Category Archives: Talmud

Teenage girl goes through entire Talmud in 2.5 years, breaking gender and speed norms  The Times of Israel

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Teenage girl goes through entire Talmud in 2.5 years, breaking gender and speed norms - The Times of Israel

Published: 24 June 2024

Last updated: 25 June 2024

Young Jews are looking for secular contexts through which to embrace their cultural heritage. For some the yearning has been filled through music, or language, others have found a connection through humanist Shabbat services.

Now a growing cohort is exploring another path through the study of Jewish texts without the religion.

There is a growing phenomenon of Jewish cultural centres are offering programs on traditional Jewish thought and literature detached from the synagogue context.

Topics such as Talmud and Kabbalah and interpretations of the Bible are offerred in new formats such as feminist frameworks or with music. The formats are broad and flexible, in a regular weekly context or through immersive weekend retreats.

Importantly, there is no expectation of observance or faith accompanying knowledge.

Beit Midrash Oz, a non-denominational learning centre in Melbourne, offers weekly classes on Midrash, Talmud, and Zohar (Kabbalah), and also holds a weekly informal parashah group, a monthly women's learning circle, and public talks and events combining music with textual learning.

Its weekly programs have 5-15 participants, with special events that combine music with textual learning drawing up to 100 participants, says Raphael Dascalu, who co-ordinates the program.

There certainly seems to be a growing appetite for Jewish learning, says Dascalu. My sense is that many Jews are seeking ways to engage deeply and honestly with their cultural heritage, and Jewish thought and literature are both the richest context for such engagement, and the least provided in most mainstream Jewish settings.

For those who don't want to make an ongoing committment immersive retreats and one-off events have strong appeal.

Many Jews are seeking ways to engage with their cultural heritage. Jewish thought and literature are the richest context for such engagement.

In recent years secular Zionist youth group Habonim and humanistic congregration Kolenu have combined to draw crowds to their Shavuot Tikkun Leil (learning night). This year they had 300 to 400 participants, ranging in age from 13 to their sixties but heavily weighted towards late teens and early twenties..

The secular Jewish community needed and wanted a space to engage in Jewish learning in a way that spoke and related to the wider community, says Amelia Page, the chair of Habonim Melbourne. We are proud to be able to offer diverse and broad sessions that bring in all people.

She puts the popularity of the annual event down to providing a space that allows for many different Jews of all ages to come together, learn, and reflect on our world through a secular Jewish lens.

People are yearning for multiple avenues of Jewish learning, particularly in a secular way. And our Tikkun Leil meets those desires.

Page says the emphasis is on interactivity. We started with getting into small groups to learn Jewish text and getting to know each other this year. We just felt this year especially it was important that people felt like they had a voice and didnt come just to listen.

Participants in the Moishe House Sydney Shavuot retreat, May 2024 (courtesy)

International youth outreach organisation Moishe House held a Sydney Shavout retreat in May, which drew 32 participants, aged 20 to 31. It held a similar event in Melbourne in December. There had been a ten-year gap since the last ones, according to co-ordinator Naama Zohar.

The Moishe House Jewish Learning Retreats aim to deepen ones connection to Judaism, Zohar says. The education team invites participants to craft Jewish learning that has application to modern life, personal and communal relevance, and a call for future action.

She says demand for immersive retreats is growing. Staff-led retreats provide an opportunity for Jewish young adults from different locations to connect to each other, get inspired, gain knowledge and replicate a specific program at home.

Their philosophy is learning by doing under an umbrella of complete acceptance. Everyone is welcomed and respected no matter their level observance, she says. The hosting community where the retreat takes place will also host a pre-retreat gathering the day before to give participants an opportunity to get acquainted with each other before diving into educational content.

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A radical thought: study the Talmud without the religion - The Jewish Independent

The South Korean ambassador to Israel, Ma Young-sam, raised eyebrows recently when he told reporters the Talmud was mandatory reading for Korean schoolchildren.

South Korea is a country with a deep Buddhist history, but one which has embraced with vigour the Christianity brought to its shores by missionaries in the late 1800s. Official statistics say some 30 per cent of South Koreans are church-going. In such a country, Jews are few and far between.

Yet, pop down to the local corner shop and along with a pot of instant rice or dried noodles, you can buy a copy of Stories from the Talmud. It is not rare, either, to come across book-vending machines stocked with classic works of Babylonian Judaism.

The Talmud is a bestseller in South Korea - even the government insists it is good for you, and has included it on the curriculum for primary school children.

Lee Chang-ro heads a literature research team at the Ministry for Education. He says: "The reasons why Korean children are taught Talmud are pretty obvious. Koreans and Jews both have a long history of oppression and surviving adversity with nothing but their own ingenuity to thank. There are no natural resources to speak of in Korea, so, like the Jews, all we can develop is our minds."

The fascination with Judaism does not end there. Media outlets regularly run newspapers columns on "Jewish education", weekly radio features, and television documentaries, all of them showing Jews in a glowing light.

