Category Archives: Talmud

Congregation Beth Yeshuruns Rabbi Steve Morgen and his wife, Cantor Diane Dorf, will be this years Jewish representatives at the 36th-annual Houston Interfaith Thanksgiving Service, Nov. 18 at 7 p.m., at St. Philip Presbyterian Church, 4807 San Felipe St.

Religious leaders from nine faiths will share texts related to giving thanks from their own traditions. The event is sponsored by the Ecumenism Commission of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.

The theme this year is The Gift of Life.

While G-d manifests in different ways for different people, all religions give thanks, organizer Garland Pohl told the JHV. I hope in the future that we come together around common experiences like this Thanksgiving Service to make friends who we can rely upon each others support during challenging times.

Rabbi Morgen and Cantor Dorf are collaborating on their joint presentation. Cantor Dorf will chant three traditional morning blessings, thanking G-d for waking our souls and our bodies, and Rabbi Morgen will explain and interpret these blessings.

Rabbi Morgen has been involved with interfaith dialogue groups for many years, including as a board member of Interfaith Ministries, a contributor for programs at the Muslim Turquoise Center, and as a participant in several other groups of faith leaders who are committed to building a better understanding between peoples of all faiths.

Rabbi Morgen strongly believes in the power of dialogue as a way to heal the world.

Our society today is very polarized, Rabbi Morgen told the JHV. People are isolated into homogenous groups. When we dont interact with people of other faiths, there is a tendency for us to wonder what they think about us and fear the worst. And they, in turn, may wonder and fear what we think, believe and do. Fear can then lead to hostility.

By interacting with each other, we can break down barriers and realize that we are all human beings with much in common. We all want to improve our world, to be fair, honest and just.

Social media can enable this isolation and hinder us from having real interaction with people not like ourselves. Interfaith events broaden our own perspective and allow us to think more clearly about our own faith and be more accepting of people of other faiths.

Cantor Dorf emphasized that, in addition to giving thanks in prayer, Judaism commands us to give thanks through tzedakah.

At Thanksgiving, we can share our food and volunteer in ways that help those in need, Cantor Dorf told the JHV.

Rabbi Morgen emphasized the point. Judaism is about not just saying words but also taking action, he said. The Talmud teaches us to honor parents, do deeds of loving kindness, visit the sick, study, make peace between each other and many more acts of loving kindness.

One of my favorite quotes by [Rabbi] Abraham Joshua Heshel is A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of faith. And it is so much better if we can take that leap of action with people of other faiths. That has a multiplying effect that is more than the sum of its parts.

To register for the event or watch a live-stream, go to saintphilip.net/Interfaith.html, COVID protocols for wearing masks and social distancing will be observed.

See original here:

Community invited to Houston Interfaith Thanksgiving Service - Jewish Herald-Voice

By ohtadmin | on November 10, 2021

Weve all heard the story of why Hanukkah is celebrated for eight days. The Maccabees reclaimed the Temple but discovered that all of the oil to light the Temples menorah had been defiled except for one cruse. That cruse, we learned, was just enough oil to light the Menorah for one day, but a miracle ensued and the lights remained lit for eight days. What we dont all learn, however, is that this story is a late story appearing in the Talmud, and it is only one explanation for why Hanukkah is celebrated for eight days. Now, my goal is not to ruin Hanukkah for you, so if finding out that this story might not be the reason Hanukkah is celebrated for eight days would ruin the entire holiday, I encourage you to stop reading now. That said, in looking at another explanation we may find new meaning to a holiday weve been celebrating our entire lives.

In the Second Book of Maccabees (not included in the canon of the Tanakh) we read that upon reclaiming the Temple an eight-day celebration followed in the manner of the Feast of Booths (Sukkot) remembering how not long before, during [Sukkot], they had been wandering like wild beasts in the mountains and the caves (10:6-8). The text goes on to talk about their lifting up palm fronds (the lulav). While it could be a coincidence that Sukkot (an eight-day festival including Shmini Atzeret) is mentioned in connection to another eight-day celebration taking place two months later, it most likely is not. It seems as though the Maccabees and their followers missed the Festival of Sukkot because they were fighting, and upon the end of their battle, they celebrated the neglected festival.

While quite different from the miracle of the oil, this does not have to change our Hanukkah celebrations. It can, however, leave us with a new value in this season. Too often we think of missed opportunities as permanent. In celebrating a second Sukkot a month and a half after the festival ended, the Maccabees and their followers teach us that its never too late for a second chance. As we prepare to enter our Hanukkah celebration at the end of this month, think about that conversation you meant to have but never did. As you light your Hanukkah lights, think about that joyous occasion you meant to celebrate but let slip by. As you eat your latkes, think about any other moments in life that slipped by, and embrace this lesson of the Maccabees. Take advantage of the opportunity to have a second chance.

Neis gadol haya sham A great miracle happened there. Whether or not one day of oil lasted eight days, the Maccabees victory was truly a miracle, and rather than mourning a missed festival, their combination of nostalgia and optimism led them to celebrate that missed opportunity with more passion than they would have the first time around. We can learn from both of these miracles by making the most of every opportunity and creating a second chance for those times in which we cant.

Rabbinically Speaking is published as a public service by the Jewish Press in cooperation with the Tampa Rabbinical Association which assigns the column on a rotating basis. The views expressed in the column are those of the rabbi and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Jewish Press or the TRA.

See the original post here:

The eight days of Hanukkah: The miracle of oil or a second Sukkot? - jewishpresstampa

I do not burn sage, said Zo Jacobi, who runs Jewitches, a popular blog and podcast that deep dives into ancient Jewish myths and folkloric practices. The sage-related ritual of smudging, an Indigenous ceremony popular among modern witches for cleansing a person or place of negative energy, is not a Jewish practice, she said. But Jews had crystals. Actually, they were called gems.

Jacobi and her peers are revitalizing ancient Jewish practices of witchcraft, which have been seeing something of a revival as of late. Far from having an uneasy relationship with magic practitioners, Judaism or at least Kabbalistic strands of it has long embraced them.

Jacobi, based in Los Angeles, studies those gems role in Jewish ritual, along with the connections between assorted other magical artifacts and Judaica. Eight shelves in her home are filled with books on Judaism as well as Jewish magic, witchcraft and folklore.

Her studies have revealed the historical ways that items like gems have been used in Jewish magical correspondences. Like healing crystals, gems are meant to protect and heal based on their properties, according to Midrash (Numbers Rabbah 2:7). For example, sapphire was thought to strengthen eyesight.

Its in a medieval text called the Sefer Ha-Gematriaot, Jacobi said. But even if we go to the Torah, we see crystals on the breastplates of the kohanim (high priests of Israel).

Many Jewish rituals today have their roots in warding off demons, ghosts and other mythological creatures. When we break glass at a wedding, scholars say, were not just remembering the destruction of the Temple; were also scaring off evil spirits that may want to hurt the bride and groom. Likewise, ancient Jews believed that the mezuzah protected them from messengers of evil a function parallel to that of an amulet, or good-luck charm.

The mezuzah is absolutely an amulet, said Rebekah Erev, a Jewish feminist artist, activist and kohenet (Hebrew priestexx, a gender-neutral term for priest or priestess) who uses the pronouns they/them and teaches online courses on Jewish magic. I consider it to be a reminder of the presence of spirit, of goddess, of shechinah [the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God]. Much of magic is about reminding ourselves that were all connected and that everything is alive and animate.

