Category Archives: Talmud

As we celebrate Jerusalem Day this coming week, it pays to recall the fateful decision to initiate the Six Day War and the lesser-known debate between religious officials over preemptive attacks.

In May 1967, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, then the IDFs chief rabbi, was sent on a mission by then-IDF chief of staff Yitzhak Rabin.

Rabin was trying to convince the cabinet that the IDF must preemptively strike the Egyptians, who had closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships while beating war drums.

Prime minister Levi Eshkol was hesitant, particularly because of significant opposition to the move from the religious-Zionist ministers, led by Haim Moshe Shapira. In a heated cabinet meeting, Shapira had told Rabin that Israel should bunker down and prepare to defend itself, yet not take the first shot. As a man of faith he declared that we cannot bring danger upon ourselves and initiate the warfare, especially without international support. The Bible declares that Israel will dwell alone yet that does mean that it must fight alone.

Rabin urged Goren to meet with Shapira and convince him of the urgency to act.

After consulting with other military commanders, including the head of the air force, Goren was confident. He spent four hours with Shapira. Goren argued to him that Israel could win if it attacked first and that every day of delay would cost many more Israeli lives. He also claimed that there was no choice but to act, since the Arab nations were out to destroy Israel.

Shapira was not yet convinced, and was supported by another religious minister, Zorach Warhaftig, who worried that Israel required a casus belli to justify the war. He suggested sending a ship through the Straits of Tiran to evoke an Egyptian reaction. The move would risk soldiers lives but legitimate the war.

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Most ministers, however, contended that Israel would inevitably be condemned no matter what they did. If they believed in the justness of their claims, they must act on their own conscience. At the end of this fateful meeting on June 4, 1967, the religious ministers relented and voted to support the war. The next day, Israeli jet fighters destroyed the entire fleet of the Egyptian air force. Many around the world, as expected, criticized the preemptive attack. Yet the conclusive victory and salvation of Israel lives was undeniable.

THE ARGUMENT over both the prudence and justness of this preemptive strike reflects a much larger debate over the morality of striking a belligerent nation before it has launched an act of aggression.

Many ethicists condemn anticipatory attacks in which there is no imminent or concrete threat, where a nation attacks a potential future threat in order to maintain the future balance of power i.e., to prevent other countries from gaining strength or wealth that may be utilized against it.

These ethicists assert that a preemptive strike is justifiable only if one reasonably believes that a belligerent nation will attack in the very near future, and that waiting to respond will significantly increase your level of risk. Many thinkers, such as Prof. Michael Walzer, assert that even under these strict criteria, the preemptive strike in June 1967 was justified.

The Talmud also seems to recognize a distinction between these types of scenarios. In one case, in which Jews are under attack, it is deemed a mitzvah or obligation for Jews to fight back. Other warfare, however, is deemed as discretionary (reshut).

Historically, such discretionary wars required the approval of the 70-member Sanhedrin, which served here as an advisory committee to the king to ensure that such a dangerous course of action was necessary. This provided an important check, protecting soldiers from the capricious whims or imperial desires of the monarch.

What scenarios fall into this discretionary category? According to the Babylonian Talmud, these include cases in which Jews initiate the conflict toward reducing the gentiles so that they will not come and wage war against them. The Jerusalem Talmud, leaving unclear the motivations, more broadly includes all cases in which the Jews initiate the action.

Further complicating matters was that Maimonides broadly asserted that wars undertaken to deliver Israel from an enemy were a mitzvah. Yet he leaves undefined what it means to be in such a scenario.

Given these cryptic definitions, a wide range of interpretations emerged.

According to one interpretation, offered by R. Yehiel Michel Epstein, any war initiated because there is some concern of being attacked may be deemed a mitzvah. Such a definition draws from a medieval ruling allowing violation of Shabbat restrictions in preparation for an anticipated (but not yet actualized) attack.

Others, in contrast, seem to assert that an attack against a nation that is not clearly and imminently threatening a Jewish community would be deemed as discretionary. Only when the enemy is clearly on the move may one rise up and attack first.

By either definition, the Six Day War was certainly justified.

Beyond the problem of defining these categories, it remains difficult to assess, in practice, what type of threat is imminent and what is less pressing. Yet getting these decisions correct can be the difference between triumph and travail, life and death. Israel learned this both from the triumph of the Six Day War and the tragic opening period of the Yom Kippur War.

In this respect, a sliding scale might emerge in which the more distant the threat appears, the greater amount of consultation must be taken, as was done in the Talmudic Sanhedrin.

Launching a discretionary war must not be a capricious decision. While consultation is no guarantee of making the right choice, it does provide an important check on the countrys leaders not to cavalierly enter into warfare.

The writer is co-dean of the Tikvah Online Academy and a postdoctoral fellow at Bar-Ilan University Law School.

Originally posted here:

Is preemptive warfare allowed in Jewish law? - The Jerusalem Post

The annual Lag BaOmer pilgrimage to Mount Meron in Israel attracts as many as half a million visitors every year. Because of COVID-19, this years event was less crowded, but even so, over 100,000 people were packed into a space with a capacity for perhaps 15,000. This overcrowding reportedly contributed to the recent tragedy, in which at least 45 people, mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews known as Haredim in Hebrew, died in a stampede.

This is by far the largest pilgrimage of Jews to what is believed to be the gravesite of the second-century Talmudic sage Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai.

I have participated twice in the pilgrimage once in 1994 as a newly observant Jew seeking religious meaning, and again in 2001 as a scholar of Jewish history. What fascinates me about this pilgrimage is the way it weaves together Jewish mysticism, folk practices and modern-day nationalism.

The Jewish practice of worshipping at the graves of holy men is at least a thousand years old. Many Jews particularly those whose ancestry comes from the Arab world, called Mizrahim or Sephardim believe that these saints can act as their advocates in the celestial court. They pray at their gravesites for everything from children to good health to a livelihood.

The pilgrimage to Meron, in the hills of the Galilee near Safed in the northern part of Israel, initially focused on the graves of other holy figures said to be buried there, particularly the early rabbinic sages Hillel and Shamai, whose debates on Jewish law helped lay the foundation for rabbinic Judaism 2,000 years ago.

In the aftermath of the Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492, Safed grew into an important center of Jewish mysticism, known in Hebrew as Kabbalah. The most important and influential of these mystics was the 16th-century scholar Isaac Luria, whose innovative teachings transformed Judaism and Jewish history. Under his influence, the focus of the Meron pilgrimage shifted to Shimon, whose burial place was among the many such graves of ancient rabbis that Luria identified with supernatural guidance.

Shimon is by tradition credited with the composition of the Zohar, the core text of all subsequent Jewish mysticism, though scholars have determined it was actually composed in 13th-century Spain.

Sixteenth-century mystics, and the Jews who follow in their footsteps, are thus particularly interested in connecting to him. They are especially interested in doing so on the anniversary of his death, when the Zohar states he revealed the deepest secrets about God, and pilgrims expect to experience a taste of that revelation. Since at least the 18th century, that date has been accepted as Lag BaOmer.

The Hebrew name of the holiday Lag BaOmer literally reflects its date in the Jewish calendar, the 33rd day of the Omer, the ritual counting of 50 days from the holiday of Passover, commemorating the exodus from Egypt, to Shavuot, commemorating Gods revelation and giving of the Torah, the Jewish holy canon.

These seven weeks are traditionally days of mourning commemorating the death of 24,000 students of the great sage Rabbi Akiva in the second century by plague, seen as a punishment by God. Only five people survived, including Shimon. Haircuts, music, weddings and all celebrations are prohibited during that seven-week period.

