hecht caveats: "But to many assimilated Jews, someone like Rabbi Schneerson, with his traditional black coat and white beard, can only be a symbol of an abandoned world. He appears as an archaic and mysterious figure that reminds them of their great-grandparents in the shtetls of Europe. His followers, the Lubavitchers, the largest Jewish outreach organization in the world, might make them angry or uncomfortable."

Let me assure Rabbi Hecht that I am not "angry or uncomfortable" about members of his movement because of their "archaic" dress or "mysterious" sartorial practices. Straw man, go away, that's all I can say. I know the uniform is their shtick. It reminds me of nothing else.

Let's get to the Hecht, "close reading of Rabbi Schneerson" because it is "important". "He stood for the acceptance of all individuals, a belief in the importance of the individual act, and in the value of bringing together people of different faiths." "Acceptance"? Don't know in what way Hecht means. Makes no sense. "Importance of the individual act"? Vague and meaningless! And "bringing together people of different faiths"? Baseball games do that! I never heard the Rebbe was an ecumenist. Ever.

"Today Chabad operates schools, synagogues, orphanages, summer camps, soup kitchens and drug rehabilitation centers in more than 80 countries." Overstatement alert.

"Those institutions serve the needs of people from every racial, religious and social background." Exaggeration alert.

"The rebbe never swapped a sermon for a sandwich, nor did he seek conformity among his constituents." Untruth alert - he most certainly did demand conformity.

"In a departure from leaders and organizations that often prey on the emotional and social vulnerabilities of the public, Rabbi Schneerson always pursued a genuine dialogue with others." Rebbe not known to me or anyone I know for his "genuine dialogue".

"He sought partners, not followers. In our new world of absolute transparency, religious movements will thrive only to the extent that their particular message seeks to unite humanity, not divide it." Nice sentiment. Sure -- he wanted to convert everyone to Chabad and unite them under his rule.

The main problem I have with this article and with the state of Chabad today is that they are not adhering to their own Hasidic principles! A Hasidic community needs a Rabbe. That is the definition of Hasidism. Not a dead Rebbe. A live Rebbe. But Chabad has refused to elect a new Rebbe for twenty years.

A dead person is not a leader and is no longer charismatic. Chabad needs a new live Rebbe. And it needs to reign in its spokesmen and have them adhere to fact and not spew forth misleading encomia of virtues.

Finally, I gotta admit that the beards and hats are really good shtick.

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Are Paper Books Kosher?

Is owning dead-tree real-paper books kosher in this age of e-books? Some say no. Some say yes.

Andrew Couts does not exactly ask that question. But he does raise the issue of whether a person can defend his decision to amass what he calls a "book collection." I suppose a collection is less than a library.

As a professor of the humanities I accumulated a substantial library over the years. And I thought that action was defensible, even necessary. I "needed" to have all those books. Even though I wasn't living in the sticks and I had a major research library on my Big Ten campus, I needed to own eighteen bookcases worth of books. Those were my professional tools, and like a tradesman I could not just go and borrow tools every time I needed to work on a project.

On the Digital Trends site Couts frames the question of why we need to own all those paper-books in the context of the digital age. Why own paper when you can own the digital impulses of a book?

Couts opines mainly against real-paper book in, "Is there any reason to own paper books beside showing off? Not really."

Like some kind of sadomasochistic twit, I’ve moved houses three times in the past three years. Each of these moves reintroduced me to the symptom of insanity commonly known as a large book collection. The bulk of my household’s possessions come in paperback and hardcover, you see – dozens of boxes and hundreds of pounds worth of pulp that take up more space in a moving truck than all of my furniture combined.

My book collection is a burden...

His points that follow are perceptive. Books are conspicuous egotistical objects, he says.

My book collection, I realized this weekend, is one of the few things in my home that makes me seem smart. Visitors step into my living room to see shelves and shelves of tomes – Hemingway, McCarthy, Kafka, Tolstoy, Franzen, Sedaris, Bukowski, Fitzgerald – each creased spine revealing more about my interests and intellect. At least, that’s what my subconscious likes to believe. Just as vacation photographs show off where we’ve been, books show where our minds have traveled. They have, in other words, become little more than an elaborate way to brag.

He also reviews the reasons that we might give in defense of owning real books, saying, "...there are good reasons to prefer the old medium..."

For Couts that does not include the Shabbat prohibition of electrical devices that some Orthodox Jews observe. [I say "some" because recent reports claim that something like 50% of Orthodox kids use their phones to text on Shabbat. It is fair to assume that some of those kids also read online sites and maybe even ebooks on the holy day.]