But although average Koreans can boast that their bookshelves hold at least one or two copies of the Talmud, to think of Korea as a hotbed of latent Judaism would be wrong. The motivation is less to do with religion and more to do with aspiration. Korean parents value schooling above all else. Parents send their children to after-school crammers until midnight and will spend their last penny on tutors and extra lessons. And, shy of good role models on the quest to securing academic success for their offspring, mothers almost unerringly turn to the Jews for inspiration.

Mother-of-two Lee San-sook explains that the way that Jewish children are brought up is universally viewed as positive in Korea.

"The stereotype of Jews here is that they are ultra-intelligent people. Jews have come out of nowhere to become business chiefs, media bosses, Nobel Prize winners - we want our children to do the same. If that means studying Talmud, Torah, whatever, so be it," she says.

Nonetheless, for a small number of Koreans, this love of Jewishness does translate into religious observance, even though, with no synagogues and no access to kosher food, they encounter almost insurmountable problems in leading a Jewish life.

One wannabe Jew, 38-year-old Park Yo-han, has handed in his notice at an investment bank to take the plunge into Judaism. He says he will go to New York, where he knows nobody, has no job prospects, just to follow his dream of Orthodox conversion.

"I've tried just about everything. Converting in Korea isn't difficult - it's impossible," he says.

Jewish observance in Seoul is almost entirely centred on Friday night services in the back of a Christian chapel on a US Army base. Every week, the tiny congregation of ex-pats and locals flip pews containing hymns books and New Testaments to face a pokey little ark for prayers. At the end of the night, everything gets put back in place for Friday night Mass. If there was not a small Ner Tamid hanging above the ark, you really would mistake it for a cupboard.

Most of the regular and long-serving members of the congregation are non-Jewish Koreans - civil servants, doctors and a politician from the ruling party, who is currently squeezing in his attendance between bouts of campaigning for local elections. They have no wish to convert but they take their interest in Judaism seriously. Most boast impressive collections of Judaica and read Hebrew fluently.

Among their number is a living legend of Korean Jewry, Abraham Cha. One of the few Koreans who have actually converted, he is a regular fixture at the US Army base services.

An old man now, he still cuts a memorable figure. He has a wild beard, payot, tzitzit protruding proudly, and maintains an unrivalled personal library of Jewish books from around the world, which he has painstakingly collected.

Cha says he had to give up everything to become an observant Jew in Korea.

"My family don't speak to me any more, I had to divorce my wife. I even had to stop working because they wouldn't give me the day off on Shabbat or on Jewish holidays. My bosses couldn't conceive what it meant to be Jewish."

Although precisely what it involves to be a Jew eludes most Koreans, anti-Jewish feeling is almost unthinkable in this part of the world.

Says Seoul resident Naomi Zaslow, "If you refuse a plate of pork ribs here, people will be dumbfounded. If you tell them it's because you're Jewish, they'll unfailingly look impressed and say: 'Oh, you must be very clever'."

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Why South Koreans are in love with Judaism - The Jewish Chronicle

This Shabbat, Parshat Kedoshim, begins the week we commemorate Remembrance Day and Independence Day. In the weekly Torah portion, God commands, Do not stand upon the blood of your neighbor; I am the Lord (19:16). The Talmud Bavli (Sanhedrin 73a) expounds: From where [do we learn] that if one sees his fellow drowning in a river, or a wild animal dragging him, or robbers attacking him, that he must save him? The Torah states, Do not stand upon the blood of your neighbor. In other words, we must endanger our own lives to save another Jew in mortal danger.

Rambam, in the Laws of Murder and the Preservation of Life (1:14), broadens the scope of this commandment to encompass financial expenditure to save ones friend. He also mentions rescuing a person from a wicked scheme:

Anyone who can save and does not violate the principle of not standing idly by the blood of ones neighbor. Likewise, if one sees a neighbor drowning in the sea, attackers coming upon them, or a wild animal threatening them, and can save them alone or by hiring others to do so but does not, or if one hears rumors of a plot against a neighbor but does not warn them; or if one knows of a dispute and can mediate but chooses not to do so; and in any similar case, one transgresses the commandment of not standing idly by the blood of their neighbor.

The medieval authorities considered the level of danger that required the rescuer to place oneself in harms way to save a friend. The Talmud Yerushalmi goes so far as to assert that one should enter a possible danger to save another person. The Kesef Mishneh (commenting on the aforementioned Rambam) explains that the logic for the Talmud Yerushalmi is likely that while ones friend is in definite danger, the rescuer is in uncertain danger.

The halakhic requirement to endanger ourselves for the sake of others raises the question: Why should a person risk their life for another? Why does the Torah expect this of us?

Rashbam explains the directive Do not stand to mean, Do not stand as an onlooker. In other words, the Torah commands us to cultivate a natural tendency not to turn a blind eye to injustice, danger, or problematic situations confronting others. A Jew cannot stand idly by when another Jew is in distress.