The moniker Jewitch itself can be seen as controversial within the group. Erev first heard the term while attending a 2014 Jewitch Collective retreat in the Bay Area.

I feel that any word that identifies someone as a witch is controversial in nature because of how society, including Jewish society, has demonized witches leading to violence and ostracizing, Erev said. To be a Jew and to be a witch has had serious repercussions throughout time. I hope the recent popularity of the term Jewitch will bring more acceptance and understanding of both identities and help to make our practices more widely accessible.

Priestexx Rebekah Erev calls the mezuzah an amulet. (Vito Valera)

I feel that any word that identifies someone as a witch is controversial in nature because of how society, including Jewish society, has demonized witches leading to violence and ostracizing, they said, even though they do consider both witchcraft and Judaism to be major tenets of their life.

Cooper Kaminsky, a Denver-based intuitive artist and healer, concurred that the portmanteau was revisionist to some, but added, Many, including myself, are empowered by identifying as a Jewitch.

Historically, as Judaic practices grew more patriarchal, women were exempt from studying the Talmud and Torah. They knew little Hebrew, so they created their own prayers in Yiddish, used herbal remedies and centered their religious practices around the earth.

Erev mirrors these customs by creating magical rituals, like meditating on cinnamon sticks during the month of Shvat, hearkening back to how cinnamon trees in Jerusalem scented the land during the harvest.

Theres a Kabbalistic idea of making oneself smaller for creation to emerge. Connecting with a cinnamon stick is a simple ritual. The cinnamon folds in, and the bark contracts in on itself, Erev said. Sometimes contracting inward can give us space to emerge and create.

They also do spellwork, creating spells for new love, pregnancy protection and social justice; on their blog, they shared an incantation designed to bring more awareness to Indigenous Land Back movements.

The goal of many Jewitch educators and practitioners, they say, is to shine a light on rituals that have been forgotten or buried for self-preservation. Jacobi believes that many folkloric practices died out following the 13th-18th centuries because, at the time, Jews were viewed as demonic witches.

Jewish communities did what they thought would protect them from literal certain death. Some of that came at the expense of some of these practices, Jacobi said. Instead of the supernatural reasons, they tried to give rational reasons for what they were doing. Ashkenazi Jews routinely tried to debate with their oppressors in the hopes that they could out-logic antisemitism.

This traumatic history, the Jewitches say, is often papered over or dismissed as myths and superstitions. Saying superstition is a way that we downplay our magic, Kaminsky said. We protect ourselves because, historically, a huge part of our oppression has been because were magical.

Almost all of our Jewish spells are for the sake of healing, says Cooper Kaminsky. (Colin Lloyd)

Kaminsky, who uses the pronouns they/them, does spiritual readings for clients that draw upon Kabbalah, Tarot and the Akashic records a reference library of everything that has ever happened, which spiritual mediums believe resides in another dimension. Kaminskyincorporates Jewish prayers into their spellwork, like reciting the Psalms of David when doing candle spells and the Bsheim Hashem as a magical invocation.

Kaminsky, who uses the pronouns they/them, grew up in a Conservative Jewish household and learned the basic concepts of Kabbalah in Jewish day school.

Kabbalah looks at Judaism through a cosmic, mystical lens that clicked for me a lot more than looking at a story from the Torah, Kaminsky said. As I read more Kabbalah, I started feeling more connected to my Judaism.

Various scholars and rabbis have linked Kabbalah to Tarot, a deck of cards originally used in the mid-15th century to play games that evolved to divinatory practices in the 18thcentury (though Jacobi, for one, refutes this idea, claiming the connection has never been proven). The Tarots Major Arcana the trump cards of the deck, which detail the evolution of ones soul usually make up 22 cards in any given pack, a meaningful Jewish number: the same as the number of letters in the aleph-bet, and the number of pathways on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

For their energy work, Kaminsky draws parallels between the chakras, energy points in the body discussed in Hinduism, and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life is an energy network, they said. Theres the meridians of energy, and the chakras are like the middle pillar.

Mystical practices were a part of Jacobis upbringing. Her parents practiced Kabbalah, metaphysics, folklore and folk mythology. They have attended the same local Chabad since Jacobi was three years old.

Thanks to these experiences, Jacobi is comfortable living out of the (broom) closet a tongue-in-cheek term that some modern witches use to refer to openly practicing witchcraft. She grew up with astrology, used tarot cards on Shabbat and played with her mothers rose quartz crystal ball while her father led Havdalah prayers. The Jewitches blog and podcast are filled with mythological creatures with origins in Jewish beliefs, like dybbuks, werewolves, dragons and vampires.

Some creatures are unique to Jewish lore:the vampiric Alukah, a blood-sucking witch referred to in Proverbs 30, turned out to be Liliths daughter, while a Broxa originated as a bird from medieval Portugal that drank goats milk and sometimes human blood during the night.

Whenever there have been dire times throughout history, people have turned to mysticism; thats how Kabbalah emerged, Erev said. We need to look to our ancestors for guidance. There are a lot of tools in our human community for healing and re-dreaming and creating a world that is safe and generative for all beings.

Kaminsky thinks magic has the power to repair the world: Almost all of our Jewish spells are for the sake of healing. Tikkun olam, using our magic to repair the world, is beautiful.

Continue reading here:

Season of the Jewitch: The Occultists who Blend Witchcraft and Jewish Folklore - Jewish Journal

31 October 2021 GIL ZOHAR

Qiryat Luza, West BankReligion Unplugged

For Israeli Jews, the month of Cheshvan is sometimes called Mar Cheshvan - meaning the bitter Cheshvan - since it is the only month in the Hebrew lunar calendar that does not include a holy day, or at least a holiday.

But those feeling the need to celebrate Gods graciousness can visit the village of Qiryat Luza atop Mount Gerizim - to the south of the Palestinian city of Nablus - to join in the seven-day Biblical harvest festival ofSukkot,which Samaritans observed from 20th to 26th October - one month after Jews.

Mount Gerizim. PICTURE: Gil Zohar.

The ranks of the once mighty Samaritan people reached three million in Biblical times but were reduced by persecution and apostasy to 146 by 1918. Today they number 814,half of whom live here on this picturesque mountaintop in the West Bank. The other half live in Holon, a city on the coastal plain adjoining Tel Aviv to the south 75 kilometres to the west.

In this special week just passed, they observed the Sukkot holiday, a harvest festival that celebrates the protection God provided to the children of Israel when they left behind slavery in Egypt and wandered in the desert.

Speaking in a mixture of Arabic, Hebrew and English, community spokesman Hosni Wasef explained that some 90 sukkot - a term that also refers to temporary tabernacle huts made for the holiday - had been erected in Kiryat Luza and slightly fewer in Holon.

Sitting barefoot, he recently welcomed a group of journalists in the parlor of his spacious, elegant apartment that doubles as his office. The modern stone-clad, three-floor, concrete building erected in 1994 adjoins the traditional site of the Paschal lamb sacrifice ceremony held in April. The trenches were filled with garbage thrown there by children, his daughter Selwa noted with some embarrassment.