On Lag BaOmer, the restrictions are lifted in accordance with the tradition that on this day the plague ended. Mystical tradition credits this to Shimons death, which was understood as having the power to eradicate the decree of the plague. According to that tradition, Shimon instructed that the day of passing be celebrated rather than mourned, and thus was born the celebration we know today.

In the 20th century, even before the founding of Israel, the Lag BaOmer pilgrimage to Meron grew into a mass event.

Pilgrims light bonfires symbolizing the light of Torah revealed by Shimon, or perhaps the literal fires that the Zohar states surrounded him at the moment of his death. In fact, they are lit not only at Meron, but throughout Israel and the world, although for some secular Zionists it evokes not Shimon but instead the Bar Kochba military rebellion against Rome that occurred around the same time.

Its earliest pilgrims were mostly Moroccan Jews who arrived in Israel intent on continuing their tradition of graveside visits to saints, convinced of the possibility of magical remedies and blessings through their holy intervention.

Many pilgrims celebrate the kabbalistic custom of giving a boy his first haircut, leaving behind the sidelocks, at 3 years of age. In recent years, ultra-Orthodox Jews of European ancestry especially Hasidim have increasingly dominated the site, although all sectors of Jewish society are represented there.

The pilgrimage is one of the only truly widespread expressions of folk religion in Judaism today. As anthropologist Edith Turner wrote in her classic essay on Meron, pilgrims come to Meron with deep faith in its power to bring blessings to them. This is a popular celebration, with a long history that shimmers through the events at various points.

The celebration is an intense, highly packed event that offers participants an ecstatic experience of communing with God in a collective of tens, even hundreds of thousands, of fellow Jews.

I can certainly attest to this effect. In 1994, at the start of my journey into Orthodox Judaism, I joined the Lag BaOmer pilgrimage to Meron. At that time, the festival hosted many Moroccan Jews, who camped outside the main grounds. Several among them had live animals ready to be slaughtered and eaten to celebrate their sons first haircuts. The Ashkenazic Hasidic Jews sects of Jews from Eastern Europe deeply influenced by Jewish mysticism and devoted to their leaders dominated the inner spaces of the compound.

Everywhere I walked, people offered me free drinks, convinced of the promise that it would bring blessings to their family. Meanwhile, gender-segregated crowds sang and danced in unison for hours into the night, creating a palpable sense of euphoria and connection to a collective eternity. Some of us pushed inside to approach the gravesite and prayed for blessings of success, while others pushed to reach closer to the bonfires.

There were several fires, each representing a different Jewish community, although by custom the main fire is lit by the head of the Boyan Hasidim, so called because their leaders originally lived in the city of Boyan in Ukraine. It was in the area of a different Hasidic group, known as Toldos Aharon, that the tragedy on April 30, 2021, occurred. This group can be seen dancing this year, just before the tragedy.

By the time I returned in 2001, I had become a full-fledged Hasid myself and was living in Betar Illit, a massive Haredi settlement south of Jerusalem. I recall far fewer Moroccan families camping in tents. But the number of Haredim, joined by Sephardim, modern Orthodox and even secular pilgrims seemed to have exploded, serving to enhance that sense of eternal community, of Jewish connection across time and space.

I have long since left that Hasidic world, for a variety of reasons. But I do not for a moment discount the very real experience of divinity and eternity enjoyed by Meron pilgrims, and their deep need to return to it each year.

The events leading up to the deadly stampede need to be viewed in context of Haredi society in Israel today about 12% of the population, but growing rapidly and the power wielded by its leaders. Israels first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, granted Haredim extensive autonomy in their education system, military deferments, welfare funding and more. Israels parliamentary system, which offers small political parties disproportionate power, has carefully protected and expanded that autonomy.

As a result, Haredi leaders have successfully fought enforcement of government oversight and safety regulations, from COVID-19 restrictions to the Meron festival. Aryeh Deri, the interior minister and leader of the Sephardic Shas party, said on the eve of Lag BaOmer: This is a holy day, and the largest gathering of Jews [each year]. Bad things, he promised, dont happen to Jews on religious pilgrimage: One should trust in Rabbi Shimon in times of distress.

Similar sentiments were voiced by Haredi leaders when they prematurely opened their schools last year, promising that Torah study would hold the plague at bay. Countless officials had warned that Meron was a disaster waiting to happen.

One hopes that this tragedy will lead Haredim and other Israelis to accept government oversight and limits at the site.

One should not for a moment, however, discount the vital need of members of this community to bond with one another and God at this place, any more than we would discount the legitimacy of other religious and secular communities finding it elsewhere.

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Lag BaOmer pilgrimage brings Orthodox Jews closer to eternity I experienced this spiritual bonding in years before the tragedy - The Conversation US

The MIT Hillel Jewish Learning Fellowship (JLF) is a 10-week experiential, conversational seminar for MIT students looking to deepen their understanding of Judaism on their own terms. Were interested in asking big questions. You know, the big stuff, like who am I? What communities am I a part of? What is worth committing myself to, and why? And we dont purport to have any of the big answerscertainly not for anyone else.

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Im kind of prudish. The last time I talked about sex or intimacy in mixed-gender company was with my husband and rabbi during our pre-wedding counseling sessions. Before that, the last time I was engaged in learning about Judaisms views on sex in the presence of men was during a late-night Shavuot lesson at Harvard Hillel about five years ago. From that evening I remembered that a man of independent means is supposed to have sex with his wife every day while sailors are only required to have sex with their wives once every six months (Talmud, Ketubot 61b). Wow, what a difference a job makes! I jest, but I understand. To me, this is one of Judaisms many examples of valuing equity over equality.

Traditional ketubot, marriage contracts, prescribe that a man is to please his wife sexually and provide for her materially. It is consequential that a sailor cannot both be home every evening to have sexual relations with his wife and perform the duties that allow him to care for his family in other ways. Yet he can shirk neither responsibility; he has two contracts he must fulfill: to his employer and to his beloved. Three, actually, as man and woman are commanded to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28). Halachically, to have a child would also require a suitable marriage. To both marry and become a parent are acts of creation that necessitate physical intimacy and can open pathways for spiritual intimacy as well.

To me, that men are obligated to procreate can be interpreted as a requirement for men to make themselves vulnerable and to offer them a kind of safety that such an intimacy offers as a reward. Throughout time and place, for reasons positive and negative, women have often been compelled into intimate relationships as a matter of security and bonding. And what is a more intimate experience than to have a child form in your own womb and to feed them from your own breast? It is also quite intimate to observe niddah (laws of ritual purity), which brings menstruating married women together for a monthly ritual of spiritual purity that requires the assistance of another to view your nakedness and declare you kosher. What a blessing to hear the repeated proclamation with each dip in the mikveh.

With so many rules that reinforce intimacy, it begs the question: What is the value of intimacy at all? Genesis 1:27 tells us, God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. While I used to interpret this as something akin to a blessing on our souls, some interpret our godliness as the legacy of lineage of Adam following the words of the Mishna Sanhedrin 4:5: Adam was created for the sake of peace among men, so that no one should say to his fellow, My father was greater than yours. In either case, this suggests our birthright includes an intimate relationship with God; God is directly in us and when we combine ourselves into one to create another we amplify and continue Gods presence in the world.

By recognizing and honoring the presence of the divine in each of us, we can all come closer to oneness, as a people, as part of humanity. Oxford defines intimacy as close familiarity or friendship; closeness. What could be more intimatethansharing divine kinship?