This charge is already evident in the actions of our nations founder. Abraham could not remain indifferent when his nephew Lot was captured. Instead, he ventured out with a limited number of warriors to combat the formidable four kings, risking himself to save Lot and the people of Sodom. Abrahamcould not tolerate the moral injustice of the four kings subjugating peaceful nations.

We find a similar trait of intolerance toward injustice among other biblical heroes. Jacob arrives at Haran and rebukes the shepherds for wasting their time not tending to the flock until all the shepherds gather. Moses steps out of the palace, endangering himself and risking his political standing, and he slays the Egyptian, harming a Jew, and intervenes between the two quarreling Hebrews. The idea of self-sacrifice for others is deeply rooted in our people due to the bonds that tie us together. As the Talmud puts it (Sanhedrin 27b), If one person falls, the other should help his fellow this means that everyone bears responsibility for one another.

Remembrance Day for soldiers, security forces, and victims of terror is a particularly painful day for bereaved families and for each and every one of us. This year, perhaps more than any, owing to the events of October 7, that pain has become a tangible part of our lives. Our mutual responsibility demands that we do not stand idly by the blood of our neighbor that we do not stand by in the face of the reality that our sons and daughters are still held captive in Gaza and that we not stand idly by the blood of our neighbor by insufficiently honoring the memory of the fallen. We dare not stand aside and permit division among our people. It is forbidden for us to enable their blood to have been spilled needlessly; we must instead ensure that we are worthy of their sacrifices and those of their families.

The suffering that has befallen the people of Israel since Simchat Torah calls for introspection. The midrash (Yalkut Shimoni Tehillim 680) expounds on the verse, May the Lord answer you on a day of distress, which seems puzzling. Why does the Lord only answer on a day of distress, after the trouble has befallen? Why doesnt He prevent the distress from occurring in the first place?

The midrash answers with a parable:

To what can the matter be compared? It is like a father and son who are on a journey. The son became weary and asked his father, Father, where is the country? His father said to him, My son, this shall be your sign: if you see a cemetery laid out before you, then the country is near. Similarly, the prophet tells Israel that if you see troubles looming over you, you will be redeemed immediately, as it states, May the Lord answer you on a day of distress.

The father and son symbolize the biological connection and the partnership between the two generations traversing the path. The son, who represents the new generation, grows weary of the prolonged journey and asks his father, Where is the country? When will we finally know that we have arrived so we may rest? The father does not respond directly but gives his son a sign: If you see a cemetery, the country is near.

This midrash contains a profound message that is deeply relevant to our times. The cemetery symbolizes the fact that there are people who are willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Under these conditions, the country is near. Our country, the State of Israel, has a cemetery before it that contains graves of our sons and daughters who have sacrificed themselves so that the country can remain close to us. The proximity between the cemetery and the country signifies a bond between the two that must not be severed. There is no country without a cemetery, and there are no graves without a country. At the same time, the cemetery must be somewhat distant from the city; thus, Bava Batra 2:9 teaches that one should distance... the graves from the city fifty cubits. But even as life must inexorably carry on, we are committed to perpetuating and building the country while keeping our memories front of mind, deepening our understanding of the price others have paid and the price we continue to pay. The people of our country owe their lives to the cemetery and are committed to fulfilling the dreams of the fallen.

On the upcoming Independence Day, it is essential for us to deeply contemplate the concept of mutual responsibility for all facets of Israeli society. Does our entire society understand what mutual responsibility is and what it demands from each and every one of us? It seems to me that the answer to this is not a simple yes and that certain segments of society will need to engage in introspection. Mutual responsibility is not confined to religious devotion; that is part of the concept but not its entirety. The directive of Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor calls upon us to take physical risks for the sake of others. At the same time, mutual responsibility is not just a blood covenant but also a spiritual covenant that is interwoven with the blood covenant. Only when these two covenants unite will redemption come.

This year, more than any other, we must recommit ourselves to both dimensions of the demand for mutual responsibility. In this way, we may yet merit the reward promised by the rabbis: If you see troubles looming over you, you will be redeemed immediately, as it states, May the Lord answer you on a day of distress.

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Contemplating mutual responsibility ahead of Independence Day - The Jerusalem Post

(JTA) - As an undergraduate student, I used to delight in small rebellions. I would pen papers trying to show how different facets of Jewish observance developed, at times differently from what we were told in school.

I spent an inordinate amount of time one semester excavating books from the library to interrogate the mourning practices of the time period called the Omer, the seven weeks between Passover and Shavuot we are in the midst of now.

The practice of counting each day between Passover and Shavuot is commanded in the Bible, but over time these days have become chiefly seen as a period of mourning in observant communities. The Talmud notes that over these seven weeks, 24,000 students of the famed sage Rabbi Akiva died because they did not treat each other with respect.

While the Talmud does not explicitly connect this to any mourning practices, most observant Jews today do. In my Jewish day school, we learned that the deaths of Rabbi Akivas students is the reason we dont perform weddings, celebrate engagements or host big parties during this time. Some people refrain from buying new clothes, listening to music or even getting a haircut.