Wasef, the director of the Samaritan Museum here and the younger brother of High PriestAbdallah Wasef, proudly noted he haswritten 20 books about his people and their faith. He calls himself a leading figure globally in the study of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt - which, like for Jews, marks the beginning of their peoplehood. His brother, 85, has served as high priest for the last seven years, and will continue do so until his death, when he will be replaced by the eldest member of his priestly family.

The Samaritans celebrateSukkotevery year, beginning on the full moon of Tishrei 15, just as the worlds Jews do. But since the sect - which traces its origins to the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the tribes of Ephraim, Menasseh and Levi - doesn't accept the rabbinic calendar reforms from the Talmudic period in the sixth century, their Bible-based holy days sometimes fall one month later. While Judaism fixes the order of the seven leap years in a 19-year cycle, the high priest decides when the extra months will occur. Hence the disparity in the calendars.

Unlike Jews, who build their sukkot outside, the Samaritans construct their elaboratesukkotindoors, suspended from a frame attached to the living room ceiling. They have been doing so for the last 1,500 years. In the Byzantine period, the Samaritans were persecuted, and their outdoorsukkotwere often vandalised by their Christian neighbours.

Like Jews, they utiliseskhahk - greenery such as palm fronds - to cover theirsukkot, but only the top layer. Beneath the palm leaves, the Samaritan sukkot is decorated with fruit and vegetables arranged in decorative geometric patterns and hung like a chandelier from a permanent ceiling mount.

The colourful display in remembrance of the Garden of Eden can often involve 100 kilograms of seasonal fruit, such as pomegranates, apples, guavas, oranges, peppers and, of course,etrogim-citrons, the Biblical citrus fruit that is akin to a lemon. The display is rounded out with colored lights and foil decorations that might be used for Christmas or Ramadan.

Samaritan High Priest Abdallah Wasef. PICTURE: Gil Zohar.

Symbolising the Samaritans confusing status in the middle of Israelis and Palestinians, Selwa pointed out that water is provided by Israel while electricity comes from the Palestinian Authority grid. At that moment, a PA garbage truck rolled by with a sign noting it was from Turkey. Some Samaritans hold Israeli, Palestinian and Jordanian passports, her father said.

Interviewed in his home - one floor below his brothers apartment - Abdallah Wasef wore a traditional robe made from golden silk imported from Damascus and a red turban on his head, wrapped with a white cloth.

We are seekers of peace, he explained in Arabic. We are living between the Jews and the Palestinians. Both are supporting us. Peace is better than war.

And what of the future?

Without hesitation, the elderly high priest replied that the ruins of the temple in the national park atop Mount Gerizim, marking the spot Samaritans believe Abraham was ready to offer up his son Isaac as a sacrifice, will be rebuilt when God wants, when the time comes.

The religion and history of the SamaritansAfter the death of King Solomon in about 920 BC, his northern subjects gathered at Shechem - modern-day Nablus - to secede, rejecting his arrogant heir Rehoboam (I Kings 12:1-20). The breakaway kingdom bolstered its political independence from Judah by theologically challenging the beliefs of the old kingdom.

The Samaritans maintained that Gods chosen site for his sanctuary was Mount Gerizim, an 881-metre peak looming over Shechem from the south, rather than Mount Moriah in Jerusalem 63 kilometres to the south.

The Samaritan religion became fossilised in the centuries following the split between Israel and Judah. Very little innovation in thought, literature or social organisation has arisen over the millennia, affording a telescopic glimpse of the pristine Judaism of pre-Rabbinic times. Even the Hebrew font they use is ancient, preceding alphabet reforms made by Jews some two-and-a-half millennia ago.

The Samaritans call themselvesShamerim, meaning guardians of the truth. They hold as sacred the five books of Moses but have never accepted as canon the Prophets or Writings, or the Talmud - the compendium of Jewish oral law.

Their Torah, written on parchment in the ancient Hebrew alphabet, contains some 6,000 variants from the Masoretic Hebrew Bible. Most of these are discrepancies over spelling or pronunciation. Some, however, reflect the bitter historical and religious struggle waged in antiquity between the Samaritans and the Jews.

A Samarian Torah scroll. PICTURE: Gil Zohar.

For example, the Ten Commandments as they are known to Jews and Christian alike have been compressed into nine in the Samaritan version. A tenth commandment drawn up from passages in Deuteronomy 11 and 27 proclaims the sanctity of Mount Gerizim, the Mount of Blessing. The Samaritans observe only the biblical Holy Days: the New Year, Day of Atonement, Tabernacles (Sukkot), Pentecost (Shavuot) and Passover, the latter being their most important festival.

The communitys high priesttraces his genealogy back to the Biblical figure Uziel, son of Kohath, son of Levi. It was the Levites who assisted the Kohanim in their priestly duties in Solomons temple.

Until 1624, there had existed a chain of high priests descended from Eleazar, the son of Aaron and the nephew of Moses.

In addition to his official duties as final arbiter in matters of religion and as leader of religious ceremonies, Abdallah Wasef has encouraged the young to learn their historical and literary traditions from the communitys sages and has endeavoured to find matches for the unwed. More than half of Samaritans are under the age of 30.

In 722 BC, 200 years after the split between Solomons sons Jeroboam and Rehoboam, the Kingdom of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians. Many of the vanquished population were deported as slaves to Mesopotamia, or present-day Iraq. Vassal people living in what is now Syria at the border between Iran and Iraq were brought in their stead to settle the barren land.

Jewish tradition maintains that the Samaritans are the descendants of these colonisers who adopted some Israelite rituals (II Kings 17:24-29), a charge adamantly denied by the Samaritans.

The enmity between the Jews and Samaritans continued for centuries. The Hebrew prophets continually upbraided the northerners for their sins. Isaiah delivered a tongue-lashing against the drunkards of Ephraim (Isaiah 28:1), and the name Jezebel, the wife of King Ahab, has become a synonym for impudence and licentiousness.

The parable of the good Samaritan in the Gospels (Luke 10:2-37) obliquely refers to the acrimonious relations between the rival faiths. Jesus uses Samaritans as a metaphor for despised yet helping people, like the good Christian.

In the Talmud, Samaritans are disparagingly called Cutheans after the Babylonian city of Kuthah, one of the places from which the Assyrians relocated settlers.

At the beginning of the Christian era, upwards of a million Samaritans were living in the hill country and plains of central Palestine, and Nablus had developed into a major city. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus recounted the ancient love story that led to the construction of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim in 332 BC.

According to Josephus, a Jerusalem high priest named Menashe flouted Jewish law by marrying a Samaritan woman named Nikaso. Menashe was given the choice of leaving his wife or the temple cult. Nikasos father Sanballat, leader of the Samaritans, promised to build him an exact replica of the Jerusalem temple and make him high priest there.

In 170 BC, the Seleucid ruler Antiochus I converted the temple into a shrine to Zeus. Both the pagan sanctuary and the city below were razed by John Hyrcanus in 113 BC. The zealous Hasmonean king also conquered Idumea to the south, the homeland of the biblical Edomites, whom he forcibly converted to Judaism.

This tradition of persecution was continued by the Christian Byzantines, who built the Church of Mary Theotokos atop the ruins starting in AD 484. Throughout the centuries, the Samaritan population gradually dwindled, decimated by the crushed revolts against Byzantine rule in 444 and 555 and forced conversions.