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Intimacy and Judaism - jewishboston.com

Now they tremble. Staring at 45 bodies, the people whose negligence enabled the Meron disaster are resisting a commission of inquirys establishment as forcefully as they resisted orders imposition on the pilgrimage site that became a death trap.

That resistance alone is reason enough to establish the panel whose verdict they fear. If only they had been burdened by this fear over the years in which they allowed this disaster to evolve. Now these cowards must be overruled.

The only way to prevent the recurrence of such tragedies is to have this one probed thoroughly by a panel whose power, authority and impartiality will be unquestionable, and such a panel can only be a judicial commission of inquiry.

The commissions members should be collectively familiar with investigation, government, religion, ultra-Orthodoxy, politics, law and public administration.

By Israeli law, its chair should be a judge. A good choice would therefore be retired Supreme Court justice Elyakim Rubinstein. In addition to his judicial experience and his additional credentials as a former attorney-general, the 73-year-old jurist also served as cabinet secretary for both Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin. In short, he knows the system, and is consensual.

In addition, the Orthodox Rubinstein is a Talmudic scholar familiar with ultra-Orthodoxys inner language, politics and norms. Rubinstein is thus equipped to understand, and win the respect of, Israeli ultra-Orthodoxy while leading the probe into the worst disaster it ever sustained.

The second member should be Lt.-Gen. (res.) Gadi Eisenkot. The former chief of General Staff headed the countrys biggest and most complex employer, and is therefore equipped to understand what engineers, architects and bureaucrats will explain to him concerning the compounds physical evolution.

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The commissions third member should be an expert on politics and government. An ideal candidate for this is Hebrew Universitys Shlomo Avineri, the dean of Israels political scientists, with whom the commission will map and critique the political-administrative complex that produced the worst civilian disaster in Israels 73 years.

Added up, this threesome brings all the knowledge, balance, and caution it will have to deploy when passing judgments that will end peoples careers.

THE COMMISSION should answer four questions:

First: Who was in charge? Second: What were they supposed to do? Third: What did they actually do? And lastly: Why didnt they do what they were supposed to do?

The commission will then charge individuals, the way previous commissions did. It would be premature to predict the commissions personal conclusions. It is not premature to predict its non-personal conclusions.

The original sin at Mount Meron, the report will assert, was the Jewish states elbowing by the ghetto, by outfits like the anti-Zionist hassidic sect whose fiefdom shouldered the disaster.

Clearly, the government abandoned the mountain to a celebration of construction violations, allowing the growth of an anarchic jungle where legal authority, civil planning and public discipline were all laughingstocks.

Once it will have established this, the commission will seek this conducts roots. That is where it will proceed from matters of planning and policing into matters of politics and faith.

Religiously, the question will be why the mountain was parceled between multiple sects, and why Lag Baomer, of all holidays, became the focus of this atomization.

The commission will likely avoid discussion of Lag Baomers history, which is actually fascinating, and also telling. Most people dont know this, but this holiday is not even mentioned in the Mishna and Talmud, and towering scholars like Rashi, Maimonides and the Vilna Gaon never celebrated it.

The holiday that became a pagan celebration of fire, dead souls and escapism was invented by Galilean mystics in the 16th century. Rabbi Moshe Sofer (1762-1839), widely seen as ultra-Orthodoxys founder, ruled against its celebration.

Had Rabbi Sofer seen what happened annually at Mount Meron rabbis kindling bonfires to the singing of thousands seeking communication with an ancient rabbis soul he would have fumed, much the way Moses did when he saw the Golden Calf.

The commission will likely avoid discussion of this perplexing history, but it should bear it in mind, because it can help explain the lawlessness that this feast has come to foment.

AFTER LISTING what went wrong technically namely, what the mountains maximum capacity should have been, how it should have been secured, and how it was breached the commission will expose the calamitys political setting.

That is when the tragedy on the mountain will emerge as the fruit and emblem of the corrupt deal that shaped Israeli politics for the better part of half-a-century: the pact whereby the political hegemon ruled the rest of us while demanding nothing from, and ceding everything to, its ultra-Orthodox friends.

Brazen, cynical and woefully immoral, this deal seemed as omnipotent here as the communist deal was in the USSR. The communists collapsed for many reasons, but the blow that floored them was the Chernobyl disaster, because it made them lose their peoples trust. Similarly, ultra-Orthodox Israelis will now realize they have been led by self-serving manipulators who deformed life and sowed death.

Yes, the Meron disasters political engineers will try their best to prevent a commission of inquirys creation, the way the Soviets tried to hide Chernobyl. Truth will defy them. Like volcanic lava it will burst from below, and like a radioactive cloud it will hover from above, for, as the Levites sang at the Temple (Psalms 85:12), Truth springs up from the earth, and justice looks down from heaven.

Amotz Asa-Els bestselling Mitzad Haivelet Hayehudi (The Jewish March of Folly, Yediot Sefarim, 2019) is a revisionist history of the Jewish peoples leadership from antiquity to modernity.

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The Mount Meron tragedy is the ultra-Orthodox's Chernobyl disaster - The Jerusalem Post

The last time my dad went to his hometown of Martinsville, Virginia, was for his mothers burial at the Jewish cemetery there two years ago. It had been nearly five decades since hed moved away from the little industrial town on the Carolina borderpart of a mass migration of the Souths small-town Jews to the regions urban centersand at least fifteen years since hed last returned. The main street where his parents had run their department store for thirty years was full of empty storefronts. The thoroughfare had once been lined with shops owned by other Jewish merchants, but Mr. Blacks music store, where my dad had gotten records as a teenager, had long ago shuttered. There was no evidence of cousin Gilmers shoe store, where my grandfather used to go smoke cigars with the other shopkeepers to catch a break from his wife, a New Jersey native who thought she could do anything better than you until the day she died.

My grandparents met through correspondence during World War II. Someone had connected the two, thinking they were relatives because they happened to share the same last name. They were pen pals; they were married. My grandmother moved down to Martinsville, where my grandfather grew up. Many years laterafter my dad relocated his parents to a nursing home near us in Atlanta, and then after Gramps passedthe rhythm of Nanas days slowed. She made a ritual of calling us up and asking, again and again: Whats new and different?

I missed the funeral. I had just moved to New Orleans to start a new job, and I had decidednow this sounds like such a slippery, no-good reasonthat the small ceremony wasnt worth missing work and driving alone all the way to Virginia. Nana was buried that day in a plain wooden casket, as is Jewish custom. The casket is meant to disintegrate into the soil, returning the body to the earth rather than preserving it in an enclosed box. Its a ritual of regeneration, and its one I find especially beautiful in the Jewish tradition.

The practice has its roots in a quote from Genesis: For you are dust, and unto dust you shall return. Ancient rabbis, insisting that the ritual of Jewish burial reflect that every human is equal in creation and in death, wrote in the Talmud that all people should be buried on plain biers, even if they could afford more lavish trimmings. This idea of democracy in deathand that death can, and must, beget lifehas brought me recently to a poem by New Orleanian writer Clint Smith. In An Evening at the Louvre, he writes:

_It would be nice to besomething in a museum one daybecause thats what Ive been toldmeans youve lived a meaningful lifebut I think I might liketo be in a gardenwhere even after I die the residueof me can help grow somethingmore beautiful than I ever was_

The residue of my grandparents lies in the cemetery of a synagogue called Ohev Zion that my great-grandfather helped found in 1927. Today, theres a will outlining what will happen to the synagogue once membership falls below ten dues-paying families. They havent hit that point yet, but theyre close. My grandmothers burial was officiated by a rabbi who came up from Greensboro, since Ohev Zion cant support a full-time rabbi anymore. It hasnt been able to in years, since around the time my dad left Martinsville. After the service, my dad gathered with Martinsvilles remaining Jews for lunch. They traded stories. There was the one about a young rabbi serving Ohev Zion years ago, who had been fresh out of seminary and was very New York, my dad told me later; the guy mysteriously fled town in the thick of night. There were the tales of traveling Jewish salesmen coming through Martinsville to hawk their wares, and the impromptu dinners to host them. What were we going to do, send them to the rib joint downtown? my dad posed. From down the lunch table, the Globmans piped up: Wed have them over the next night! There was goodwill and warmth, my dad told me, but also the sense that, soon enough, the old ladies keeping the lights on at Ohev Zion would finally pass and the synagogue would go along with them. As my dad recounted all this to me, I couldnt help but wonder how much longer Martinsville would have enough Jews to form a minyan: a gathering of at least ten people needed to say the most sacred prayers, like the mourners kaddish.