Most Jews who observe these practices continue them until the 33rd day of the Omer, known as Lag Baomer, which is celebrated as the day on which the great mystic Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai died. His death signified a joyful reunification with God and marked the end of the deaths of the students.

These strictures bothered me mostly because the story behind them felt tenuous. My exploration seemed to prove me right - these practices developed over time, and not in the way I was taught. I wrote about how mourning practices were not introduced in talmudic times, but much later.

Around the ninth century, for example, we first see weddings and engagements prohibited. As the centuries rolled on - especially in medieval Ashkenaz - more and more mourning was added to these days and tied to the students of Rabbi Akiva.

There are good reasons to wonder about all of this. The famed medieval authority Maimonides, who systematically categorized all of Jewish law, didnt include these mourning practices in any of his extensive writings, an omission that hints at their late development. And some scholars suggest they became especially important in medieval times because Jews experienced the tragedies of the crusades and found in these rituals of mourning an acute relevance to their own grief.

When I submitted the paper to my professor, I felt a bit triumphant. I had taken a tradition that most around me observed uncritically and excavated its layers of historical development. But as Ive grown a bit more mature, I realize how wrongheaded my approach was - not because I tried to understand a tradition or its development, but in thinking that the Jewish observance of this sacred time should be valued less for being the product of history.

Thats because the Jewish calendar wasnt (only) set by God. The biblical commandment to mark the new month inaugurated a practice of marking time, which Jews have done ever since. We have added rabbinic holidays like Hanukkah and Purim to biblical holidays and infused our days and months with meaning inspired by different Jews across time and space.

Daniel Sperber, an expert in the development of Jewish customs, poignantly observes that the Ashkenazi tradition of mourning during the Omer reflects the tragedy of the persecutions of Tatnu [the first crusade in the 11th century]. Blood touched blood; the blood of Rabbi Akivas disciples is mixed with the blood of the martyrs of Ashkenaz, who sacrificed themselves for the sanctification of Gods name.

To observe Jewish time then is to be bound by Jewish peoplehood and Jewish solidarity. Its to live our lives not guided by scientific history, but by a memory that commands and rewards us with ties of fraternity and even love. That means that when I mourn during the Omer, I am connected to my people - connected to the talmudic rabbis who described a massive tragedy that occurred to an entire generation of students, and connected to every tragedy thereafter that moved Jews to add more grief to these days.

This coming week we will mark Yom Hazikaron, the day of remembrance for fallen Israeli soldiers and victims of terror who were killed since the state of Israel was established in 1948. This day was created in 1951 to honor those who paid the ultimate price for creating a safe refuge for Jews - a day to which new names are added every year, and which after October 7 will hit many of us much harder.

We will then transition to Yom Haatzmaut, the day celebrating the establishment of the state of Israel, a day connecting us to the millions of Jews whose prayers for Zion across generations have been given new life in our lifetime.

This year, when I mourn and then celebrate Israel, I will not just be reaffirming my commitment to how Jews have continued to add to and develop the Jewish calendar, but I will honor how that living and breathing calendar links generations of Jews together in solidarity.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media, or of The Jerusalem Post.

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Israel's Independence Day is a time for mourning and celebration - Opinion - The Jerusalem Post

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 37a) teaches that if a person saves a life, it is as if he were responsible for saving an entire universe.

There is an apocryphal story of a child who was drowning in the sea and was saved from the clutches of the current by a passing stranger.

The parents, a well-to-do couple, thanked the rescuer with heartfelt gratitude and offered a magnanimous reward. The hero declined graciously and said to the child, I am happy that I was able to save your life, now go and spend the rest of it ensuring it was a life worth saving; that will be my reward.

I was reminded of this by a story I came across this week on Facebook. It was posted on the page of EFRAT, an organization that was established by a modern-day hidden tzadik (righteous person), Dr. Eli Schussheim, in 1977, and which provides women (and couples) with what they describe as a full safety net of support emotional, financial, medical, physical, and even vocational to empower them to give birth with confidence, joy, and dignity.

In essence, EFRAT provides financial and psychological support to people who are considering termination of pregnancy, not because they want to, but because they feel they cannot cope, either with the additional financial burden or with the added stresses that inevitably arrive with the precious bundle of joy.

To date, they have assisted 86,000 women to fulfil their dream of motherhood and, in so doing, saved myriad worlds.

The Facebook post that someone sent me stated: I need to tell you this story. My son is serving in Gaza right now. He was mobilized on that dark Shabbat day of October 7. In the first week, he called me and let me know that they were lacking basic equipment. Immediately, as any father would do, I started calling around to see if anyone could help. By chance, I heard from a friend that EFRAT was fundraising for the supplies my son needed.

EFRAT. The memories started flooding back. I had shivers down my spine because, 20 years ago, my wife wanted to have an abortion. At the time, we were a wreck money-wise. But EFRAT insisted that if we wanted to have the baby, they wouldnt abandon us. They promised us that they would help look after the baby. And they delivered.