With the conquest of the Holy Land by Muslims in 637, the Samaritans became a pariah people restricted to their ghettos and compelled to wear distinctive dress.

By the time of the Crusades, they were reduced from a great nation to a scattered and broken sect - one segment in their ancient homeland, another in Damascus and a third spread thinly along the coastal towns between Jaffa and Egypt.

By the middle of the 19th century, all settlements other than Nablus had been abandoned and their remaining members concentrated in the enclave at the foot of Mount Gerizim.

In 1918, when the British armys advance precipitated the collapse of the tottering Ottoman Empire toward the end of the World War I, the Samaritan population had been reduced to 146 souls. The ancient culture was on the brink of extinction.

In addition, the custom of endogamous marriage had led to dangerous inbreeding, resulting in a high percentage of genetic defects - including colour blindness, congenital respiratory deficiency and deafness. Moreover, male births outnumbered females two-to-one, resulting in an acute shortage of potential spouses.

The Samaritans were rescued from ultimate oblivion by Zionism and the beginning of large-scale Jewish immigration to Palestine in the early 1920s. At that time, some 54 Samaritans left the primitive conditions of the Nablus ghetto to live in Holon, a new Jewish settlement near the port city of Jaffa - predominantly Arab at the time - and the newly founded Jewish town of Tel Aviv.

Most of the settlers were members of two clans: the Tsedakah and Marhib. In 1924, one of these settlers, Yefet Tsedakah, met and married ahalutza - a Zionist pioneer - who had recently immigrated from Russia.

Their union was the first between the lines of Israel and Judah since the time of King Solomon. A number of such marriages have taken place in the ensuing decades, all between Samaritan men and female Jews. There is no male conversion procedure.

Throughout the years of British rule, the enclave in Holon remained static, numbering between 40 and 50. Following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, Israels War of Independence and Jordans annexation of Judea and Samaria - renamed the West Bank - the Samaritans were divided in two. Families left Nablus to join their kin in Holon, making the two communities roughly equal in number.

Samaritans'Passoverpilgrimage onMount Gerizim,West Bank. PICTURE:Edkaprov (Edward Kaprov)(licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

How Samaritans became divided, then unitedThe Samaritans of Holon were recognised as children of Israel under the Law of Return, Israels repatriation act, and became full-fledged citizens of the nascent Jewish state.

Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, Israels second President, took a personal interest in their integration. Due to his efforts, a self-contained neighbourhood, Shikun ha-Shomronim, was built in Holon in 1954. Nine years later, akinshah,or synagogue and community centre, were added.

The Samaritans of Holon gradually adjusted to the ethos of a modern Westernised society. The younger generation has become progressively acculturated, though resistive to religious assimilation so far. In external appearance, Holon Samaritans are indistinguishable from their Jewish neighbours and serve together with them in Tzahal, the Israel Defense Forces.

The 1949 truce secured in Rhodes, which ending hostilities between Israel and its Arab neighbours, contained a provision guaranteeing Israeli Samaritans the right to visit their relatives in Nablus and to participate in the Passover pilgrimage to Mount Gerizim. However, the Jordanians honored this agreement mainly in the breach, claiming it would infringe on security.

For the next 18 years, the Passover celebration was the sole occasion when most of the community was united. The Paschal lamb sacrifice became an annual assembly for matchmaking. In consultation with the high priest, prospective couples decided which partner would join the other to live in Israel or Jordan.

During this period, the Holon community became progressively more established and prosperous, and the Nablus community more impoverished and persecuted.

With the Israeli victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, the two communities were free to meet all year long. A feeling of national renaissance took hold. Never faltering in their belief that they are Gods chosen people and that the day will come when providence will again favour them, the Samaritans interpreted the reunion of their divided community as a divine omen.

Israels Civil Administration has indeed proven to be a blessing. The Samaritan presence in Nablus dovetails with right-wing Israeli desires to settle the Biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, notwithstanding Israels 1996 withdrawal from the city of 130,000. That year, Nablus Samaritans were granted Israeli citizenship.

The settlement of Qiryat Luza was built on Mount Gerizim, strategically overlooking Nablus, an-Najah University and the Balata refugee camp - all hotbeds of Palestinian nationalism and scenes of rioting during the uprising.

Archaeological excavations were carried out for 18 years, beginning in 1982, and led by Yitzhak Magen - the Israeli Civil Administrations chief archaeologist for the West Bank - as if to further strengthen the connection between past and present. In 2000, the Israel Antiquities Authority dedicated a 100-acre archaeological park comprising the Samaritan temple and other remains.

The 3,000-year-old rift between Jews and Samaritans has been healed. The Samaritans today may be seen as the pitiful remnant of a once-sovereign nation whose system of religious beliefs has been seemingly arrested in time, but they are also an illustration of how ethnic and religious conservatism can safeguard a minority group that would otherwise have vanished - almost without a trace.

Gil Zohar was born in Toronto, Canada, and moved to Jerusalem, Israel, in 1982. He is a journalist writing for The Jerusalem Post, Segula magazine, Religion Unplugged and other publications. Hes also a professional tour guide who likes to weave together the Holy Lands multiple narratives.

View post:

The Long Read: Samaritans number less than 1,000. Here's how their tradition survives in Israel - Sight Magazine

Travel

26 Oct, 2021 09:03 PM3 minutes to read

A rare ancient toilet in Jerusalem dating back more than 2,700 years, when private bathrooms were a luxury in the holy city. Photo / Yoli Schwartz, Israel Antiquities Authority via AP

Archaeological excavations in Jerusalem have revealed a 2,700-year-old toilet in an ancient, royal mansion.

The private toilet cubicle dated back to the end of the 7th century BCE and was unearthed in a building that overlooks the City of David archaeological site and the Temple Mount according to a press release from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).

The bathroom itself was a rectangular shape, carved from stone and around one by two meters wide. Meanwhile, the loo itself, made from limestone, sat over a deep septic tank and was designed for the best sitting experience possible.

Considered a bare essential in any home today, IAA's excavation director Yaakov Billig said back in the day, only the wealthiest could afford to splash out with a private toilet cubicle.

"A private toilet cubicle was very rare in antiquity, and to date, only a few have been found, mostly in the City of David," said Billig in a statement.

"Only the rich could afford toilets. In fact, a thousand years later, the Mishnah and the Talmud discuss the various criteria that define a rich person, and Rabbi Yossi [suggests that] to be rich is [to have] a toilet near his table.'"

IAA director Eli Eskisiod said it was fascinating to consider how something so common today would be considered a luxury to people during the reign of the kings of Judah.

Leaving no stone unturned, the team also dug into the septic tank and found several animal bones and pottery.

The study of such objects and materials could help shed light on the diet, lifestyle and diseases of people living during this period.

Further afield from the toilet, archaeologists also found evidence of a garden that had ornamental trees, fruit trees ad aquatic plants. These findings supposedly add to the impression that a well-off family had resided at the estate.

26 Oct, 2021 07:52 PMQuick Read

26 Oct, 2021 12:17 AMQuick Read

25 Oct, 2021 11:59 PMQuick Read

According to Billig, the estate may have been a residence of a king of Judah,

In March, dozens of pieces of a Dead Sea Scroll containing biblical text were discovered in the Judean Desert by archaeologists.