Small-town Southern Jewish communities are dead or dying. So goes the popular narrative. Its a story my dad has claimed as his own, watching through his increasingly infrequent visits as the Jews of Martinsville dispersed when the town lost its textile and furniture factories, as Jew storesas he calls themgave way to strip malls, and his generation went off to college and never came back. Its a story Ive only known secondhand. My parents raised me within the folds of Atlanta Jewish life, where I came of age surrounded by Jews whose families had also come from small towns across the region. Jews with Delta drawls and Tennessee twangs and Lowcountry liltsmy moms side of the family hails from Charleston, South Carolinawho frequent the kosher Kroger in Toco Hills and bake the most tender brisket Ive ever tasted. Jews like my parents, who mightve been the only Jews in their schools growing up, but could send their kids (me) to Jewish day schools and sleep-away camps near home.

Now I live in New Orleans, a city thats had a vibrant Jewish community since French Colonial times; Ive enjoyed many Shabbat picnics on Bayou St. John, have an array of synagogue choices for the high holidays, and can watch Krewe de Jieux roll every Carnival season, throwing bagels spray-painted gold. As Jewish communities like mine have gravitated toward the Souths cities, the regions small-town Jewish life has diminished to a handful of older folks hanging on.

From my dad, I adopted the idea that in Martinsville, and towns like it, there is nothing left for us as Jewish peoplethat small-town synagogues in the South have become little more than museums to lost communities. Since my grandmothers funeral, Ive had an urge to go to these towns, these synagogues, in hopes of witnessing something other than decay. I wanted to question the stories Ive been told; maybe prove my dads thesis wrong. It was this motivation that led me to the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life (ISJL), a Jackson, Mississippibased organization dedicated to providing education and programming for Jewish communities across the region. The story of Southern Jewish life is not merely a story of shuttering synagogues and diminishing numbers, they write in their mission statement. Its also a story of growing communities, vibrant congregations, and active Jewish communities of all sizes.

It was sometime around the anniversary of Nanas passing that I found the ISJL and their director of rabbinical services, Rabbi Aaron Rozovsky. When I learned that Rozovskys job consists of doing one thingtraveling across the South serving small-town synagogues that can no longer sustain a full-time rabbi themselvesI knew I had to join him on his travels.

Congregation Beth Shalom convenes in an old Christian Science church tucked into a wooded neighborhood north of Auburn University. When I arrived there on a Friday evening in January, no one had unlocked the building yet. I had been driving alone all day, tracing I-65 from Mobile to Montgomery; if Id kept on going two more hours, I couldve made it to my parents Shabbat dinner table in Atlanta just in time for my moms challah to come out of the oven. I sat in the car in the dark. The pine trees loomed overhead. I had the admittedly irrational yet familiar thought that some unknown specter, despising my Jewishness, might be lurking in the dark. But it wasnt long before the first congregants pulled up and let me inside, welcoming me to their weekly service. Soon, people were flitting around the small sanctuary, setting up a couple dozen chairs and just as many miniature Dixie cups of grape juice, readying the space for this Shabbats special guest. I felt myself relax. I settled into a seat in the back row to take in the space. The sanctuary was filled with the artifacts of shuttered synagogues from across the state. There were stained-glass windows built into the double doors at the entrance, a gift from Temple Emanu-El in Jasper, Alabama, established in 1922, closed in 2005. There was a tall wooden ark donated by an old Sephardic shul in Montgomery, Congregation Etz Ahayem, that merged with the Ashkenazi synagogue there in 2001. At the top of the ark there were gold Hebrew letters that read: Know who you stand before.

A septuagenarian Brooklynite in Merrells approached me. He introduced himself as Mike Friedman, the self-proclaimed poet laureate in residence, and gave me an on-the-spot history lesson: A former chemistry professor at the university, he moved to Auburn in 1968 and helped found Beth Shalom in 1989. This congregation is the only one in eastern Alabama and was born out of a potluck dinner for Rosh Hashanah in the early 80s when a local couple invited four friends over, telling them to extend the invitation to everyone they knew. Eighty people showed up, all surprised at the number of other members of the tribe around them; many had assumed they were one of the only Jewish families around. Mike and his wife, Harriet, had helped gather the pieces I saw in the synagogue from across Alabama: the sanctuary doors, the ark, the Torah from Demopolis. I wondered: What had all of these inherited artifacts witnessed in their former homes? What did they make of their new environs?

Susan Youngblood, co-president of Beth Shalom, weaved between the rows in the sanctuary, making sure that everyone knew their responsibilities for the night: parading the Torah around the room, blessing it before it was read, reciting prayers from the bima. She apologized to me for the small number in attendance; it was Martin Luther King Jr. weekend in a college town. Yet there were still upwards of twenty people present, from kids playing with 3D glasses that turned all lights into stars of David, to Auburn undergrads and professors, to the retired Friedmans down the row.

Rabbi Rozovsky waved to me when he walked in and quickly assumed his position at the lectern. He wore a quarter-zip sweater with a button-down and a tie, paired with his signature camouflage-patterned kippah. He is thirty-four years old, a member of the National Guard, and a recent graduate of Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. He greeted the gathered with a bright and earnest grin, offered Shabbat Shalom, and launched into the hymn Hinei Matov. Some of the congregants around me stumbled through the Hebrew under their breath; others sang it clearly. As we moved through the traditional Friday evening blessings, I thought about the number of times a rabbi must lead a congregation to know which of myriad tunes the laypeople prefer, which of the prayers to skip over; all of the ways to measure a rapport between the leader and the led. Id been raised in synagogues with longstanding rabbinical appointments, where if the rabbi sang the first note of a song, the congregants could carry the tune seamlessly, hardly needing a leader. Later, when I played back a recording Id made of the Friday night service in Auburn, I could hardly hear anyones singing over my own.

When we reached the culminating song, Rabbi Rozovsky gestured to the bar mitzvah-to-be in the front row and posed, Come lead Adon Olam, as part of your training! The middle-schooler shook his head no. You can kick me under the bima if you want to! Still no. Hate to put you on the spot butokay, wait til May? We can wait til May. The rabbi led the song in a rousing call-and-response rendition, just slightly off-rhythm. Everyone migrated over to the oneg table. We blessed the candles and the grape juice and challah. Folks lingered over a spread of cookies and a liter of ginger ale. Susan Youngblood reminded everyone to come out to a lively Torah study the next morning.

I approached Rabbi Rozovsky, who was chatting animatedly with a professor in the veterinary school about the breadth of Southern synagogues he serves. A century ago, Anshe Chesed in Vicksburg, Mississippi, had more than four hundred members, but today has only eight, all over the age of eighty. But not all the small-town synagogues that Rozovsky visits are disappearing. Theres Beth Ahabah in Richmond, Texas: only four years old with a membership of one hundred and fifty. And theres Beth Shalom in Auburn, where we stood, which the rabbi liked to call his bar mitzvah factory.