When the baby was born, they outfitted us with a new stroller, a crib, a full layette truly everything we needed to bring the baby home. Afterward, for two years, every month we would receive a package full of pacifiers, formula, diapers, and more. Everything with abundance, kindness, and discretion.

Here we are today. My baby, my pride and joy, is all grown up, serving in an elite unit, protecting lives. Ensuring new life. Just like EFRAT did.

When I read this, like many readers, I was greatly moved, but I was also transported back about 35 years.

Back then, in what seems like a different universe altogether, I was a rookie young doctor, full of enthusiasm, energy, and a large dose of naivety, working in a family practice in the UK.

A lady came to consult because she was pregnant and couldnt face the stresses of another child. She hadnt told her husband. She was a wreck; not sleeping, not eating, and constantly tearful. She requested that I refer her for a termination.

We talked it through for what seemed like an eternity, and I did what today would be considered to be breaking every rule in the book: I gave my opinion! I suggested that she find the courage to discuss it with her husband, reconsider, sleep on it some more, and then come back to me to discuss it again.

After a week or so, she returned and told me that she and her husband had decided to continue with the pregnancy. I felt I had done the right thing, and the whole episode was never mentioned again, either by me or the mother, on the numerous occasions we met in my clinic over the years.

However, secretly, I watched, from a distance, how this delightful little girl grew up, went to school, graduated, and was a source of joy to her parents and grandmother, all of whom were my patients. Whenever I saw any of the family, I desperately wanted to ask them how R was doing, but I didnt, of course.

I smiled a warm smile to myself when I read in the local newspaper all the good wishes that she received on her 21st birthday, but perhaps one of the highlights of my long career as a family doctor was, when, completely out of the blue, I received an invitation to a wedding.

On the beautifully printed gold-edged invitation, the brides name had been underlined, and in tiny handwritten letters below were the words, Without you, this would never have happened. Thank you.

Today, that little girl is a mother herself, and another entire world has begun.

How wise is the Talmud, and how wonderful is the organization called EFRAT.

The writer is a rabbi and physician living in Ramat Poleg, Netanya, and is a co-founder of Techelet-Inspiring Judaism.

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Honoring EFRAT: An organization that provides support to parents - The Jerusalem Post

How Yeshivas Ohr Elchonon Chabad illuminates the world one Talmid at a time. Full Story, Video

Esther 8:16 Talmud Bavli, Megillah 16b

We recite it every Havdalah. It is sourced in the Megillah. It describes the spirit of the Jewish people. It captures the month(s) of Adar. It is who we are.

It is light. It is what the world needs. It is what our Torah, our Bochurim, our Yeshiva radiates into existence.

As our name illuminates, Yeshivas Ohr Elchonon Chabad is anchored in and emanates Ohr, Light. As our sages teach, Light is Torah. The tower of Torah, the lighthouse of learning, the beacon of brilliance that is YOEC infuses every Bochur, every student with a joyous thirst for divine knowledge and heartwarming burn for Yiddishkeit.

Yeshivas Ohr Elchonon Chabad is a Migdal Ohr that, with every wick of wisdom and every spark of spirit, we illuminate our Bochurim by the light of Torah as it is illuminated by Chassidus.

Every candle requires one thing: fuel. Without fuel, we cannot be the Ohr we have to be for our students. This is why we have ignited Our Ohr campaign.

In this month of joy, of increase, of celebrationespecially this year, a leap year, where there is a double measure of everythingwe invite you to give light by partnering with us in our annual Charidy Campaign.

OUR OHR! Give Light.

PLEASE GO TO CHARIDY.COM/YOEC TO HELP BRING LIGHT TO OUR PEOPLE!

Your generosity is essential and your fuel is energizing. It powers and brightens our students, our community, and our world.

The joyous month of Adar proves that light (Torah) never stops, light (Torah) always grows, light (Torah) always glows.

Thank you for being our essential partner in this eternal mission. Thank you for giving what you can and sharing this profound message. For the Jewish people there was, is, and always will be light.

In your merit, and the merit of all the Torah, the Orah, that you generate, surely the eternal will saturate this world with the coming of the eternal Redemption speedily in our days.

Click here to donate now.

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For the Yehudim There Was Light - COLlive

SUBCULTURE VULTURE: A Memoir in Six Scenes, by Moshe Kasher

About three-quarters of the way through his new memoir, Subculture Vulture, the writer and comedian Moshe Kasher warns that, right about now, readers might want to bail and head to YouTube: Hes about to explain the Talmud.

Kasher, whose first book chronicled his early youth, spent many of his childhood summers flying from his home in Oakland, Calif., to visit with his ultra-Orthodox father, who lived in a Hasidic community in Brooklyn. He describes swapping his As cap for a yarmulke as he prepared to live the life of Tevye the Milkman for a few weeks a year.

Despite his warning, Kasher makes short and only moderately sacrilegious work of the various holy texts and their significance. The Mishna is a written version of collected oral law, he explains. It was eventually written down when people realized the Jews werent so good at oral, he adds with, I can only imagine, a click of his teeth and a wink direct to camera. If that sort of joke isnt to your taste, hes right: Abandon ship now.

