Video: Andy Statman Trio with Ricky Skaggs at a Nashville Bluegrass Stomp

Great music. Tablet Mag has a new podcast on the Statman - Skaggs recordings. (Hat tip to Blog in Dm). Andy is an Orthodox Jew. Ricky Skaggs is a Christian who has won two Grammy awards for "Best Southern, Country, or Bluegrass Gospel Album."

"God's Favorite Prayers"- another kind of Stomp

Times' Ethicist Tackles Is SABBATH SHMOOZING Jewish? and Is it Kosher to Hand Out $50 Bills During Kaddish?

Signs of a slow ethical quandary day. The ethicist at the Times, Ariel Kaminer, has to be scraping the bottom of the moral barrel with a question like the one he covered this past Sunday from one "NAME WITHHELD" writer. Read it in all its gory details and you will see why anonymity is so essential.

SABBATH SHMOOZING

My synagogue is interviewing four rabbis. One, who lives nearby, comes every Saturday to pray and glad-hand. The other three can’t, because they don’t travel on the Sabbath. Isn’t it unethical of him to take advantage of his proximity? NAME WITHHELD

Attending those services isn’t unethical; it’s sensible. If you applied for a job at a bookstore, would you refuse on principle to visit until they made their choice? But if you find the rabbi’s behavior in the synagogue to be inappropriate (if, say, he hands out $50 bills during the mourner’s prayer), then cast your vote accordingly.

By the way, I get a lot of rabbi questions; priest and imam questions, not so much. Clerics of the world, tell us your quandaries!

A few Talmudic observations.

In a cold and nasty shul that we know, friendly glad-handing by anyone, including a rabbinic candidate, would be considered out-of-place, surely a negative in any search. And further, most people agree that it makes no sense to consider it an "advantage" for a candidate to appear in shul to campaign for a job. We all know that the rabbi with the most relatives on the board of directors will get the job no matter what. And what indeed is "inappropriate" about handing out $50 bills in synagogue? Are we still talking during Sabbath prayers here? Does Kaminer mean it is too little or too much for someone to hand out money in synagogue. And is it especially egregious to hand out money during the Kaddish? We'd think during the Shema or the Amidah would be a more questionable time to distribute cash.

Now lots of people complain about the Times' awful coverage of Israel. This ethicist query is a new low in their coverage of synagogue matters. We are considering canceling our subscription!

It is ethical to buy "God's Favorite Prayers" today

Heebow Video Parody of NFL's Tim Tebow

Here is a silly parody of the Tim Tebow football phenomenon -- Heebow. Worth a few good laughs.

Huff Post: Best Paid Pastors

Jaweed Kaleem writes in the Huffington Post about the top earning pastors in the US. He explains,

From church closings and foreclosures of houses of worship across the nation to the limited number of clergy jobs for new rabbis, imams and pastors, the recession has hit religious Americans just as it has affected the tens of millions of the country's jobless.

Even before the recession, most spiritual leaders of small towns and big cities across the United States earned meager salaries, with annual pay for Catholic priests and imams ranging from $25,000 to $30,000 and the average Protestant pastor making $40,000 a year, according to a recent survey.

Yet, even in difficult times, some churches and pastors are soaring. While not a definitive guide, HuffPost Religion has has compiled a slideshow of some of the best paid pastors in America. For several, their high income comes not only from employment as pastors, but also from TV appearances, book sales and charity management.

For the lucky few, being a pastor can mean being a multi-millionaire.

We like the description of how Rick Warren "reverse tithes." Warren is one of Barack Obama's friends,

Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, has made tens millions of dollars off his books, such as "A Purpose Driven Life." He's made so much that, in 2005, he returned 25 years of salary to the church and stopped accepting new paychecks. Warren and his wife say they are "reverse tithers" who give away 91 percent of their income to charity and live off nine percent.

In our understanding, the reverse of giving 10% of your income would be taking 10% of something or other. Ah well, imprecision, whatever.

Mitt Romney's Phoney Florida Jewish Support

According to Sam Stein in the Huffington Post, "Mitt Romney's Reported Rise In Support From Florida's Jewish Voters Appears Fabricated".

He explained, "A report purporting to show potentially historic levels of support from Jewish voters for Mitt Romney in a general election matchup with Barack Obama appears to be either profoundly flawed or simply fabricated."

Dov Linzer Blows It in NY Times Op-Ed

Op-Ed Contributor Dov Linzer wrote, "Lechery, Immodesty and the Talmud" in an Op-Ed in the Times, asking to start with, "Is it possible for a religious demand for modesty to be about anything other than men controlling women’s bodies?"

While we agree with the egalitarian ideal underlying this essay, that men and women ought to have equal standing in all aspects of life, we are uneasy with Linzer's critique of Orthodox Jewish attitudes towards gender separation and roles for men and women.

To the opening rhetorical question of his essay cited above, we must say yes, it is possible for religious "demands" for "modesty" to be about many things, including modesty itself. Why would Linzer not know this? We have said previously (and humorously) that gender rules in Orthodox Judaism can assert the male Jews' tribal territorial rights over the females. Any number of equally viable reductive explanations can be adduced regarding the prominent gender laws and customs in Orthodox Judaism.