It had been around 60 years since the last fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls had been found, in a cave where Jewish rebels had hidden from the Roman Empire around 1,900 years earlier.

The team from IAA plan to present their findings at the conference taking place in Jerusalem this week called "Innovations in the Archaeology of Jerusalem and its Surroundings."

Continued here:

2,700-year-old private toilet discovered in Jerusalem - New Zealand Herald

(JTA) Occult practices and totems are a mainstay of Halloween season, and sage bundles, altars and crystals are an increasingly trendy way to dabble in divination and witchcraft. But the spooky supernatural world also has a long history in Judaism, and modern Jewitches are encouraging the connection though their practices often slightly differ from their non-Jewish contemporaries.

I do not burn sage, said Zo Jacobi, who runs Jewitches, a popular blog and podcast that deep dives into ancient Jewish myths and folkloric practices. The sage-related ritual of smudging, an Indigenous ceremony popular among modern witches for cleansing a person or place of negative energy, is not a Jewish practice, she said. But Jews had crystals. Actually, they were called gems.

Jacobi and her peers are revitalizing ancient Jewish practices of witchcraft, which have been seeing something of a revival as of late. Far from having an uneasy relationship with magic practitioners, Judaism or at least Kabbalistic strands of it has long embraced them.

Jacobi, based in Los Angeles, studies those gems role in Jewish ritual, along with the connections between assorted other magical artifacts and Judaica. Eight shelves in her home are filled with books on Judaism as well as Jewish magic, witchcraft and folklore.

Her studies have revealed the historical ways that items like gems have been used in Jewish magical correspondences. Like healing crystals, gems are meant to protect and heal based on their properties, according to Midrash (Numbers Rabbah 2:7). For example, sapphire was thought to strengthen eyesight.

Its in a medieval text called the Sefer Ha-Gematriaot, Jacobi said. But even if we go to the Torah, we see crystals on the breastplates of the kohanim (high priests of Israel).

Many Jewish rituals today have their roots in warding off demons, ghosts and other mythological creatures. When we break glass at a wedding, scholars say, were not just remembering the destruction of the Temple; were also scaring off evil spirits that may want to hurt the bride and groom. Likewise, ancient Jews believed that the mezuzah protected them from messengers of evil a function parallel to that of an amulet, or good-luck charm.

The mezuzah is absolutely an amulet, said Rebekah Erev, a Jewish feminist artist, activist and kohenet (Hebrew priestexx, a gender-neutral term for priest or priestess) who uses the pronouns they/them and teaches online courses on Jewish magic. I consider it to be a reminder of the presence of spirit, of goddess, of shechinah [the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God]. Much of magic is about reminding ourselves that were all connected and that everything is alive and animate.

The moniker Jewitch itself can be seen as controversial within the group. Erev first heard the term while attending a 2014 Jewitch Collective retreat in the Bay Area.

I feel that any word that identifies someone as a witch is controversial in nature because of how society, including Jewish society, has demonized witches leading to violence and ostracizing, Erev said. To be a Jew and to be a witch has had serious repercussions throughout time. I hope the recent popularity of the term Jewitch will bring more acceptance and understanding of both identities and help to make our practices more widely accessible.

Priestexx Rebekah Erev calls the mezuzah an amulet. (Vito Valera)

I feel that any word that identifies someone as a witch is controversial in nature because of how society, including Jewish society, has demonized witches leading to violence and ostracizing, they said, even though they do consider both witchcraft and Judaism to be major tenets of their life.

Cooper Kaminsky, a Denver-based intuitive artist and healer, concurred that the portmanteau was revisionist to some, but added, Many, including myself, are empowered by identifying as a Jewitch.

Historically, as Judaic practices grew more patriarchal, women were exempt from studying the Talmud and Torah. They knew little Hebrew, so they created their own prayers in Yiddish, used herbal remedies and centered their religious practices around the earth.

Erev mirrors these customs by creating magical rituals, like meditating on cinnamon sticks during the month of Shvat, hearkening back to how cinnamon trees in Jerusalem scented the land during the harvest.

Theres a Kabbalistic idea of making oneself smaller for creation to emerge. Connecting with a cinnamon stick is a simple ritual. The cinnamon folds in, and the bark contracts in on itself, Erev said. Sometimes contracting inward can give us space to emerge and create.

They also do spellwork, creating spells for new love, pregnancy protection and social justice; on their blog, they shared an incantation designed to bring more awareness to Indigenous Land Back movements.

The goal of many Jewitch educators and practitioners, they say, is to shine a light on rituals that have been forgotten or buried for self-preservation. Jacobi believes that many folkloric practices died out following the 13th-18th centuries because, at the time, Jews were viewed as demonic witches.

Jewish communities did what they thought would protect them from literal certain death. Some of that came at the expense of some of these practices, Jacobi said. Instead of the supernatural reasons, they tried to give rational reasons for what they were doing. Ashkenazi Jews routinely tried to debate with their oppressors in the hopes that they could out-logic antisemitism.

This traumatic history, the Jewitches say, is often papered over or dismissed as myths and superstitions. Saying superstition is a way that we downplay our magic, Kaminsky said. We protect ourselves because, historically, a huge part of our oppression has been because were magical.

Almost all of our Jewish spells are for the sake of healing, says Cooper Kaminsky. (Colin Lloyd)

Kaminsky, who uses the pronouns they/them, does spiritual readings for clients that draw upon Kabbalah, Tarot and the Akashic records a reference library of everything that has ever happened, which spiritual mediums believe resides in another dimension. Kaminsky incorporates Jewish prayers into their spellwork, like reciting the Psalms of David when doing candle spells and the Bsheim Hashem as a magical invocation.

Kaminsky, who uses the pronouns they/them, grew up in a Conservative Jewish household and learned the basic concepts of Kabbalah in Jewish day school.

Kabbalah looks at Judaism through a cosmic, mystical lens that clicked for me a lot more than looking at a story from the Torah, Kaminsky said. As I read more Kabbalah, I started feeling more connected to my Judaism.

Various scholars and rabbis have linked Kabbalah to Tarot, a deck of cards originally used in the mid-15th century to play games that evolved to divinatory practices in the 18th century (though Jacobi, for one, refutes this idea, claiming the connection has never been proven). The Tarots Major Arcana the trump cards of the deck, which detail the evolution of ones soul usually make up 22 cards in any given pack, a meaningful Jewish number: the same as the number of letters in the aleph-bet, and the number of pathways on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

For their energy work, Kaminsky draws parallels between the chakras, energy points in the body discussed in Hinduism, and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life is an energy network, they said. Theres the meridians of energy, and the chakras are like the middle pillar.

Mystical practices were a part of Jacobis upbringing. Her parents practiced Kabbalah, metaphysics, folklore and folk mythology. They have attended the same local Chabad since Jacobi was three years old.

Thanks to these experiences, Jacobi is comfortable living out of the (broom) closet a tongue-in-cheek term that some modern witches use to refer to openly practicing witchcraft. She grew up with astrology, used tarot cards on Shabbat and played with her mothers rose quartz crystal ball while her father led Havdalah prayers. The Jewitches blog and podcast are filled with mythological creatures with origins in Jewish beliefs, like dybbuks, werewolves, dragons and vampires.