Talmudic studies la Kasher offer the same solid balance he demonstrates throughout the book. Youll probably learn something unless youve lived an identical life to his, which seems statistically impossible and laugh in roughly equal measure.

In Subculture Vulture, Kasher details his experiences within six distinct communities. First comes his account of growing up in Young Peoples Alcoholics Anonymous after landing in rehab at the age of 13. Later he immerses himself in sober partying and drug-selling within San Franciscos rave scene. He parlays his experience as a child of deaf adults in a yearslong career as a professional sign language interpreter, before a stint manning the entrance at Burning Man, and, ultimately, a career in comedy. And, of course, theres his time in Brooklyn.

These abridged accounts of his life serve as part history lesson, part standup set and, often, part love letter. My mother loves masturbation. Its kind of her thing. Farting and masturbation, he writes in the chapter about deafness. Kasher spares no details of her fondness for a particularly loud vibrator or her unabashed flatulence. (Neither of which, he reminds us, his mother can hear.) He describes being the hearing child of two deaf parents as a nonconsensual sign language interpretation internship program. Still, by the chapters end, Kashers fondness for his mother and the deaf community is unmistakable.

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Book Review: Subculture Vulture, by Moshe Kasher - The New York Times

The Jews occupied a unique geographic position in the Middle East: they lived in a strategic place, the transit point between three continents, a coveted place for all the large imperial powers of the time. They had a unique philosophy: the Jews worshiped one and only one God, declared this God to be invisible and, on top of it, proclaimed that there were no other gods. This only brought on them the ire of all the imperial powers of the time, like the Greeks and the Romans, who worshiped a variety of multiple idols. And they had a unique history: Remember that we were slaves in Egypt, parents told to their children during the Passover meal, from time immemorial. This is central to the Jewish ethos. What other people would include in their primordial mythos that they descended from slaves? This did not sit well with the great powers of that era, for which slavery was a very profitable endeavor, vital for their economy. All this unique geographic position, unique philosophy, and unique history put the Jews at odds with their surroundings. The result was that they lost their territorial center through frequent wars and became dispersed. Most historians set the origin of this dispersion (the Jewish Diaspora) in the years 66-73 CE, during the Jewish revolt against the Roman Empire, that ended with the destruction of Jerusalem. However, the true catastrophic event for the Jewish people was their last revolt against the Roman Empire, in years 132-136 CE, known as the Bar Kokhba Revolt, for the name of their leader. In this last rebellion, 985 villages in Judea were destroyed and around 580,000 Jews perished. [1]

Judea under Bar Kochba rule (132-136 CE). (courtesy of the author)

After the Jewish rebellion in Judea was crushed, the Romans barred the remaining Jews from living in Jerusalem, and merged the Roman provinces of Syria and Judea, under one unified province, renamed Syria Palaestina. The origin of the name Palaestina is unclear: some identify it with an ancient people that used to live in times past in the coastal area, the Philistines. Having just eliminated the Jews of Judea physically, it seems that the Romans decided to eliminate also the name Judea from the maps. Since then, the name Palestine stuck in all the Western literature as the land (or former land) of the Jews.

After the destruction of Judea in the 2nd century CE, the center of Jewish life in Palestine moved from the mountainous region of Judea to the Galilee, what is now northern Israel. In the course of several centuries the Jews in Galilee created two monumental works that shaped for centuries the life of the Jews in the Diaspora: the Jerusalem Talmud and the Aleppo Codex.

The Jerusalem Talmud was originally written by rabbinic sages in Tiberias, a town by the Sea of Galilee, in the 4th century (a century later, a second version of the Talmud, known as the Babylonian Talmud, was written by the Jewish center in Babylon, today Iraq). The importance of the Talmud cannot be understated: with the Jewish State gone and Jews living under foreign occupation in Palestine, or in foreign lands in the diaspora, the rabbinic sages pondered the question of how to preserve Jewish life in such conditions. The answer was the Talmud: an encyclopedic compilation of myriads of examples and teachings covering all the subjects of Jewish life, from Jewish customs, to religious and civil affairs. The Talmud became for centuries the main source of Jewish survival in the Diaspora: Jews in the Diaspora followed the Talmud for guidance in everything related to earthly and spiritual affairs.

The following figure shows a page of the Jerusalem Talmud found in the geniza of the Ben Ezrah synagogue in Fustat, Egypt. (Remember the name Fustat: we will find it again when talking about the Aleppo Codex).

A page of the Jerusalem Talmud, found in the geniza (storage room) of Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, Egypt. (source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yerushalmi_Talmud.jpg )

The Aleppo Codex a special text of the Bible was written in Tiberias around 930 CE. It became the most authoritative version of the Hebrew Bible, followed by the Jews in the Diaspora.