Linzer fails to accept that blunt gender differentiation is at the crux of some of those prominent forms of Haredi Orthodox religion that teach that women are different and are subject to different rules. Such gender differentiation is not subject to reductionism, to making it sound as if these rules are hiding some sinister program of male domination over females. The rules define core values and practices of the religion. (Do we debate such internal issues now in the Op-Ed columns of the Times? Shouldn't Linzer be writing directly to the offending Orthodox leaders?)

Linzer also fails to accept that religion in the US, and in Israel, is an entirely voluntary association. Women, children, and men, can opt to skip the synagogue, to walk out of Orthodoxy and never come back, without any formal repercussions in real-world legal or civic terms. As a result of such actions, those who go out will not starve, nor will they be shot.

Purchase your own copy of "God's Favorite Prayers"

Haaretz : Cedar's 'Footnote' nominated for Oscar

We saw it  at the NYFF and we predict this film will win the Oscar in its category.

Joseph Cedar's 'Footnote' nominated for Oscar
Film to compete against entries from Iran, Poland, Belgium and Canada in the 84th Academy Awards ceremony, to be held at the Kodak Theatre in Hollywood on February 26.

Joseph Cedar's film, "Footnote," was nominated yesterday for the Academy Award's best foreign language film for 2011. Four Israeli films, including Cedar's "Beaufort" in 2007, have made the short list for the prestigious prize in the last five years.

Our Work is Published in the World's Most Expensive Jewish Books: $970 or $1,004

These may be the World's Most Expensive Jewish Books. And they have our work inside.

The Law of Agriculture in the Mishnah and the Tosefta Translation, Commentary, Theology ($970 if ordered from Brill) ($1,004 from Amazon)

Our contributions are Berakhot (pages 398-574) and Hallah (pages 2601-2627).

The book set is not titled accurately. Tractate Berakhot, the first in the book, is about prayer, liturgy (the Shema and Amidah) and blessings. The rest of the tractates are about agriculture and many other topics.

The listing for this book set from the publisher does not properly credit any of the contributors.

Publisher's Book Set Description - This project presents in three volumes the Mishnah's and the Tosefta's first division, Zera'im (Agriculture), organized in eleven topical tractates, together with a systematic history of the law of Zeraim in the Mishnah. To the exposition of the Halakhah on the chosen topic, the Mishnah-tractates are primary but complemented by the Tosefta's presentation of its collection of glosses of the Mishnah's law and supplements to that law.

The Mishnah's and the Tosefta's tractates are integrated, with the Tosefta's complement given in the setting of the Mishnah's rules, and the whole is given in English translation. The presentation in each case encompasses an introduction, a form-analytical translation and commentary, a systematic integration of the Tosefta's compositions into the Mishnah's laws, an explanation of the details of the law, and an inquiry into how the Halakhah of the Mishnah and that of the Tosefta intersect, item by item.

Readership: All those interested in Jewish prayer and liturgy, agricultural law, Mishnaic law and Tosefta.

Product Details
Hardcover: 2112 pages
Publisher: Brill Academic Pub
Language: English
Publication year: 2005
Series: Handbook of Oriental Studies. Section 1 The Near and Middle East, 79
ISBN-10: 90 04 14503 6; ISBN-13 (Brill)The ISBN (International Standard Book Number) on 1 January 2007: 978 9004145 03 0
Cover: Hardback
Number of pages: Vol.I, xxii, 800 pp.; Vol. II, xiv, 975 pp.; Vol. III, xiv, 1013 pp. (English)
Number of volumes: 3

Daily News: Teaneck's Rodda Center WiFi Name is “F--- All Jews and N----”

It should be easy to find out who set up the racist name on the WiFi router at the Teaneck rec center. Not many people can have access to it and the knowhow. Sounds like a kid's prank to us.

WiFi signal with racist, anti-Semitic slur in Teaneck, NJ sparks police probe; signal came from rec center router

Mom of two shocked, dismayed as iphone flashes hateful WiFi signal as daughter danced
By Michael J. Feeney / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

A bigot named their WiFi signal “F--- All Jews and N----” — and now cops are investigating.

The hateful signal I.D. popped up on the iPhone of a 28-year-old mom inside a Teaneck, N.J. recreation center, where her 3-year-old daughter was attending dance class.

The offending signal was coming from a router connected in the Richard Rodda Community Center in the the township, located 10 miles outside New York City....

Teaneck FYI is less than 4 miles from NYC, which starts at the center of the GW Bridge, not 10 miles away.

Talmud Scholarship Links

Online Scholarly Tools for the Study of Talmud
We spent many days poring over manuscripts, limited edition photo-reproductions and microfilms in libraries to check manuscript variants back in 1976 when we were completing our PhD at Brown. Things are different today. Here are a few useful links:

• Mishnah and Shas
• Talmud with Rashi and Tosefot
  
• A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature. Compiled By Marcus Jastrow, Ph. D. Litt. D. (in PDF format): Volume one, Volume two and here.
• Rambi: The Index of Articles on Jewish Studies
  
• The Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon from HUC
  
• The Jewish National University Library has online the Kaufman, Parma and Cambridge manuscripts of the Mishnah and the Munich (linked to the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek), Florence and Paris manuscripts of the Talmud
• Online Soncino Translation of the Babylonian Talmud at Halakhah.com

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