Like me, Rabbi Rozovsky anticipated seeing a lot of death and decline as he began traveling around to the Souths Jewish communities. When I took this job I thought I was going to do a ton of funerals, he said. But hes been surprised at the vivacity hes witnessed. Ive only done one funeral in a year and a half, he told me. By the time hes finished up in a few monthsthe traveling rabbi post tends to run for just two to three yearsthe rabbi said hell have done three or four conversions and four bnai mitzvot.

At Torah study the next morning, the congregants set out a basket of sesame bagels with cream cheese and lox. Coffee brewed in the kitchen. Rabbi Rozovsky opted for a bottle of Coke from the refrigerator and a paper plate of leftover off-brand Oreos from last nights oneg. Ten of us sat in a circle in the sanctuary, and the rabbi passed around printouts with excerpts of the weekly Torah portion. We began with the rape of Dinah and pivoted quickly toward the intricacies of ritual sacrifice. A congregant asked if, in ancient Israel, you wanted to roast a lamb for Sunday dinner, did you need to bring it to the altar in Jerusalem, or could you cook it right there in your field? The rabbi clarified, saying you could roast whatever you pleased in your field (as long as it was kosher), but all sacrifices needed to go through Jerusalem.

You know who has a society like that? Mike Friedman posed. Alabama. The local people do not have jurisdiction. I wondered if Mike was referring to the way Alabama, like many Southern states, pre-empts local governments from setting many of their own policies, like minimum-wage floors or firearms regulationsits a legacy of former slave states wielding power over their constituents. With its congregation made up of university professors, I got the sense that Beth Shalom leaned more liberal than conservative. Theyve been trying to get that changed, Mike said. But the power in Montgomery, they dont want to give it up. Just like Jerusalem had all the power.

The rabbi had a penchant for likening biblical passages to contemporary pop dramas (Dinahs story to Game of Thrones, baby Mosess choice between riches and coal to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, any anecdote about the Jewish few against the gentile many to Braveheart, which, ironically or not, was produced by Mel Gibson). He explained what a midrash is by telling everyone about a rabbinical school assignment where he was asked to write a commentary on a Talmudic teaching about why we are forbidden to eat shellfish (It was the only time I got top of the class in seminary, he said). He peppered his teaching with Hebrew affirmations in an Israeli inflection, favoring nachon (yes, correct) with an emphasis on the ch.

I had assumed that the small town Jewish communities Id meet on my travels would lack the sort of robust Jewish education Id gained in Atlanta as a kid. My dad still stumbles through the Hebrew of Friday night blessings that were drilled into me at school growing up. But around me, many Beth Shalom members followed the text of the Torah portion closely with books perched in their laps, asking the rabbi pointed questions about the ancient census and rights to land ownership and the assimilation of Jewish girls into the Egyptian population after all the Jewish boys were killed on the pharaohs edict (the girls were useful as slaves). We veered toward an intimate discussion on how Judaism shifted from patrilineal to matrilineal descent; how Harriet Friedmans grandmother lost all her gold during a pogrom (it wasnt so long ago); how Judaism came, at times, to be defined by blood rather than by personal persuasion. Rabbi Rozovsky entertained every tangent with apparent delight.

It came time for me to go. The rabbi had an afternoon full of appointments for bar mitzvah trainings; we would convene at our next stop, Temple Bnai Israel in Columbus, Mississippi, the following evening. On the way there, I drove through stretches of dense forest. At times, the trees lining the state highway felt like a protection, a haven. At others, I imagined what might be looming in the shadows. Through a break in the trees, I spied a pickup truck parked in a driveway, a Confederate battle flag painted across the entirety of its back tailgate. I saw countless crosses planted in front lawns or built up on hillsides for all drivers to see. The only place I spotted a Star of David was in the corner of a billboard near Gordo, Alabama, that read: THE ONLY KEY TO HEAVEN IS JESUS.

The South is the only home I know, and yet I often feel a nebulous threat of anti-Semitism: a thing that tightens my throat, makes me look over my shoulder when Im alone. Sometimes, the fear feels warranted. I think of my dad as a kid, watching a Klan rally march past his parents store (he insists they werent rallying against the line of Jewish merchants, but I do wonder)and how, a hundred miles away and a couple decades later, a crowd with torches descended upon Charlottesville chanting Jews will not replace us. It can be easy to assume that anti-Semitism in the South is worse than in the rest of the country.

But then I remember recent acts of violence in the Northeast, and Harriet Friedman telling me about moving to Auburn from Washington, D.C., which had been the home of the American Nazi Party in the 1960s. For me it was torment living there, she said. They used to have arson at various synagogues in the D.C. area. So it was actually nicer here.

Despite all thisor maybe because of itwhenever I step into a synagogue, I feel immediately safe and at home. Something about showing up to a place Ive never been, where I dont know a soul, and realizing: all of us share a root system.

Rabbi Rozovsky and I pulled up in our separate cars outside Temple Bnai Israel in Columbus. The door to the sanctuary was locked. The rabbi suggested we find the nearest McDonalds. There, he ordered an Oreo McFlurry and we sat in a booth facing a strip of franchises by the highway. He told me his family hails from rural Canada, where, years ago, his grandfather drove his father three hours each way to Montreal every weekend to get a Jewish education. It became a passion of Rozovskys to serve small-town Jewish communities, with their all hands on deck spirit. Everyone feels like theyre a stakeholder, he told me. Youll have a lawyer, a doctor, an executive, but theyre there mopping or sweeping. You wouldnt see that at a big synagogue. Theres an investment. I love it. He also gets to be closer to his mother in Texas, his fiance in South Carolina, and his community in Richmond, where he lived from the ages of ten to eighteen. Before that, he came of age in Providence, Rhode Island; he considers himself a New Englander. He likes to tell the congregants that instead of yall he says yous guys.

I followed him back to the synagogue. When we arrived, the congregants were setting out a platter of cookies and a pot of coffee in one corner of the sanctuary. Ten of us gathered around a table. The congregation had requested that Rabbi Rozovsky give a presentation on the history of Reform Judaism. He dove in excitedly. As a history guy I want to go through every day of the last few millennia, but you know, we have to cut it short, he said.

Heres what he said about Jews in the South: Jews have lived here since the first white settlers arrived on the land that would become the United States. German and Spanish Jews entered the Americas through Galveston and Charleston and Savannah, establishing both Ashkenazi and Sephardic synagogues before this countrys founding. A century later, Eastern European Jews fleeing the heightening persecution in their home countries began to join those earlier arrivals, who, by then, knew no other home than the American South. Together they created flourishing Jewish communities in small towns across the region during the first half of the twentieth century. Picture peddlers whod gained enough capital selling their wares door to door to open brick-and-mortar storefronts that lined main streets in downtowns from Texas to the Carolinas; Jewish mayors in Dumas, Arkansas, and Durham, North Carolina, and Donaldsonville, Louisiana (and Martinsville, Virginia). Yet after the second World War, a generation of Jewish Southerners waved goodbye to their parents, leaving home for the opportunities that only big cities could offer.

The Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life grew out of this population shift. It began in 1986 as a response to Jews like my dad leaving the Souths small towns. First, it was a museum housed at a Jewish sleep-away camp in Mississippi: a repository for artifacts and sacred objects that needed a home when synagogues closed across the region. Yet its founders saw a need beyond historic preservation. They recognized a story that exceeded the simple narrative that Jewish communities were dead or dying. So, in 2000, they expanded their operations and began providing educational and rabbinical services to Jewish communities in thirteen states.