Written Hebrew only uses the consonants: vowels are not printed. If you check the archeological remains of ancient Hebrew texts written two thousand years ago in the Land of Israel, you will not find vowels in these texts. No one needed them, because Jews lived then in Israel, Hebrew was quite natural to them, and it was clear to all how to read and pronounce the words in the sacred texts, even if no vowels were indicated in them. If you check the Sacred Scrolls of the Bible today in any synagogue over the world, there are no vowels either written in the text. So how come, Jews so far apart in time and space, today in New York, in Buenos Aires, in London, in Moscow and in Jerusalem, preserved for 2,000 years the phonetics of the Hebrew language and manage to read and pronounce the words in the Bible with such uniformity during the long centuries of dispersion in the Diaspora?

The answer can be found in Tiberias, the city at the shores of the Sea of Galilea. The Jewish sages in Tiberias came to the help of their brethren in the Diaspora: they meticulously added the vowels to all the words in a copy of the Bible, and not only vowels but also diacritical marks so people would know how to pronounce each word with the correct stressed syllable, and thus, the Aleppo Codex was born.

The following two figures show the difference between a standard Bible text you can find today in a synagogue and the biblical text as it appears in the Aleppo Codex:

text in a standard scroll of the Bible. (courtesy of the author)

Notice in the figure above that, for example, the last word in the text (fourth row, to the right) is the word Israel in Hebrew. Notice the absence of vowels, or any marks above and below the word Israel or any other word in the text.

To the right is shown a paragraph of the Aleppo Codex. To the left, the word Israel that appears in the paragraph is reproduced and magnified. (courtesy of the author)

Notice that, in the Aleppo Codex text, the vowels in the word Israel were added below the letters. In addition to the vowels, the Aleppo Codex includes diacritical marks for the correct pronunciation of the words.

The Aleppo Codex, due to circumstances described below, was not kept in Tiberias for long. It circulated between the Jewish communities in the Middle East. The following figure shows this history of its itinerary [2[).

The travel history of the Aleppo Codex (early dates are approximate) (map from: https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/hebrew-bible/travelogue-of-the-aleppo-codex/, arrows and text to the right added by the author)

The movement from Tiberias to Jerusalem in year 1030, may be related to a major earthquake along the Jordan Valley, in 1033, which might have damaged Tiberias. The movement from Jerusalem to Egypt was related to historic events in the region: The book had been caught by the Christian Crusaders, during their military expeditions in 1095-1291, and was redeemed by the Jewish community in Egypt by paying a ransom. Fustat, the city in Egypt where the Aleppo Codex was moved to after it was retrieved from the Crusaders, had an important Jewish community: The Jewish philosopher and physician Maimonides (1138-1204) lived in Fustat.

The book was later moved from Fustat to Aleppo, in Syria, in year 1375. The movement of the Aleppo Codex from Fustat to Aleppo, may be related to the deterioration of the conditions of Jews (and Christians Copts) in Egypt during the rule of the Mamelukes. It is known that severe persecution and attacks against non-Muslims happened in 1354, close to the date when the Aleppo Codex was moved out of Egypt.

The Jewish community in Aleppo had the book for almost 600 years (hence, its name Aleppo Codex), until the pogrom in 1947, when the synagogue where it was kept was burnt. During the exodus of the Jews from Syria, following the pogroms in Aleppo (1947) and Damascus (1949), the book disappeared and, somehow, found its way to the recently born state of Israel, and it is now kept in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

The Aleppo Codex, presently kept in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem (courtesy of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem)

References

[1] These numerical figures were provided by the Roman historian Cassius Dio (born 150, died 235 CE), in his History of Rome, 69.14.1-2, cited in:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Kokhba_revolt

[2] Travelogue of the Aleppo Codex

Travelogue of the Aleppo Codex

Lexicon:

Geniza: storage area in a Jewish synagogue designated for the storage of worn-out Hebrew-language books and papers on religious topics, prior to proper cemetery burial.

The Cairo Geniza is a collection of some 400,000 Jewish manuscript fragments that were kept in the geniza of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat, Egypt. These manuscripts span the entire period of Middle-Eastern, North African, and Spanish Jewish history between the 6th and 19th centuries CE, and comprise the largest and most diverse collection of medieval manuscripts in the world.

The above is an excerpt of a new chapter (Lesson 4) in my book The root of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the path to peace (February 2024 edition). The edition has also two chapters dedicated to the present Hamas-Israel war (Lessons 8 and 9). The book can be downloaded for free at:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/364057784_The_root_of_the_Arab-Israeli_conflict_and_the_path_to_peace

(The book is also available in a Spanish edition, and it is also available at Amazon)

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Palestine, the Jews, the Talmud and the Aleppo Codex | Jaime Kardontchik | The Blogs - The Times of Israel

There are moments in which the Torah we learn jumps off the page and morphs into something completely different than what appeared at the outset.

As I was searching for inspiring Torah to write for this column, I came across a beautiful dvar Torah by Rabbi Aviva Richman of the Hadar Yeshiva. It was so instantly resonant that it was as if it had been sent for this purpose.

The beginning of the Book of Exodus opens with the terrible loss of baby boys as they are cruelly thrown into the Nile. In this weeks Torah portion, as the Children of Israel are leaving Egypt, they are leaving behind their dead children mired in their watery graves.

