Newer Bigger El Grande Amazon Kindle Coming this Summer for $489

[Update - click to pre-order one today]
Amazon has released a newer bigger Kindle. The talking points surrounding it make it a device that will save the faltering newspaper industry. But the only thing that will impact that debacle is the end of the recession and the accompanying revival of advertising.

After our initial euphoria, we found the Kindle 2 sadly lacking - and it reminds us of 1990-like crippled technology.

We tried sending a simple Hebrew file of the Megillah to our Kindle 2 but it displayed pages and pages of boxes. Enough. We don't need no retro-tech. (See the comments below regarding the hack that enables Hebrew - reminding me of 1984.)

But wait. Kindle DX has a native PDF reader. So does this change everything? We sure do hope so.

Some will say that... Kindle 2 and Big Kindle are just gadgets. (But those of us who spent the money have been too embarrassed to admit it.)

The new big one is $489. We just don't understand the business plan yet. Order one anyway!

Video of Living the Biblical Life in Melbourne - Redeeming a Firstborn Male Donkey with a Sheep

The biblical ritual of redeeming a firstborn male donkey with a sheep was performed by Orthodox Jews in Melbourne Australia on Sunday 3rd May 2009.

They called it the Special Mitzvah of Pidyon Petter Chamor. The story of the events leading up to this ceremony, including dramatic DNA tests, can be found at the Yeshiva World News.

Hat tip to our chavrusa Billy, a former Melbourne resident, for bringing all of this to our attention.

The relevant verses are:

Exodus 13:13 - But every first offspring of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, but if you do not redeem it, then you shall break its neck; and every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem.

Exodus 34:20 - You shall redeem with a lamb the first offspring from a donkey; and if you do not redeem it, then you shall break its neck. You shall redeem all the firstborn of your sons. None shall appear before Me empty-handed.

And the video speaks for itself...

Hamas' Khaled Meshal Interview Perpetuates the Impossibility of a Palestinian State

The world will never grant statehood to a people whose leaders are bereft of any semblance of statecraft.

The Hamas leader interviewed by the Times expresses opinions that are so completely out of touch with reality that it should be an embarrassment for any ordinary Palestinian person.

Transcript: Interview With Khaled Meshal of Hamas

The only good news is that Hamas says they have decided to stop firing rockets at Israel.

All the rest is bad news - as for instance this refusal to disavow the Hamas charter which calls for the destruction of Israel - a beautiful, modern, progressive democracy that has celebrated its 61st anniversary as a state.

Hamas invokes logic as a premise while it denies the basic facts of Israel's existence:

...it's not logical for the international community to get stuck on sentences written 20 years ago. It's not logical for the international community to judge Hamas based on these sentences and stay silent when Israel destroys and kills our people.

There is not the slightest indication that Hamas will ever renounce its world-denying worldview. And thus there is not the slightest chance that there will ever be a Palestinian state.

Kosher Food Fight in the New Jewish Food Movement

Not every progressive movement is truly grass roots. New Voices reports on the, "Culture Clash in the New Jewish Food Movement." The machlokes here seems to me to be entirely leshem shamayim - the disputants all appear to be on the same correct side of the issue... A special hat tip to Jack for bringing this to our attention.

When Ethan Genauer discovered that he couldn’t afford to attend the food activism conference hosted by the Jewish environmental group Hazon last December, he decided to make a fuss. Activist movements, Genauer reasoned, should be accessible. This one, with its expensive conference at a resort in Monterey, CA, was not. So, he published an open letter calling the New Jewish Food Movement elitist, arguing that it caters to a wealthy subset of the Jewish community while failing to confront broader social justice issues. “During a holiday season of massive economic implosion when millions of Americans are struggling just to put food on their tables,” he wrote, “what message does the comparative luxury of the Hazon Food Conference send?”

The New Jewish Food Movement has emerged as a Jewish wing of a broader movement emphasizing locally grown produce, sustainable agricultural practices, and a return to the pleasures of preparing one’s own food...more...

Fish, Eagleton, Hitchins, Dawkins all gossip about God

Stanley Fish in his "God Talk" post on his Times blog takes on Terry Eagleton who in turn takes on Christopher Hitchins and Richard Dawkins.

All of these amateurs address the meaning and necessity of religion in the world. When a bunch of dabblers like these fellows debate about a great endeavor, like religion, we think it would be best to title the occasion, "God Gossip."