In the Jewish South, I learned, necessity has often led to innovation. The ISJLs creation of Rabbi Rozovskys position is a testament to this, and so are many other tales of Jews here seeking leadership wherever they could find it. In his presentation, the rabbi shared that two decades before the first female rabbi was officially ordained in the 1970s, Congregation Beth Israel in Meridian, Mississippi, had named a woman as spiritual leader. In 1950, Beth Israels beloved Rabbi Ackerman suddenly passed away. The congregants approached his widow, Paulaa rabbis daughter herself, who knew how to lead a service, give a sermon, and conduct marriages and funeralsand appointed her their leader. Her position was harshly opposed by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, but Beth Israels membership didnt care. This was not in New York or Los Angeles or San Francisco, Rabbi Rozovsky exclaimed. This was in Meridian, Mississippi!

As we wrapped up, Rabbi Rozovsky let the congregants know that hed be finishing his term with the ISJL in a few months time. He had plans to get married and settle down. They thanked him for his time, and insisted he stay the night in Columbus rather than trek to Jackson in the dark, but he swore he could make it back in just a few hours. Everyone began to fold up the tables and put away the snacks and turn off the lights. A white-haired lady in a long red coat approached me. She introduced herself as Emily.

Are you Jewish? she asked.

I am, I said. She told me shes a convert, and pointed to the treasurer holding a coffee cup: Hes a convert too. Emily had always been a bit of a doubter, and then one day, at the church here in Columbus where she grew up, she was reciting the creed and thought: I dont believe this. Everyone was extremely understanding, supportive. My Catholic relatives in Starkville trooped over to Memphis with me when I went through the beit din, she said. Spiritually, its been very satisfying. The temple is just like any other church. Ups and downs, advantages and disadvantages, frustrations and so forth. I wish there was a larger community here. There used to be, but they sent their children off to good schools and colleges and they went beyond that. Thats what happens.

She looked me in the eye. Jews dont proselytize, but they can certainly be attractive for a spiritual kind of anchor, she said. I always appreciate the opportunity to question and doubt.

Emily put half a dozen cookies in a Ziploc bag and handed them to me for the road, as if to say: you have a place here. I waved goodbye to her and to Rabbi Rozovsky and left.

When I returned to New Orleans, I met with Anna Tucker, the curator of the soon-to-be-opened Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience. Though the museum is a separate project from the ISJL, the two entities share board members, and the museum bills itself as an expanded vision of the institutes original repository for the sacred objects left behind when synagogues shuttered across the region. Tucker and I sat in the library of Temple Sinai on St. Charles Avenue with artifacts from Southern Jewish history sprawled on the table in front of us. She presented a wooden tzedakah box with the words social justice affixed to it, and then led me into the sanctuary to show me an identical box sitting atop a pedestal by the door, meant for charitable donations. Tucker thought the older box might have been used in this synagogue during the civil rights era. In 1949, Temple Sinai had housed the first major integrated audience in New Orleans, for a public speech delivered by Ralph Bunche; the next year, Bunche would become the first African American to win the Nobel Peace Prize, which he received for his late 1940s work as a United Nations mediator in Palestine. I imagined those small wooden boxes speaking across generations, signaling that gathering people and resources can bring change.

Back in the library, Tucker brought out a stack of postcards showing the faades of Jewish storefronts across the South, from Levy Bros. in Louisville to Richs in Atlanta. I looked for my grandparents store in Martinsville, and for my mothers parents store in Charleston, and for the stores that belonged to the ancestors of friends in Knoxville and Cary and Jasper and Swainsboro. I didnt find any. Many of those stores are likely vacant now, or torn down and remade into something else. I wondered then about tracing the legacies they created, landing me in that synagogue that day, looking back. Tucker told me that the vision for the project is to create a living museum: one that continues to collect, a place where history is built rather than explained. It should be a space to ask questions, she said.

After our meeting, I went to sit by the entrance of Audubon Park. On my phone, I pulled up the will for Ohev Zion. When the synagogue closes its doors for good, it will sell its assetsits Torah and ark and stained-glass windows. The profit from the sale will go into a trust, which will be used to ensure maintenance of the cemetery where my grandparents lie, their wooden caskets slowly decomposing, returning them to the earth.

In Judaism, when someone dies, we say, May their memory be for a blessing. Sitting in the park, under the shade of a live oaks winding branches, I considered the empty flower bed around the fountain in frontof me. In the spring, it would be bounding with blooms. May their memories be for a garden, I thought. May their stories be ones of regeneration.

This article was originally published in Oxford American and has been reposted with permission.

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My journey through the Jewish South: always disappearing, never gone - Forward

Renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, who designed the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco as well as several other Jewish museums around the world, has been chosen as the lead architect to reimagine the site of the Tree of Life synagogue building in Pittsburgh.

The renovation is part of the congregations renewal campaign that commemorates the events of Oct. 27, 2018, when a white supremacist gunman murdered 11 worshippers during Shabbat at the three congregations housed in the building: Tree of Life, Dor Hadash and New Light. It was the most violent antisemitic attack in U.S. history.

Libeskind, the son of Holocaust survivor parents, was selected unanimously by Tree of Lifes board of trustees and steering committee following a search that was launched in January.

When my parents, survivors of the Holocaust, and I came as immigrants to America, we felt an air of freedom as Jews in this country, he said in a statement. That is why this project is not simply about Never Again. It is a project that must address the persistence of antisemitism and the intolerance of our time and affirm the democratic values of our country.

Libeskind gained international attention when he won the competition to build the Jewish Museum Berlin in 1989. In addition to the CJM, hes known for the Felix Nussbaum Haus in Germany, the UKs Imperial War Museum North, the Denver Art Museum, the Danish Jewish Museum and the National Holocaust Monument in Ottawa, Canada. (He also won a 2002 commission to redevelop the World Trade Center in New York City, although the final result scrapped most of his design.)

The CJM, which opened in 2009, saw Libeskind remodel an old power substation and combine it with a new annex on a tight space partly behind a church and under the looming tower of a high-rise hotel. Libeskind said he relished the challenge, which resulted in a widely praised amalgam of old and new.

I think it was actually a Talmudic commentary, because it was all in the margins, he said in a 2019 talk at the museum.

The new Tree of Life will include areas for worship, reflection and classrooms, as well as exhibitions and public programs of the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh.

Our collaboration with Daniel Libeskind will not be the culmination, but is the beginning of our efforts to create a Makom Kodesh, a safe and sacred space, for all who wish to be a part of our community, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of Tree of Life said in a statement. Our new and reimagined space will not only serve the needs of our congregation, but will offer an open space to our neighbors and the broader community here in Pittsburgh, across the country and around the world. The space will be welcoming and accessible for people of all abilities and backgrounds, offering safe and secure places to learn, cultivate partnerships, remember and reflect.

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Daniel Libeskind to design new Pittsburgh Tree of Life shul J. - The Jewish News of Northern California

All those who are learning Daf Yomi just completed Maseches Shekolim, the only volume included in the cycle from Talmud Yerushalmi. Some of the participants breathed a sigh of relief as we returned to the more familiar territory of Talmud Bavli with the study of Yoma. However, for others, their appetite was whetted for new vistas in the land of Yerushalmi. Not too long ago, the Gerrer Rebbe spearheaded a Daf Yomi for Yerushalmi and ArtScroll has been regularly issuing volumes in the English and Hebrew translations of this often unexplored Torah adventure.

