Were visions of angels in Bible real?

No, visions of angels were not perceptions of anything real according to recent studies. They were the products of lucid dreams.

The UK paper the Daily Mail reports that, "Recorded Biblical angels and religious encounters may have just been lucid dreaming suggests a new sleep study that claims the historic stories were merely 'out of body experiences'"

The research center that conducted the study is not a recognized academic unit. Still the claims provoke much thought at a time of year when many people experience vivid types of dreams of their own.

That reminds us to think about the Talmudic materials in Bavli Berakhot on dreams and their meanings. We may even post the Talmud selection as a separate file, or a new short book. Hmm. A real idea or a lucid dream?

Here is the crux of the news report.

Visions of angels in Bible were 'lucid dreams' claims new sleep study after 15 studied 'see angels'
By Nina Golgowski

Recorded Biblical angels and religious encounters may have just been lucid dreaming suggests a new sleep study that specializes in 'out of body experiences.'

Asking 30 volunteers to try to re-create a scene out of the Bible where a prophet is aided by an angel during sleep, the researchers taken from the University of California Los Angeles say the majority reported similar encounters.

Progress Report: The Worried Waiting of West Side Jewish Women

Our question lately is, if Orthodox Judaism says that modesty is such a virtue, then why is it imposed upon women and not men? Shouldn't men also be modest in all the ways they require women to be? Why not?

We posted this below four years ago, 3/3/08. Is there any progress to report after four years? Looks to us like lately Orthodox women are losing ground, not making progress. Here is our question from 2008.

What do women want? On the West Side of Manhattan, Orthodox Jewish women apparently want to wait for some imaginary time when they will be accepted as equals to their male counterparts.

All the men have to do is to say yes, women are equal, and that will be the end of the struggle. Ha'aretz reports....

Who's that woman in the pulpit?
By Shmuel Rosner

NEW YORK - She waits patiently for the end of the service before going up to the synagogue's pulpit. This is the policy and she respects it. Women are not allowed there until the service has been completed. This is how it was before her, and this is the custom now. Her husband doesn't get it - he thinks that she ought to propose a change. But Elana Stein Hain is not in any hurry. "Caution" is the key word in a conversation with her that took place recently in Manhattan's Upper West Side. This caution "is the only way for me to be effective," she said.

She is part of a new fashion that is getting quite a lot of attention in modern Orthodox circles in America, an offshoot of one of the few trends that are occurring almost simultaneously in America and Israel - the Orthodox women's revolution. Or to use plain English: women taking key, quasi-rabbinic roles in synagogues. They are almost rabbis, but not really. Or maybe really, but just not called by that name. They deliver sermons, but they cannot lead prayers, nor can they officiate at weddings. But maybe at other ceremonies: for example, funerals...more...

Henry Frisch's Maxwell House Haggadah Beats out the new one by the Trendy Novelists Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander

Our neighbor Henry Frisch (he lives mamash on our block in Teaneck) has beaten out the two hoity toity hotsy totsy novelists who have published a really strange new Haggadah this year.

According to the Times, none other than the President of the United States, Barack Obama, has considered the Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander Haggadah and has rejected it in favor of Henry's translation in the Maxwell House Haggadah.

Boo-yah to Henry. Way to go man!

Two Novelists Take on the Haggadah
By ALEX WILLIAMS
AFTER a lengthy interview with President Obama in the Oval Office two weeks ago, Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for the Atlantic, had one more question, and it had nothing to do with Iran.

“I know this is cheesy ...” Mr. Goldberg started, but before he could finish, the president interrupted him. “What, you have a book?” Mr. Obama asked. Turns out, Mr. Goldberg did, but “it’s not just any book,” he replied.

Mr. Goldberg reached into his briefcase and handed the president an advance copy of the “New American Haggadah,” a new translation of the Passover liturgy that was edited by Jonathan Safran Foer and contains commentary by Mr. Goldberg and other contemporary writers.

After thumbing through the sleek hardcover book, Mr. Obama looked up and asked wryly, “Does this mean that we can’t use the Maxwell House Haggadah anymore?”

Mr. Goldberg was impressed. “Way to deploy the inside-Jewish joke,” he later said. Since the 1930s, Maxwell House has printed more than 50 millions copies of its pamphlet-style version of the Haggadah. It has been the go-to choice at the Obamas’ White House Seders, though Mr. Goldberg hoped the president would consider using their version this time around.

In the end, the White House decided to stick with the Maxwell House next month...more...

Cheesy? More like dumb to report that your president rejected you. Or not, the book is the #7 best seller on Amazon! Utterly amazing all around.