In the opening sentence of the last chapter of his new book, “Reason, Faith and Revolution,” the British critic Terry Eagleton asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” His answer, elaborated in prose that is alternately witty, scabrous and angry, is that the other candidates for guidance — science, reason, liberalism, capitalism — just don’t deliver what is ultimately needed. “What other symbolic form,” he queries, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?”...more...

PS: The subtitle of Eagleton's book is "Reflections on the God Debate." Our experience is that any book of "reflections" by definition is not a serious and sustained argument on a topic.

Is there a ceremony for converting from republican to democrat?

In the aftermath of the dramatic conversion of Senator Arlen Specter to the democratic party, the Talmudic Blogger has been doing some research...

Q: Is there a ceremony for converting from republican to democrat?

A: Yes, a politician who wishes to convert from republican to democrat must undergo a circumcision to remove the foreskin from his heart.

The ceremony is accompanied by the recitation of various appropriate biblical verses such as:

Deuteronomy 10:16 - Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiff necked.

Deuteronomy 30:6 - And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.

Jeremiah 4:4 - Circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart, ye men of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Times: Iraqis Open Babylon and Resume Their Antisemitism

Babylon Ruins Reopen in Iraq, to Controversy
Colonial powers looted it, Saddam Hussein rebuilt it, US and Polish troops made it a military camp, and now Babylon, Iraqis hope, ...May 3, 2009 - By STEVEN LEE MYERS - International / Middle East

It's jarring to read about the opening of an archaeological area after a war and be hit in the face in the middle of the article with an antisemitic slur. So it is, and it becomes the only take-away we get from the report:

...In the 1980s Mr. Hussein ordered the reconstruction of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace and other buildings, using cheap bricks on foundations built 2,600 years ago. Many were stamped with a tribute to the “Protector of Great Iraq” in the way Nebuchadnezzar marked bricks with his own stamp in cuneiform, still visible today.

Archaeologists were appalled, but could hardly complain at the time. Such is not the case with the American and Polish troops who occupied the site from 2003 to 2004. The work they carried out to turn the area into a base, as reported by a British Museum study, provoked international outrage, though the extent of the damage is a matter of debate and perspective.

One thing officials agree on is blaming the Americans. Mr. Rashid, in a conspiratorial and anti-Semitic vein, suggested that Jews stationed with the Polish troops might have deliberately singled out the site because of their captivity in Babylon. The director of the ruins, Maryam Musa, who has worked in Babylon for 30 years, said the damage could never be repaired or adequately compensated for.

Asked who did worse by Babylon, Mr. Hussein or the Americans, however, she became taciturn. “Is it necessary to ask such a question?” she said uncomfortably, and declined to answer...

New Statistics Show How Religious Affiliation Supports Evolution

Bear with me on this somewhat Talmudic line of thought.

An op-ed in the Times claims children of the unaffiliated commonly become members of a religious group at a significant rate.

We consider this another proof of the theory of evolution.

Richard Dawkins eloquently argues (in The God Delusion) that religion is an accidental byproduct of evolution. Religious humans are more fit than the non-religious. Because of evolution, humans as a whole are genetically predisposed to be religious.

The fact that children of the unaffiliated, deprived of the nurture of religion, still gravitate towards affiliation with religion, confirms that indeed, religion is hard wired into our evolved human nature.

It's one way of looking at the data so concisely summarized by Charles M. Blow in his op-ed, "Defecting to Faith,"

“Most people are religious because they’re raised to be. They’re indoctrinated by their parents.”

So goes the rationale of my nonreligious friends.

Maybe, but a study entitled “Faith in Flux” issued this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life questioned nearly 3,000 people and found that most children raised unaffiliated with a religion later chose to join one. Indoctrination be damned. By contrast, only 14 percent of those raised Catholic and 13 percent of those raised Protestant later became unaffiliated.

(It should be noted that about a quarter of the unaffiliated identified as atheist or agnostic, and the rest said that they had no particular religion.)

So what was the reason for this flight of the unchurched to churches?

Did God appear in a bush? Did the grass look greener on the other side of the cross? Or was it a response to the social pressure of being nonreligious in a very Christian country?

None of those reasons topped the list. Most said that they first joined a religion because their spiritual needs were not being met. And the most-cited reason for settling on their current religion was that they simply enjoyed the services and style of worship.

For these newly converted, the nonreligious shtick didn’t stick. There was still a void, and communities of the faithful helped fill it.