Why, indeed, are there two different Talmuds and what distinguishes one from the other?

Furthermore, how did it happen that almost all scholars study Talmud Bavli and only rarely do we encounter even a great talmid chochom who is proficient in Yerushalmi?

The answers are fascinating and often lead to further commitment to the study of the Jerusalem Talmud.

First of all, what about the language and its apparent difficulty? Is it only our lack of familiarity or is there actually a reason we often simply dont know whats happening? Rav Yaakov Emden (Zohorei Yaavetz, page 123) writes that the lofty level of the Yerushalmi and the incredible light that shines from it motivated its editors and organizers, our sages, to present it in a difficult language that keeps the populace from understanding its depths. The language of the Bavli is clear and accessible, as opposed to the Yerushalmi, which is quite strange and almost incomprehensible. The reason for this discrepancy is so that the Yerushalmi would be inscrutable to the nations and evil people would have no access to its riches. There is no question that this was done deliberately with great wisdom, as all the decisions made by our sages.

The Netziv (Haamek Dovor, Shemos 34a) is even more specific in delineating the distinctions between Bavli and Yerushalmi. He likens the Yerushalmi to the first Luchos, which were given to us before we sinned with the Eigel. The sanctity of the first, he writes, was greater than the second. Had the first set not been broken, it would have been [relatively] easy to arrive at final decisions by logical means and comparisons. However, once we sinned, we required greater effort and analysis of the Torah. For this, the second Luchos were preferable. This dichotomy was similar to that of the two Talmudim. The Yerushalmis sanctity is greater than that of the Bavli in that the Amoraim [who compiled it] were earlier (Shabbos 134b), which led them closer to the truth. To this end, the fact that it was compiled in the Holy Land elevated this Talmud to the level of the first Luchos. This approach is reflected in Chazal, who say (Medrash Haneelam Eichah, Uzechor es borecha) that the word light always refers to Talmud Yerushalmi.

Rav Moshe Zechus (commentary to Rav Chaim Vitals Mevo Hashearim) adds another appellation. He reveals that the essence of Talmud Yerushalmi is rooted in Leah Imeinu and Talmud Bavli in Rochel Imeinu. At the beginning of the exile, not so many of the sparks (nitzotzos) were hidden very deeply and the righteous were able to retrieve them in the spirit of Leah However, later, when the pain of the exile deepened, the secrets could not be brought forth on the same level, leading to the statement of the Talmud Bavli itself (Sanhedrin 24a) that the posuk in Eichah of He placed me in darkness refers to Talmud Bavli.

Now, while all of this is beyond my understanding, it seems clear that the Yerushalmi retains secrets of the Torah beyond those permitted to Talmud Bavli. The Chidah (Midbar Kadomos, ches, No. 2) adds that the earlier generations were comprised of more elevated souls who were able to plumb the depths without tremendous debate and argumentation. The Chidah elsewhere (Sheim Hagedolim, seforim taf, No. 56) attributes the Rambams lofty soul to his connection to the Talmud Yerushalmi. Rav Yosef Shaul Nathanson (commentary to Aggados, Yoma 9a) also understands the darkness of Talmud Bavli as resulting from the doubts that emerge from pilpul and much machlokes, unlike the majority of the Yerushalmi.

All of this reminds us that our primary learning must be in Talmud Bavli, because this is closer to our level of understanding. On the hand, as the Gerrer Rebbe reminded us, there is much to be gained from allocating some time to the grand holiness and esoteric secrets of Talmud Yerushalmi as well. May we merit mastering both Talmudim, im yirtzeh Hashem.

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The Joys of Learning Talmud Bavli And Yerushalmi - Yated.com

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Being the first ever organisation to offer deep inclusive Jewish text learning in Scotland, Azara will begin with a month-long summer programme in Edinburgh next year.

The group aims to work across sectarian divisions in order to change the face of the Jewish community, as there are currently very few places in Scotland teaching how to read ancient texts written in Hebrew and Aramaic.

Talmud Torah, known as text study, is one of the pillars in Judaism that many Jews will set aside time each day to learn, yet the only previous place of Jewish learning in Scotland was the Glasgow Yeshiva, only open to teenage boys.

This place of learning was also closed many years ago. Previously, Scottish Jews who wanted to study this type of ancient text often find themselves going abroad to do so, but Azara plans to teach anyone regardless of age, gender or background. This will also help the emigration that has plagued the community, which has quartered in size since the mid-20th century.

The summer programme in Edinburgh invites students from across Scotland, the UK and Europe to learn together, connecting visitors and locals in attempts of being a gathering place for the whole community, as Azara will also be in conjunction with other Scottish Jewish organisations. Furthermore, there will be the option of attending for a day, an evening, or even a class, if those wanting to attend cannot for the whole month.

Jessica Spencer, a Scottish student Rabbi and co-founder of Azara, said: Classical Jewish texts are full of thoughtful debate about just the sort of questions that we ask today: how to build a just society, how to make life meaningful, how to cultivate connection?

"By bringing this kind of learning back into the Scottish community and inviting visitors to share with locals in the project, were hoping to show the world how vibrant Jewish life in Scotland can be.

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Talmud Torah: Jewish group will be studying ancient texts in Edinburgh - Edinburgh News

It was with profound sadness as well as angry consternation that I read of the recent decision by the Council of the Chief Rabbinate stating that all the conversions and divorces performed in Orthodox rabbinical courts outside of Israel must be approved by the Chief Rabbinates Department for Marriage and Conversion. I believe the Israeli Rabbinate is overstepping their boundaries especially in two areas dependent upon a personal relationship: between a rabbi and convert, and a congregant seeking a divorce.

Moreover, the glory of our Talmudic literature is that it is profoundly pluralistic, encouraging dissent and respectful of different traditions as long as the disputants have the proper intellectual credentials and accept the overall system of Halacha (Jewish law) and lifestyle. Witness the following Talmudic passage:

Rabbi Abba said in the name of Shmuel: For three years the academy of Shammai and the academy of Hillel disputed. These said, The Halacha is like we [declare it to be] and those said, The Halacha is like we [declare it to be]. A small Divine voice descended [from heaven] and said, These and those are the words of the Living God, and the Halacha is in accordance with the academy of Hillel. But if these and those are the words of the living God, why did the academy of Hillel merit the law to be established in accordance with its positions? Because they are gentle and tolerant and study their own opinions as well as the opinions of the academy of Shammai, and they even cite the opinions of the Academy of Shammai before their own opinions. (Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin 13b)

According to this source, in the rabbinical disputes between the disciples of Hillel and Shammai, both sides represent the words of God and both sides express an absolute truth of Divine origin. God Himself, as it were, provided for alternate possibilities depending upon the circumstances, the temper of the times, and the individuals in question. Pluralism, at least in terms of differences of opinion in the realm of Jewish law, is built into the very fabric of our system and appears to be a necessary expression of Divine will.

The overwhelming majority of Talmudic sources confirm this open view of pluralism the idea that these and those are the words of the Living God. In fact, this phrase appears many more times in the Babylonian Talmud (e.g., Gittin 6b and Rosh Hashanah 14b). The Babylonian Talmud in Hagiga 3b says, Those who declare impure and those who declare pure... were each given their view from [the] one Shepherd.

If the exigencies of the time and/or the situation demand it, it is certainly permissible for a religio-legal authority (posek) to resolve a halachic problem in accordance with a minority decision. So teaches the Tosefta in the beginning of the Tractate Eduyot, and this is the accepted procedure in normative Halacha. (See my book The Living Tree, Studies in Modern Orthodoxy, Maggid Books pp. 9-30.)