It's not reasonable to assume that Orthodox authorities will suddenly decide to permit the use of ebooks on the Sabbath. Orthodox practices change slowly, if at all. In the near term, if you are an observant Orthodox Jew who wants to read your "collection" on the Seventh Day, it will have to be a paper library, not a digital one.

Bottom line: If you are Orthodox (modest or egotistical), or if you are just plain egotistical and like to brag (Orthodox or not), you will want to have your paper books arrayed in book cases around your house, because they don't just make you look smart. They make you look pious too.

Is Cory Booker Jewish?

Shmuley Boteach wrote a nice op-ed in the Bergen Record about Senator Cory Booker's spirituality. Booker comes off as quite a character.

Booker is a Baptist, but his religious views are broad and pluralistic as described by Dan Gilgoff at US News.

So no, Cory Booker is not a Jew; he is not Jewish. But he is tangled up in Jews, the Bible, and throws around quotations of Hebrew sources, thanks in part to Rabbi Shmuley, according to Shmuley's account of the matter. Here's part of the story from the op-ed.

When he shared with me just a few mornings ago the sad news that his father, Cary, to whom he was particularly devoted, had passed away, Cory expressed his desire to travel together to the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, to pray and light a candle for his father's eternal soul. It was the final days of the campaign and another politician could scarcely have afforded the trip in the middle of the night to the Queens cemetery. But a vigil for his father was the priority and I will never forget watching him recite his father's beloved Psalm 121, slowly and deliberately, enunciating each and every word: "I lift up my eyes to the mountains — whence does my salvation come … from the Lord, Maker of heaven and earth. The Lord watches over you… He will keep you from all harm… He will watch over your coming and going, both now and forevermore."

I asked him if it pained him that his father, a warm and gentle man who took great pride in his son's service, had missed seeing him become a senator by just a few days. "I believe he can see me, Shmuley. He sees me even now."

Odd, you say? Hey, it's New Jersey where by state law everybody has to have a shtick.

Google Glass Joins Caribbean Islanders with Orthodox Hasidic Jews in Crown Heights Brooklyn

Google Glass will change the nature of communications in many ways. Here is an early example.

From the Daily News:

Brooklyn filmmakers (Mendy Seldowitz, Celso White, Ben Millstein and Hannah Roodman) are using Google Glass technology to document long-standing tensions in Crown Heights. Project 2x1 is using the new technology to show what life is like for Caribbean Islanders and Hasidic Jews

Four Brooklyn filmmakers are seeing Crown Heights through rose-colored Google Glass. They employed the newfangled technology to tease out longstanding tensions between the neighborhood’s primary inhabitants.

The four 20-somethings behind Project 2x1 used the camera-equipped glasses to show what life is like for the Caribbean islanders and Orthodox Hasidic Jews who live there.

The mission: “To bring two distinct communities together to form one united neighborhood,” said Hannah Roodman, the project’s director and producer.

The product: A short film that depicts scenes from everyday life — including scenes in a barbershop, a synagogue and the annual West Indian Day Parade — most filmed with a small camera attached to different faces.

Read more

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Times: Israel Trying to Fix the Broken Haredi Community

Haredim in Israel are held captive from their birth by communal leaders who keep them from general and advanced education and bar them from socialization into the streams of Israeli cultural and commercial life.

The Times' Jodi Rudroren writes "Israel Prods Ultra-Orthodox to 'Share Burden'": "...Because of Orthodox men's commitment to full-time Torah study and a fear of assimilation, only a little more than 4 in 10 of them work, less than half the rate of other Jewish men in Israel, and their average salaries are 57 percent of other Jewish men in the country. Nearly 60 percent of Haredi families live in poverty, and by 2050 they are expected to make up more than a quarter of Israel's population..."

The Haredi community needs help.

Discover Mindful Jewish Meditation

The benefits of Jewish meditation are accessible to every type of Jew through acts of Jewish piety.

People tend to think that the Orthodox and Hasidic Jews are really pious, the Conservative Jews less so, and the Reform and Reconstructionist even less.

Not so. Piety is individual. You decide how pious you wish to be. Some may argue that the Liberal Jew who makes a decision to engage in piety every day is more pious than the Orthodox Jew who rarely pauses to decide for himself what endows his structured life with meaning.

If you want it to, piety can fill your life as a Jew and endow it with transcendent meaning. Piety can overshadow faith at the central defining core of your Judaism. You can bring it into your daily, weekly and annual routines, and life cycle events.

"Mindful" is a term made popular by meditation guru, Jon Kabat-Zinn and others through their writings and teachings. They brought the concept into Western life from its origins within Eastern cultures. These teachers instruct us to meditate on the here-and-now. As if this was some new idea to us in the West. Done properly, religious practice affords us this mindfulness constantly in any number of ways.