While science, logic and reason are on the side of the nonreligious, the cold, hard facts are just so cold and hard. Yes, the evidence for evolution is irrefutable. Yes, there is a plethora of Biblical contradictions. Yes, there is mounting evidence from neuroscientists that suggests that God may be a product of the mind. Yes, yes, yes. But when is the choir going to sing? And when is the picnic? And is my child going to get a part in the holiday play?

As the nonreligious movement picks up steam, it needs do a better job of appealing to the ethereal part of our human exceptionalism — that wondrous, precious part where logic and reason hold little purchase, where love and compassion reign. It’s the part that fears loneliness, craves companionship and needs affirmation and fellowship.

We are more than cells, synapses and sex drives. We are amazing, mysterious creatures forever in search of something greater than ourselves.

Dale McGowan, the co-author and editor of the book “Parenting Beyond Belief” told me that he believes that most of these people “are not looking for a dogma or a doctrine, but for transcendence from the everyday.”

Churches, mosques and synagogues nurture and celebrate this. Being regularly surrounded by a community that shares your convictions and reinforces them through literature, art and ritual is incredibly powerful, and yes, spiritual.

The nonreligious could learn a few things from religion.

Correction: A previous version of this column misstated the percentage of Catholics and Protestant who later became unaffiliated. The correct percentage for Catholics is 14, not 4, and the correct percentage for Protestants is 13, not 7.

By the way, sheesh, that correction sure is significant. I paused a while in disbelief when I read the print version with the erroneously lower statistics.

Bottom line though, Mr. Blow apparently does not have a sophisticated Talmudic understanding of how this data set about religion-choices so eloquently supports the evolutionary approach to human biology.

Samuel Freedman in the Times Adores Michael Green's NBC Series "Kings"

Not only does Samuel Freedman of the Times adore the NBC Series "Kings" - he also writes a learned column about it, which includes a thoughtful sample of opinion from rabbis and Judaic scholars.

We love this beautiful dramatic epic of a series too and we wish that NBC had kept it in a predictable time-slot, not put it on hiatus, and renewed it for next year.

Here's a quote from the essay, On Religion, "In ‘Kings,’ Television Tackles the Conflicted Saul," by SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN,

Created and written by Michael Green, a writer with a Jewish day-school education and a Stanford degree in religious studies, “Kings” re-imagines the story of Saul and David as the present-day confrontation between Silas Benjamin, ruler of Gilboa, and David Shepherd, a soldier who will supplant him, thanks to the divine blessing conveyed by a minister named Ephram Samuels.

As those handful of names suggest, “Kings” often refers slyly to its source material. The biblical Saul was a member of the tribe of Benjamin, and he was anointed king by the prophet Samuel. David was, of course, a shepherd. And Saul died, falling on his own sword before the Philistine could kill him, on Mount Gilboa.

The resonance of “Kings,” though, goes well beyond that sort of trivial pursuit. As written by Mr. Green and acted by Ian McShane, Silas Benjamin emerges as a complicated, gifted, tormented man, temperamentally close to the biblical character.

Saul accepts anointment reluctantly, battles valiantly, and loses the divine blessing for what are arguably acts of mercy and faith — sparing the life of the defeated Amalekite king, Agag, and saving some of the captured sheep for a sacrifice to God. Only in the aftermath does Saul become the more familiar incarnation, the jealous and treacherous rival to David.

“Saul represents for me a more tragic figure than David,” Mr. Green, 36, said last week in a phone interview, “because he began with God’s favor and he lost it. Saul is the warning to David of what he one day may become, regardless of his better intentions. You can’t understand David without telling Saul’s story in tandem.,,more...”

Rothstein of the Times Firebombs the Jüdisches Museum Berlin

The Times' EDWARD ROTHSTEIN, as I recall his work, ordinarily does not write reviews that rip apart their subject in a gut wrenching fashion.

So I am willing to say that it was out of character for him to do just that in his Museums column, "In Berlin, Teaching Germany’s Jewish History" which opens with this straight from the gut upchuck:

BERLIN — There may be worse Jewish museums in the world than the Jüdisches Museum Berlin, which opened in 2001. But it is difficult to imagine that any could be as uninspiring and banal, particularly given its pedigree and promise. Has any other Jewish museum been more celebrated or its new building (designed by Daniel Libeskind) so widely hailed? Is any other Jewish museum of more symbolic importance? ...more...

The rest of the opinion essay (it is by no means a review) jumps around from one venue to another and makes disconnected points about this and that.

Rothstein thinks that some German memorials and museum are good and some are not. End of story. I learned little, and sure do wish I could have taken away more from the newspaper of record on this important topic.