Talmudic Books for Kindle on the Talmud, Bible, Kabbalah and Prayer
The Kindle Edition of the Classic Soncino Talmud in English

Sarna Slams Soloveichik, but too Softly

Professor Jonathan Sarna has levelled a strong critique against Rabbi Meir Soloveichik in an essay in the Forward, criticizing Soloveichik's testimony to congress about the funding of birth control, concluding:

...one hopes that Congress will ignore the testimony of Soloveichik. To focus on the religious liberties of employers while overlooking those of their employees, and to focus on only the free exercise clause of the First Amendment while ignoring the dangers of coercive religious establishments, is to pervert what Washington meant when he spoke of “liberty of conscience” and to set back the cause of liberty and justice for all.

The problem with Sarna's critique is that it is correct, but it is on a level too high to be meaningful. Sarna measures in theory, weighing institutionally wrapped religious rights against the clear legal individual rights of citizens. In our democracy all rights of organized groups derive from the rights of citizens on an individual basis. The Church does not have constitutional rights per se or any rights articulated in the Declaration of Independence. In fact, as we learned in grade school, a major impetus for the democracy in our land is "freedom of religion" for individuals. That never meant freedom of a religion to oppress the rights of individuals.

Happy Purim. Absolut Talmud

Absolut Talmud

Hat tip to Yitz, Bernice, et. al.

The Sunrise and the Redemption of the Jews in Yerushalmi Berakhot and in the Book of Esther

Talmudic life extends the space-time continuum with an acute awareness of the physical here-and-now and deepens the spectrum of thought and meaning with trajectories back into the distant past of the scripture and forward to the hopeful expectation for salvation.

This passage below from the Talmud Yerushalmi Tractate Berakhot demonstrates key aspects of the logic of a Talmudic life - what we explore every day in this blog. The rabbis in the passage practice a mindfulness of the natural world on a seamless continuum with thoughtfulness about their textual world, their imagined pasts and futures.

Below, in this passage that we cite, they want to understand the dynamics of sunrise, part of their everyday natural lives. They need to know when day begins so they can start to say their daily prayers at the correct hour.

On their way to determine this they talk about visual observation and use poetic terms from scripture. They measure the elapsed time of a pre-dawn period by specifying durations for physical activities of walking. But their walking has no physical or temporal boundaries. The dusty roads of the Land of Israel in late antiquity lead them directly into the book of Genesis.

The four miles that the rabbis might walk to determine a period of elapsed time are the same four miles that Lot and his wife and daughters would walk at the behest of heavenly angels. And if those biblical four miles were really not four miles, miracles made them so.

And yet the passage tells us, when rabbis Hiyya and Simeon once were walking in a real valley at daybreak, they were not satisfied to speak about the technical definitions of the durations of the pre-dawn periods, though they surely could have done just that and stopped.

They instead looked at the rays of the dawn and launched their time machine into the future, into a peroration on the redemption of the Jewish people. As they mindfully noted the real rays of that dawn, they pondered the equally real rays of the prophetic words of Micah and of the melodramatic story of biblical Esther.

Is Robert Allen Stanford Jewish?

No, we are pretty sure that Robert Allen Stanford is not a Jew.

Stanford is a prominent financial executive who was sought by U.S. marshalls 2/17/09 and charged with a multi-billion dollar fraud. (SEC Statement)

On 6/18/2009 he was arrested and indicted on criminal charges stemming from his operation of a massive investment fraud operation that bilked thousands.

He was convicted on 3/6/2012: "Stanford Convicted by Jury in $7 Billion Ponzi Scheme"

Stanford was born March 24, 1950 in Mexia, Texas. He is a fifth-generation Texan who resides in St. Croix, US Virgin Islands and holds dual citizenship, having become a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda ten years ago.

Our reasonably certain conclusion about Stanford's religion is derived from indirect evidence. Sperling's provides this data about religious affiliation in Mexia, Texas: 56.71% of the people in Mexia, TX are religious, meaning they affiliate with a religion. 3.64% are Catholic; 47.87% are Protestant; 0.00% are LDS; 5.19% are another Christian faith; 0.00% in Mexia, TX are Jewish; 0.01% are an eastern faith; 0.00% affiliate with Islam.

The SEC Complaint charged:

• Since 1994, Stanford International Bank claims it has never failed to hit investment returns in excess of 10 percent a year.
• In 2008, the bank said its "diversified portfolio of investments" lost only 1.3 percent, while the S&P 500 U.S. stocks benchmark declined 39 percent.
• SEC says the bank's historical returns are "improbable, if not impossible."
• The bank quoted certificate of deposit rates of more than 7 percent during 2005 and 2006, and quoted a 3-year CD at 5.375 percent annual rate in November 2008, against comparable U.S. bank CDs of 3.2 percent.
• Did not disclose that its investment portfolio includes a significant portion in illiquid private equity and real estate investments.