As you can see, our halachic structure is hardly monolithic, and allows different communities to have individual rabbinical authorities who are sensitive to the background of the questioner as well as being thoroughly knowledgeable in the law at hand. Specifically issues of divorce and conversions, the very issues which the Chief Rabbinate insist on reviewing, require the local rav to be familiar with the individual case, especially if it be a woman seeking a divorce from an unwilling husband or a convert who will always require rabbinic strengthening and follow-up after the conversion. A rav in Jerusalem cannot decide on the sincerity of a convert in New York!

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A popular haredi (ultra-Orthodox) magazine at the time, Yom HaShishi, made the huppah at the Wall their cover story, with the screaming headline; The Rabbi of Efrat married a kohen to a divorce (needless to say ,without bothering to learn any of the details or even calling me to determine the true facts of the case). Rav Mordechai Eliyahu was then the Rishon Lezion chief Sephardi rabbi of Israel, and he and his rabbanit had spent a Shabbat with us in our developing community in Efrat. He had also given a lecture at our yeshiva high school and kollel, the earliest of our Ohr Torah institutions.

Since no one in Efrat in those early days read Yom HaShishi, and since I hadnt received any negative feedback from anyone, I paid no attention to the article. But to my great surprise and eternal gratitude, the Rishon Lezion Rav himself called my home. He introduced himself on the phone only as Mordechai Eliyahu, said that he hears that some people are shedding my blood, and that he would like to hear about the reported incident of the Kohen and divorce from me the following day in his office.

At our meeting, after he warmly greeted me, I explained that the Kohen was a long-time baal tshuva (returnee to Judaism) of mine, and that the only source for his status as a kohen was his father and grandfather, who had both been treif butchers and Shabbat desecrators. And so, according to a written responsum of Rav Moshe Feinstein, given the wandering status of the Jews during the last centuries, such Jews could not be considered reliable witnesses for establishing a kohen status (See Igrot Moshe, Even HaEzer 4:11).

The Rishon Lezion Rav then told me that although most halachic decisors in Israel would not accept this particular decision of Rav Moshe about the kohen status, since I was a qualified and certified Orthodox rav, I had every right to decide the issue in accordance with Rav Moshe. After all, these and those [Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, rabbinical authorities in Israel and rabbinical authorities abroad] all speak the words of our living God.

It is to be hoped that the Chief Rabbinate today would learn this lesson, especially in the two areas that they insist on controlling: conversion and divorces. As we have seen, these are specifically the areas that are most sensitive to having local religious courts making the final decision and assuming the halachic responsibility.

The writer is the founding rabbi of Efrat, and the founder and rosh yeshiva of Ohr Torah Stone.

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Rabbinate is overstepping its boundaries on conversion, divorces -opinion - The Jerusalem Post

Avigayl Halpern

By Avigayl Halpern

In the years following the reckonings with sexual harassment and assault prompted by the #MeToo movement, there has been debate over the correct communal response to those accused of sexual misconduct and whether perpetrators should be pushed to the edges of a community.

Questions of sin, quarantine and repentance are central to last weeks Torah portion, Tazria-Metzora, prompted by the rules surrounding the metzora, a person afflicted with tzaraat. Sometimes translated as leprosy, tzaraat is a skin disease that, per the description, can also affect houses and clothing. After an inspection by a priest, a person who is found to have tzaraat must tear their clothes and leave the camp until they are found to be pure by a second inspection, and they must cry out Impure! Impure! as they walk.

The rabbis suggest that tzaraat is not simply a random occurrence. Instead they cast it as a punishment, most famously associating tzaraat with lashon hara, cruel speech, but the Talmud in Arakhin offers seven sins that would cause a person to be afflicted with tzaraat: For malicious speech, for bloodshed, for an oath taken in vain, for forbidden sexual relations, for arrogance, for theft and for stinginess.

Today we know to avoid framing illness or bodily differences as signs of moral degradation. But the commands given to the metzora can be understood in another way: not as a response to a bodily condition, but as a model for repairing the damage caused by misdeeds.

The debate over how to repair such damage was reignited in recent weeks when it came to light that Jewish studies scholars and community leaders had been participating in closed-door, invitation-only conversations convened by a group that included Steven M. Cohen, a prominent Jewish sociologist accused of making both verbal and physical advances on junior women colleagues and subsequently resigned from his major academic positions.

Hundreds of Jewish leaders, rabbis and rabbinical students have pushed back against these recent gatherings in public letters, arguing that Cohen had not demonstrated the kind of repentance necessary for such acts of public rehabilitation.

As Jewish clergy, reads a letter signed by more than 500 rabbis and cantors, we know that actively participating in the rehabilitation of unrepentant abusers is not value neutral, and we know that lifting up the work of unrepentant abusers is not value neutral.

I was involved in drafting a similar letter from rabbinical and cantorial students.

In social media conversations and elsewhere, this has raised conversations about how far might be too far in socially sanctioning those who have committed sexual harassment and assault. Is it really fair to push someone fully out of the camp?

When the Talmud in Arakhin goes through its list of sins that cause tzaraat in more depth, the prooftext it offers for sexual misbehavior comes from Genesis, citing the episode when Pharaoh kidnaps Abrahams wife, Sarah, and is punished by God with great afflictions. The Hebrew word for afflictions is negaim, the same word used in Tazria-Metzora to describe the marks of tzaraat.

This is a striking example for the rabbis to choose. This is not a verse about run-of-the-mill sexual misbehavior, like adultery. This is a reference to a story about sexual violence and power. Pharaoh, who holds all the cards, takes Sarah to his palace simply because he wants to. Some commentators also hold Abraham responsible for standing by and allowing this to happen he had claimed Sarah was his sister in hopes that Pharaoh would not harm him when taking her away. While many commentators excuse Abrahams lie, the medieval commentator Nachmanides is critical of Abrahams decision to expose his wife to sexual sin.

By invoking this story in the context of tzaraat, the rabbis offer us an opportunity to understand the biblical processes for responding to tzaraat as a mode for responding to sexual violence. Banishing someone outside the camp is a key part of a communitys response to such behavior. Time away is necessary, and it is the responsibility of the culpable party to keep others safe, to prioritize their needs over his or hers. The person with tzaraat is commanded to warn passersby of their state.

In a dvar Torah, Dr. Rachel Rosenthal, a Talmud professor, writes: Often, it is difficult to acknowledge our own weaknesses and failings. We excuse behaviors in ourselves that we condemn in others, justifying our actions even as we are uncomfortably aware that we do not really believe we are doing the right thing. Imagine if, every time we wronged ourselves and others, we were forced to stand up and admit it.

Rosenthal challenges us to embrace the mode of the metzora, to see the value in making public our wrongs. Rosenthals words are directed at individuals: We must all own our misdeeds and take time to contemplate them. But her words also offer wisdom as we as a community consider what is moral and right: Rather than hiding behind excuses, we would be forced to stand before the world and say, Look, this is who I am, both for good and for bad. And while this might cause us to be temporarily separated from our communities, ultimately it would have the potential to bring us back in, presenting a more honest and more righteous version of ourselves, scars and all.

Time outside the camp and public communication about misdeeds are key parts of healing, both for individuals and a community. The case of the metzora teaches that for someone not to be welcomed in communal spaces after they do harm is necessary and important. Without it, there can be no moving forward.

Avigayil Halpern is studying for rabbinic ordination at the Hadar Institute in New York, and can be found on Twitter at @avigayiln.

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For #Metoo Transgressors, the Only Cure is Banishment - Jewish Exponent