Some creatures are unique to Jewish lore:the vampiric Alukah, a blood-sucking witch referred to in Proverbs 30, turned out to be Liliths daughter, while a Broxa originated as a bird from medieval Portugal that drank goats milk and sometimes human blood during the night.

Whenever there have been dire times throughout history, people have turned to mysticism; thats how Kabbalah emerged, Erev said. We need to look to our ancestors for guidance. There are a lot of tools in our human community for healing and re-dreaming and creating a world that is safe and generative for all beings.

Kaminsky thinks magic has the power to repair the world: Almost all of our Jewish spells are for the sake of healing. Tikkun olam, using our magic to repair the world, is beautiful.

Read more:

The season of the Jewitch: Meet the occultists who blend witchcraft and Jewish folklore - JTA News - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

From across the globe Jewish leaders from all parts of the religious spectrum will participate in COP, or Conference of the Parties, meaning states that have signed on to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

From pupils in school, through youth movements, to members of XR Jews and the increasing number of congregations signed up to EcoSynagogue, we are passionately concerned about the future of our world. We care as Jews, as human beings, and as part of the vast interdependent community of all living beings.

Before the covenant at Sinai, we were a part of the ancient, universal bond between God, humanity and all life on earth. It was established with Noah after the first great destruction. Only mindfulness of it now can preventa new environmental disaster.

Ever since God instructed Adam and Eve to work the land with respect while protecting the earth and the rich biodiversity it supports, Judaism has taught that we are not owners but trustees and caretakers because the world and its fullness belong to God. We are not entitled simply to commodify, monetise and exploit nature. For, as we are reminded in this sabbatical year, the land and all creatures matter to God.

The authors of the Bible, like the rabbis of the Mishnah and Talmud, lived in close relationship with the soil; they knew in their bones our interdependence with nature.

They experienced droughts and floods. They understood the truth taught by Ecclesiastes, that even the king or prime minister is subject to the field. If they were alive today, they would uphold the demand for climate justice for the worlds poorest populations. For justice is a central value of Torah.

The Torahs commandment, bal tashchit(do not destroy), forbids wanton destruction. We should interpret this now to include our participation, directly or through investments, in patterns of consumption, extraction and waste, which cause devastation anywhere on earth. We cannot pursue in good consciencea way of life in one part of the world that causes destitution in another.

The Torah forbids cruelty, not just to people but to animals. There can be few greater forms of cruelty than causing their extinction.

Over and above these reasons, I feel passionate concern for the future of the planet because the world is full of wonder and Gods spirit flows through all creation. Im a lover of forests, streams and mountains; they restore the soul, and our physical and mental health as well. Therefore, I fear for the future of nature.

We owe the worlds children and grandchildren a planet as rich, beautiful and sustaining as it once was and can again become. How can we live with ourselves unless we try to do our best for them and for this earth?

Religions have a crucial role in the climate crisis. With their ethos of collective responsibility, they have the capacity to mobilise whole communities to work for a better world. People of all faiths will be campaigning together at COP and working together afterwards.

We need to engage collectively in environmental teshuvah (repentance). Maimonides describes teshuvah as a process beginning with acknowledgement, followed by reparation and lasting change.

We have to rethink habits of wastefulness, unnecessary consumption and inattentiveness to our impact on the biosphere. We must fall back in love with the natural world and deepen our awareness of the peoples, animals and plants with whom we share our planet. We can join remarkable organisations supporting nature, here, in Israel and globally. We can plant trees and make gardens into miniature biodiverse reserves.

We can pursue environmental justice while filling our lives with wonder.

Jonathan Wittenberg is Rabbi at New North Masorti London Synagogue

See the article here:

Faiths are uniting to support planet but we must repent - Jewish News

Occult practices and totems are a mainstay of Halloween season, and sage bundles, altars and crystals are an increasingly trendy way to dabble indivination and witchcraft. But the spooky supernatural world also has a long history in Judaism,and modern Jewitchesare encouraging the connection though their practices often slightly differ from their non-Jewishcontemporaries.

I do not burn sage, said Zo Jacobi, who runs Jewitches, a popularblogandpodcastthat deep dives into ancient Jewish myths and folkloric practices. The sage-related ritual of smudging, an Indigenous ceremony popular among modern witches for cleansing a person or place of negative energy, is not a Jewish practice, she said. But Jews had crystals. Actually, they were called gems.

Jacobi and her peers are revitalizing ancient Jewish practices of witchcraft, which have been seeing something of a revival as of late. Far from having an uneasy relationship with magic practitioners, Judaism or at least Kabbalistic strands of it has long embraced them.

Jacobi, based in Los Angeles, studies those gems role in Jewish ritual, along with the connections between assorted other magical artifacts and Judaica. Eight shelves in her home are filled with books on Judaism as well as Jewish magic, witchcraft and folklore.

Her studies have revealed the historical ways that items like gems have been used in Jewish magical correspondences. Like healing crystals, gems are meant to protect and heal based on their properties, according toMidrash(Numbers Rabbah 2:7). For example,sapphirewas thought to strengthen eyesight.

Its in a medieval text called the Sefer Ha-Gematriaot, Jacobi said. But even if we go to the Torah, we see crystals on the breastplates of thekohanim(high priests of Israel).

Many Jewish rituals today have their roots in warding off demons, ghosts and othermythological creatures. When webreak glassat a wedding, scholars say, were not just remembering the destruction of the Temple; were also scaring off evil spirits that may want to hurt the bride and groom. Likewise, ancient Jews believed that themezuzahprotected them from messengers of evil a function parallel to that of an amulet, or good-luck charm.

The mezuzah is absolutely an amulet, said Rebekah Erev, a Jewish feminist artist, activist and kohenet (Hebrew priestexx, a gender-neutral term for priest or priestess) who uses the pronouns they/them and teaches online courses on Jewish magic. I consider it to be a reminder of the presence of spirit, of goddess, of Shechinah [the dwelling or settling of the divine presence of God]. Much of magic is about reminding ourselves that were all connected and that everything is alive and animate.

The moniker Jewitch itself can be seen as controversial within the group. Erev first heard the term while attending a 2014 JeWitch Collective retreat in the Bay Area.

I feel that any word that identifies someone as a witch is controversial in nature because of how society, including Jewish society, has demonized witches leading to violence and ostracizing, Erev said, even though they do consider both witchcraft and Judaism to be major tenets of their life.

To be a Jew and to be a witch has had serious repercussions throughout time. I hope the recent popularity of the term Jewitch will bring more acceptance and understanding of both identities and help to make our practices more widely accessible.

Cooper Kaminsky,a Denver-based intuitive artist and healer, concurred that the portmanteau was revisionist to some, but added, Many, including myself, are empowered by identifying as a Jewitch.

Historically, as Judaic practices grew more patriarchal,women were exempt from studying the Talmud and Torah. They knew little Hebrew, so they created their own prayers in Yiddish, used herbal remedies and centered their religious practices around the earth.

Erev mirrors these customs by creating magical rituals, like meditating on cinnamon sticks during the month of Shvat, hearkening back to how cinnamon trees in Jerusalem scented the land during the harvest.