Is Democracy in Israel Kosher?

A lot of people are pushing the notion in Israel that democracy is not kosher, says David Remnick of the New Yorker magazine in an editorial comment.

He reviews a wide number of examples of how democracy is "threatened" in Israel and indeed centers in on the religious tensions that are current there. Here is his pungent prose on that matter.

Herzl envisioned a pluralist Zionism in which rabbis would enjoy “no privileged voice in the state.” These days, emboldened fundamentalists flaunt an increasingly aggressive medievalism. There are sickening reports of ultra-Orthodox men spitting on schoolgirls whose attire they consider insufficiently demure, and demanding that women sit at the back of public buses. Elyakim Levanon, the chief rabbi of the Elon Moreh settlement, near Nablus, says that Orthodox soldiers should prefer to face a “firing squad” rather than sit through events at which women sing, and has forbidden women to run for public office, because “the husband presents the family’s opinion.” Dov Lior, the head of an important West Bank rabbinical council, has called Baruch Goldstein—who, in 1994, machine-gunned twenty-nine Palestinians at the Cave of the Patriarchs, in Hebron—“holier than all the martyrs of the Holocaust.” Lior endorsed a book that discussed when it is right and proper to murder an Arab, and he and a group of kindred rabbis issued a proclamation proscribing Jews from selling or renting land to non-Jews. Men like Lieberman, Levanon, and Lior are scarcely embittered figures on the irrelevant margins: a hard-right base—the settlers, the ultra-Orthodox, Shas, the National Religious Party—is indispensable to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition.

Video: Is the Megadeth style Hatikva Kosher?

The Times Ethan Bronner chronicles the controversy in Israel over an Arab judge who did not sing Hatikva at an official ceremony, "Anger and Compassion for Arab Justice Who Stays Silent During Zionist Hymn." We think that not singing is perfectly kosher.

This reminded us of another instance of Hatikva (guitar but no singing) that we took at the time as a proof that Israel is the full flowering of Jewish redemption. Here is a 2007 story from Ynet and a YouTube video clip of Megadeth style Hatikva, which we deem to be glatt kosher.

Hatikva, like you've never heard before
(VIDEO) 'Coming here twice and playing my music for these people is the best,' says Marty Friedman, who performs in Israel for second time in his life

Over 1,000 people came to the Theatre Club in Jaffa Saturday to see the great guitarist Marty Friedman.

He delivered the goods, captivating the audience for two whole hours.



Friedman (44), who is Jewish, is known for his spectacular performance with Megadeth in Israel a decade ago. Back then, he played Hatikva, Israel's national anthem, on the stage. Saturday, he did it again. He opened the performance with the national anthem. The audience sang along with him, or rather, screamed along…

After the Hatikva, Friedman and his excellent band (especially crazy drummer Jeremy Colson) continued with a rocking two hour evening,, not losing an ounce of energy for even a moment...

Was Andrew Breitbart Jewish?

Yes, Andrew Breitbart was a Jew. He died suddenly March 1.

The conservative pundit said he "grew up in Brentwood (i.e., Los Angeles, California) a secular liberal Jew" who celebrated his bar mitzvah and "has the tape to prove it."

In an effort to discredit the congressman, in June 2011, Breitbart publicized personal tweets and emails sent by Rep. Anthony Weiner to various women.

Fox News reported:

News of Breitbart's death reverberated on Capitol Hill and on the presidential campaign trail. Rick Santorum said he was "crestfallen."
"What a powerful force," Santorum said. "What a huge loss, in my opinion, for our country and certainly for the conservative movement." 

New Yorker magazine had profiled him earlier in brutally unflattering terms.

Rage Machine: Andrew Breitbart’s empire of bluster
by Rebecca Mead

On Sunday, March 21st, the day that the House voted to pass health-care reform, Andrew Breitbart, the conservative Internet entrepreneur, was thousands of miles away, at home in Westwood, a neighborhood of Los Angeles. Breitbart, who in the past year has become a fixture on Fox News and a regular at Tea Party events, spends a lot of time on the road. In the preceding weeks, he had addressed the California Republican Spring Convention, in Santa Clara—“It’s warfare to save the soul of the United States of America,” he told the audience—and had introduced Sarah Palin at the National Tea Party Convention, in Nashville...more...

/original post 2010/