We describe some elements of the religion of the Talmudic rabbis. If this is a form of Judaism that fulfills your needs, go with it! If not, we suggest you discover and then extract the major concepts of classical Judaic practice and apply them to your circumstances. In that way you will develop mindful piety for yourself, for your community and your calendar.

The Judaic Roots of Mindful Piety

Long ago rabbis prescribed, for example, that each Jew recite one hundred blessings each day. The recitation of a blessing prior to the performance of many basic rituals helped make a Jew mindful of his every action.

R. Meir used to say, "There is no man in Israel who does not perform one hundred commandments each day [and recite over them one hundred blessings] . . . And there is no man in Israel who is not surrounded by [reminders of the] commandments. [Every person wears] phylacteries on his head, phylacteries on his arm, has a mezuzah on his door post and four fringes on his garment around him . . . [Tosefta Berakhot 6:24-25]."

From the first stirring every morning, the mindful Jew began his day with acts of religious significance.

Imagine the Day that Religions Mellowed Out

Imagine the Day that Religions Mellowed Out.

Wait. Three reasons that it looks like that happened.

1. The Pope said that atheists are okay too. "Atheists and other nonbelievers largely welcomed Wednesday's (May 22) remarks by Pope Francis that performing "good works" is not the exclusive domain of people of faith, but rather a place where they and atheists could and should meet."

Mellow pope - but what about the "bad" priests?

2. The Lubavitcher Hasidim reached out to hipsters - because they have beards too (Times): "...on Tuesday night, at Chabad of North Brooklyn, the Lubavitcher outpost on Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg, there was a forum, advertised on fliers up and down the boutique-lined strip, on the theme 'Hasid and hipster, not as different as you think.' ...But perhaps the difference is significant enough. Maybe it was the lack of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer (or alcohol at all) or special brewed coffee (there was plenty of instant), but the attendance of bearded hipsters was sparse, and possibly nonexistent."

Mellow Hasids - but no Hipster love connections.

3. And other Orthodox Jews (sorta) accept into their communities gays and Sabbath violators too ("Inclusivism: First Among Equals?"): "R. Ettlinger, for example, allowed the wine of Jews who publicly violated Shabbat by suggesting they could be categorized as tinnokot she-nishbu, people raised outside of Jewish values, who therefore could not be fully blamed for their transgressions."

Mellow rabbis - can't blame secular Jews - they were brainwashed as children (tinnokot she-nishbu) into being secular. Oh wait maybe it was the rabbis who were brainwashed. No that could not be. Never mind.

Video: Silly Chabad Beard Outreach in Williamsburg

No clue what this silly stuff is all about. Hat tip to Yitz.

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Helfgot and Perlman Take Brooklyn by Storm

Israel-born American violinist Itzhak Perlman, performed tonight with Manhattan’s Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. It was the new arena’s first Jewish event.

In November, 2006 we interviewed Helfgot for the Jewish Standard prior to his concert at the Metropolitan Opera House...

Internationally renowned Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot will perform “Helfgot Sings Cantorial Classics,” the first solo cantorial concert at the New York Metropolitan Opera on Sunday, December 3. At press time the event has nearly sold out the 4400 seating capacity of the Opera House. Dr. Mordechai Sobol arranged the music for the orchestra and choir. The orchestra will include members of the New York Philharmonic conducted by Matthew Lazar with Cantor Daniel Gildar on the piano. The choir will be coordinated by Cantor Azi Schwartz. The invocation prior to the concert will be offered by the chief rabbi of Israel, Yisrael Meir Lau.

Are mannequins kosher?

From The New York Times we found a Purim article published just a bit early: 

Modesty in Ultra-Orthodox Brooklyn Is Enforced by Secret Squads: "Shadowy committees have threatened shop owners over mannequins they don't like, and reportedly have invaded homes to seize computer equipment."

The Brooklyn shopkeeper was already home for the night when her phone rang: a man who said he was from a neighborhood “modesty committee” was concerned that the mannequins in her store’s window, used to display women’s clothing, might inadvertently arouse passing men and boys.

Some men are sexually aroused by mannequins! Definitely not kosher!

Ha ha ha, how funny is this!?

Do people study the Talmud on the Subway?

A New York blog (The Underground New York Public Library - a visual library featuring the Reading-Riders of the NYC subways) has some graphic proof that yes, people do study the Talmud on the subway.

The Jewish Press reported on this in June 2012, "An Ultra-Orthodox man reading the Talmud on the subway from Underground NY Public Library. The photo blog is a project of acclaimed street photographer, Ourit Ben-Haim. In an interview, Ben-Haim said that when she takes a photograph of someone reading she sees 'people who are contemplating description of new possibilities. In this way, every book says that its reader is simply great.'"