Theres a Kabbalistic idea of making oneself smaller for creation to emerge. Connecting with a cinnamon stick is a simple ritual. The cinnamon folds in, and the bark contracts in on itself, Erev said. Sometimes contracting inward can give us space to emerge and create.

They also do spellwork, creating spells for new love, pregnancy protection and social justice; on their blog, they shared an incantationdesigned to bring more awareness to Indigenous Land Back movements.

The goal of many Jewitch educators and practitioners, they say, is to shine a light on rituals that have been forgotten or buried for self-preservation. Jacobi believes that many folkloric practices died out following the13th-18th centuriesbecause, at the time, Jews were viewed as demonic witches.

Jewish communities did what they thought would protect them from literal certain death. Some of that came at the expense of some of these practices, Jacobi said. Instead of the supernatural reasons, they tried to give rational reasons for what they were doing. Ashkenazi Jews routinely tried to debate with their oppressors in the hopes that they could out-logic antisemitism.

This traumatic history, the Jewitches say, is often papered over or dismissed as myths and superstitions. Saying superstition is a way that we downplay our magic, Kaminsky said. We protect ourselves because, historically, a huge part of our oppression has been because were magical.

Kaminsky, who uses the pronouns they/them, does spiritual readings for clients that draw upon Kabbalah, Tarot and the Akashic records a reference library of everything that has ever happened, which spiritual mediums believe resides in another dimension. Kaminskyincorporates Jewish prayers into their spellwork, like reciting the Psalms of David when doing candle spells and the Bsheim Hashem as a magical invocation.

Kaminsky grew up in a Conservative Jewish household and learned the basic concepts of Kabbalah in Jewish day school.

Kabbalah looks at Judaism through a cosmic, mystical lens that clicked for me a lot more than looking at a story from the Torah, Kaminsky said. As I read more Kabbalah, I started feeling more connected to my Judaism.

Variousscholarsandrabbishave linked Kabbalah to Tarot, a deck of cards originally used in the mid-15thcentury to play games that evolved to divinatory practices in the 18thcentury (though Jacobi, for one,refutes this idea, claiming the connection has never been proven). The Tarots Major Arcana the trump cards of the deck, which detail the evolution of ones soul usually make up 22 cards in any given pack, a meaningful Jewish number: the same as the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, and the number of pathways on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

For their energy work, Kaminsky draws parallels between the chakras, energy points in the body discussed in Hinduism, and the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

The Tree of Life is an energy network, they said. Theres the meridians of energy, and the chakras are like the middle pillar.

Mystical practices were a part of Jacobis upbringing. Her parents practiced Kabbalah, metaphysics, folklore and folk mythology. They have attended the same local Chabad since Jacobi was three years old.

Thanks to these experiences, Jacobi is comfortable living out of the (broom) closet a tongue-in-cheek phrase that some modern witches use to refer to openly practicing witchcraft. She grew up with astrology, used tarot cards on Shabbat and played with her mothers rose quartz crystal ball while her father led Havdalah prayers. The Jewitches blog and podcast are filled with mythological creatures with origins in Jewish beliefs, like dybbuks, werewolves, dragons and vampires.

Some creatures are unique to Jewish lore:the vampiricAlukah, a blood-sucking witch referred to in Proverbs 30, turned out to be Liliths daughter, while aBroxaoriginated as a bird from medieval Portugal that drank goats milk and sometimes human blood during the night.

Whenever there have been dire times throughout history, people have turned to mysticism; thats how Kabbalah emerged, Erev said. We need to look to our ancestors for guidance. There are a lot of tools in our human community for healing and re-dreaming and creating a world that is safe and generative for all beings.

Kaminsky thinks magic has the power to repair the world:Almost all of our Jewish spells are for the sake of healing.Tikkun olam, using our magic to repair the world, is beautiful.

Read more here:

The season of the Jewitch J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

For more than two decades, former Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) was among the most moderate of U.S. senators. This centrist streak brought him to the brink of the White House as the Democratic vice presidential nominee in 2000, but he angered the party by running as an Independent in 2006 and later endorsing Sen. John McCains presidential campaign in 2008. Still, Lieberman stands by his centrist political decisions. Now, he wants to encourage more politicians to do the same. His latest book,The Centrist Solution: How We Made Government Work and Can Make It Work Again, serves as a call to action for politicians to seek a more collegial middle path towards governance. I always try to distinguish between centrism as not the same as moderation, Lieberman explained in aninterview withJewish Insiders Sam Zieve Cohen. Centrism is a strategy, moderation is an ideology.

Jewish Insider:You credit your Judaism and your study of the Talmud as guiding your political beliefs. You write, the Talmudic ethic is an ideal precondition for centrism and problem solving politics. How important is religion in developing a centrist worldview?

Joe Lieberman:As I look back at my own personal history, about the various forces and ideas that were at work on me over my life, it did seem to me that my Jewish upbringing, and particularly the Talmud, was really an important part of how I became a centrist. I dont think I felt that as I was getting into politics. I always say that my religious upbringing, the whole ethic oftikkun olam, orkiddush hashem, was part of what moved me into public service. But when I looked back at the whole development of Jewish law, of the Talmud, [it] resulted from spirited, respectful discussion and argument. And then, more often than not, agreement on a course to go forward, and rarely ended up in the kind of personal animosity.

JI:In your book, you argue that the majority of Americans still remain moderate in their tastes and in their political interests. Yet, clearly, theres been a rise in the election of partisan politicians over the last decade. Why is that? If the voters want centrist problem-solvers, why are these partisan politicians winning instead?

JL:The reason is that the centrists, the independents, the moderates, are not as intensely involved in the selection of nominees for Democratic and Republican parties for Congress and other offices. And that allows the further left and further right of the two major parties to have disproportionate influence on whos chosen.

JI:You write that in 2008, neither then-Senators Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama asked for your endorsement, whereas Sen. McCain, who you endorsed, obviously did. Had they asked, would you have considered giving your support?

JL:Yeah, I definitely would have. There was such a prevailing consensus in the Democratic Party, particularly among voters who voted in primaries, that the war was a terrible mistake. The fact that I had been unwilling to give up on it until I felt we had stabilized the country which, in fact, by 2008 we had made mepersona non grataamong a lot of Democratic primary voters. I assume thats why Hillary and Barack didnt ask for my support. But it would have been natural. It would have been a hard decision between them because, as I said, I had close relations with both of them. But it would have been more natural for me to support Clinton or Obama than for me to support McCain. But by the time John asked me, around November of 2007, it was clear to me that Obama and Clinton were not going to ask for my support. And also, I loved John, I believed in John, I trusted John. And I knew he was ready to be president of the United States on day one. So I also felt that I was making a statement about bipartisanship.

JI:Regarding President Biden, you write in the book, the only way we will solve some of our serious national problems and seize some of our great national opportunities will require Republican members of Congress to break away from Trump, and it will require Biden and Democratic members of Congress to declare their independence from far-left Democrats who wont compromise. Centrist Democrats have reportedly grown annoyed by President Bidens refusal to take a hardline stance in negotiating with progressives on the infrastructure bill. How do you assess President Bidens strategy?