Richman analyzes two midrashim that I had never paid close attention to because of their fantastical content. Both describe a reality in which these babies miraculously survive! However, there are significant distinctions between them that yield contrasting ideas.

In the first, the parents reunite with their children on the banks of the Reed Sea.

How do we know that the sons thrown into the Nile River went up with their parents out of Egypt? The Holy One, blessed be He, hinted to the angel appointed over the water who spit them out into the desert. They ate and drank and procreated there... and when the Children of Israel were on the banks of the sea, these sons appeared opposite them and opened their mouths and cried out, These are our fathers!

Immediately, their fathers opened their mouths [in response to this miracle] and said, This is my God and I will glorify Him. The sons [then] said, God of my father and I will elevate Him (Otzar Midrashim Minyan 1:17).

In this midrash, the glorification of God comes after the parents are reunited with their lost children on opposite sides of the Reed Sea. While the children are not part of the initial exodus from Egypt, they join the nation in this singular moment of redemption. In Richmans words, the midrash is suggesting that leaving Egypt would not be meaningful if parents had to leave their children behind.

Only now, in this moment of joyous, miraculous reunion against all odds, parents, followed by their children, recognize the greatness of God and cry out in praise. Love for God is intertwined with love between parents and children, reflecting the midrashic idea that there are three partners in the creation of a child: mother, father, and God. When the partnership between God with parents and children is illuminated, as in this midrashic moment, it is cause for exaltation and celebration of the divine.

In a parallel midrash in Exodus Rabbah, the story is told somewhat differently. The narrative begins with the daughters of Israel seducing their husbands in order to continue procreating, despite Pharaohs decree to kill the male babies. The women would give birth in secret in the fields, and the babies would be provided for by an angel sent by God to clean, care, and feed them.

The midrash in Exodus Rabbah 1:12 continues: Once the Egyptians became aware of them [the babies], they sought to kill them. A miracle was performed for them, and they were enveloped in the ground. They [the Egyptians] brought oxen and they plowed [the land] above them. After [the Egyptians] would leave, they [the babies] would sprout and emerge like the grass of the field.

Once they grew, they would come in flocks to their homes. When the Holy One, blessed be He, revealed Himself at the sea, they recognized Him first, as it is stated: This is my God and I will glorify Him (Exodus 15:2).

In this version of the midrashic narrative, the children return to their parents after they sprout wildly in the fields. They are thus part of the exodus experience. Furthermore, as Richman explains, it is they who recognize God at the sea and, in this way, introduce God to their parents.

Their direct experience with near death and salvation gives them the ability to see Gods providence in the world before their parents, who have only just emerged from the crippling experience of slavery and the near loss of their children.

THIS COLUMN is being written on a day in which 21 families were informed of the terrible loss of their sons during the fighting in Gaza, including a young man, Ariel Wolfstal, who grew up in my community in Elazar and married his childhood sweetheart, Sapir.

Last week, our community lost David Schwartz, and on the October 7 Hamas massacre, we lost Rinat Zagdon. Three beautiful young people with so much life to live and so much love to give to their family, friends, and Am Yisrael. We are only one community mirroring the myriad communities and families who are in deep mourning.

Before this war, I would have read the midrash dispassionately, trying to understand and teach the literary underpinnings to the interpretation and the midrashs incredible ability to weave verses from throughout the Bible to enrich the narrative.

But today, when I rediscovered these midrashim, all I hear is incredible yearning for children who have died before their time to be united with their parents; to feel Gods presence; to sense salvation at times of unending darkness.

One final point. I give a weekly Gemara shiur at the home of Ariel Wolfstals mother, where we study the Talmudic tractate Bava Batra. The first chapter is about the relationship between neighbors, building walls, and the nitty-gritty of who owes what to whom, and when.

Last night, before the family was informed of the terrible news, we started learning about Reuben. His fields abut Simeons on three sides, and he decides to build fences on each side of Simeons field.

In the usual style of the Talmud, questions arose whether Simeon could be obligated to contribute to the cost of the walls. The Talmud talks about the makif (the one who surrounds) and the nikaf (the one who is surrounded). This morning, it occurred to me that those concepts have a much deeper significance. In moments of sorrow and loss, when we live in a community, we are either the ones surrounding a family in mourning (the makif) or being surrounded when we are experiencing a loss (nikaf).

While Bava Batra is filled with moments of conflict between neighbors (which is why good walls make good neighbors), those walls temporarily dissolve as we surge forward to hold, comfort, and surround those who mourn.

May the memories of Ariel, David, and Rinat, along with all of those who have fallen, be a blessing. May they help us see the presence of the divine in these moments of darkness.

The writer teaches contemporary Halacha at the Matan Advanced Talmud Institute. She also teaches Talmud at the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, as well as courses on sexuality and sanctity in the Jewish tradition.

See the article here:

Israel-Hamas War: Yearning for children lost before their time - The Jerusalem Post