JL:I mean, there has to be room and there is room in the Democratic Party for what I would call center-left Democrats like Joe Biden. That center-left group is probably the majority in the Democratic Party. I would never say to exclude the further-left Democrats who dont want to compromise, but they cant be allowed to think that they can control the party, or the president of the party. They dont have the numbers to justify that. There have been times, I will say, in the months since President Biden was elected that I felt that the Squad, the so-called Progressive Caucus in the House, has had more influence in the party and in the Biden administration than theyre entitled to. Again, I would never exclude them, but they have to come to the center also and begin to negotiate.

Read the full interview here.

Read the original here:

Daily Kickoff: The Jewish day school grads covering the World Series + On the ground in Florida's 20th district - Jewish Insider

The American Jewish standup comedian Mort Sahl, who died Oct. 26 at age 94, provided spontaneous garrulity that first galvanized audiences during the tight-lipped Eisenhower era. At a time when Senator Joseph McCarthy dominated Washington, D.C. politics, Sahl represented free speech.

The English Jewish author Jonathan Miller opined that Sahl and other Jewish comedians made their greatest contribution to contemporary culture when their intellectual energy, long compressed by the practice of exegesis, is suddenly released like an aerosol spray into this huge world of liberty.

Sahls frontal assault on current events was delivered with rolling eyes while rocking from side to side, as if he were davening. Because Sahls parents were entirely assimilated Jews, who lived in Montreal when he was born, but eventually relocated to Los Angeles, he always downplayed any direct Jewish influence on his comedy.

In 1961 Sahl told Paul Krassner that as a comedian, he nevertheless felt Jewish insofar as Sigmund Freud once wrote to a friend that the role of the Jew is that of the opposition.

By Getty Images

Mort Sahl

In fact, what Freud wrote was that being Jewish meant that he found himself free of many prejudices which restrict others in the use of the intellect; as a Jew [Freud] was prepared to be in the opposition and to renounce agreement with the compact majority.

Sahl further informed Krassner, So if the role of the Jew is to rock the boat and to be inquisitive - intellectually curious, he accepted that ideal, while criticizing many 1960s American Jews for taking a sabbatical rather than becoming firebrands to improve society. The current generation of Jews, Sahl claimed, was assimilating and becoming nothing. You know, vanilla ice cream If theyre Jewish, I dont want to be that.

Despite these rigorous standards, in appearance Sahl was unthreatening. Garbed in a sweater like a genial professor of accounting at a community college, he displayed a natural ability to follow through on a line of argument at length, like an intellectually persistent student of the Talmud.

Todays comic virtuosos in extended formats, like the Closer Look feature of Late Night with Seth Meyers and comparable programs, inevitably follow this precedent. Yet Sahl was often dismissive in interviews about such American Jewish successors as Jon Stewart or Al Franken, suggesting that they had sold out as slick entertainers for commercial success, rather than persistently making audiences uncomfortable.

The antithesis of Jewish one-liners of the Henny Youngman era, spit out at a telegraphic tempo, Sahls narrative stream of consciousness was relentless, but moderately paced. It was as if Sahl were inviting the audience to nemen a shpatzir through the absurd landscape of contemporary political life.

At times he could produce a concise wisecrack, as he did after three hours into a screening of the endless Otto Preminger epic Exodus (1960) about the founding of Israel. Sahl was reported to have stood up and exclaimed: Otto, let my people go!

Sahls disdain could skewer the left as well as the right. The Americanist Stephen Whitfield noted that Sahl scorned the African American revolutionary Angela Davis for choosing to express her anger with the system by joining the Communist Party and thereby adhering to a movement consisting of 850 86-year-old Jewish people on the Lower East Side of New York and about a thousand FBI agents.

In the 1980s, Sahl teased Caspar Weinberger, a Republican of Jewish origin seen as hawkish. Sahl told audiences that he had seen a bumper sticker implying that Weinberger would make catastrophic nuclear war inevitable: Weinberger for President Lets Get It All Over With.

With such observations, Sahl influenced Jewish creative spirits in many different domains, from fellow comedians to filmmakers and even novelists. Often mentioned alongside his contemporary Lenny Bruce, Sahl was the antithesis of Bruce in that he shunned alcohol, drugs and profanity.

Zealous about protecting his own good name, in the 1960s Sahl successfully sued Jaik Rosenstein, a Hollywood press agent, for libel for implying in the magazine, Hollywood Close-up, that Sahl was a Communist.

From Mad Magazines Harvey Kurtzman to the Canadian Jewish avant-garde filmmaker Arthur Lipsett, Sahls influence was widely discerned.

Even Philip Roths Portnoys Complaint was discussed by critics in the context of Jewish standup comedy by Sahl and others, although the latter notably departed from the traditional repertoire of gags heard at the Catskills about family tsouris.

As Albert Brooks told the Associated Press in 2007, Every comedian who is not doing wife jokes has to thank [Sahl] for that. Sahls subject matter extended beyond the mishpocheh and personal neuroses in a way that pleased some colleagues earlier on, notably Eddie Cantor, but irked other japesters like Joey Bishop, who questioned the counterculture bona fides of Sahl.

In May 1962, Ramparts Magazine decried the sick line transmitted by Mort Sahl and other cosmopolitan think people for criticizing the USA in a way comparable to the American Jewish novelist J.D. Salinger.

In response to such charges of sickness, Sahl told radio host Studs Terkel in February 1960 that Bishop and other traditional standups offered up sick jokes to the public. By contrast, Sahl, as his performance partner the jazz musician Stan Kenton had informed him, was standing up there and preaching, and nightclubs have become the temples.

Sahls quasi-rabbinical sermons went overboard after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He became a dedicated conspiracy theorist, and would read the Warren Commission report aloud during nightclub appearances, interjecting comments not intended to amuse. His bookings declined, but Sahl was undeterred.

Similarly, a carefully prepared theatrical career, including extended studies with the American Jewish acting instructor Sanford Meisner, was possibly squelched by an unyielding nature. Sahl played hooky during rehearsals for what would have been his Broadway debut. Cast in the title role of a Jewish intellectual in Lorraine Hansberrys play The Sign in Sidney Brusteins Window, (1964) Sahl obliged the producers to replace him.

Likewise, his film roles were unsensational, including a screen bow as a Jewish Korean War combatant in All the Young Men (1960) starring Sidney Poitier, whose biographer noted that during filming in Glacier National Park in Montana to emulate frigid Korean battle scenes, the cold was so intense that Sahl actually fainted.

The dramaturgical results were underwhelming, although Patricia Erenss The Jew in American Cinema states that Sahls character tellingly starts the film by amusing his fellow soldiers with one-liners, but eventually becomes embittered by the horrors of war.

Two decades later, Sahl was cast in a TV adaptation of Albert Speers Inside the Third Reich. In the miniseries, Sahl played a real-life German satirist Werner Finck, with such convincing Yiddishkeit that most summaries of the show describe Finck as Jewish. In reality, he was not, and even volunteered for the Wehrmacht, the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany.

Perhaps it was among prewar European Jewish political satirists like Austrias Karl Kraus and Germanys Kurt Tucholsky that Sahl found his closest creative parallels, although he always rejected any highbrow literary labels, explaining that his schooling had been perfunctory and unsuccessful.

Rather than literary precedent, Sahl instinctively followed the tradition of inner mission and conviction of the voice of one crying in the wilderness cited in the Book of Isaiah.

Follow this link:

For Mort Sahl, being Jewish meant being part of the opposition - Forward