27 de abril de 2015

Noé


"Noah's Ark", Fresco, Abbey Church, Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe (c. 1100)

Sinagoga de Sofia


Sofia, Bulgária

Tuvia Tenenbom


 "L'Chayim"


Ours is not a maritime country; neither commerce nor the intercourse which it promotes with the outside world has any attraction for us. Our cities are built inland, remote from the sea, and we devote ourselves to the cultivation of the productive country.

Flavius Josephus, c. 96 CE

24 de abril de 2015

Vida



This Russell's viper snake takes advantage of the rain in Sri Lanka

Birkat Cohanim


May the LORD bless you and guard you –
יְבָרֶכְךָ יהוה, וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ

May the LORD make His face shed light upon you and be gracious unto you –
יָאֵר יהוה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ, וִיחֻנֶּךָּ

May the LORD lift up His face unto you and give you peace –
יִשָּׂא יהוה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ, וְיָשֵׂם לְךָ שָׁלוֹם

Rabbi David Hartman


"Leon Charney Report" (2004)

Arménia


View of Mount Ararat from Khor Virap, Armenia
 

21 de abril de 2015

Elio Toaff




Among the many things that religious tradition holds in store for us is a legacy of wonder. The surest way to suppress our ability to understand the meaning of God and the importance of worship is to take things for granted. Indifference to the sublime wonder of living is the root of sin.

A. J. Heschel, "God in Search of Man", p.43

Ketef Hinom


The scrolls found in Ketef Hinom, as displayed in the Israel Museum (circa 600 BCE)

Ketef Hinnom (Hebrew: כָּתֵף הִינוֹם katef hinom, "shoulder of Hinnom") is an archaeological site southwest of the Old City of Jerusalem, adjacent to St. Andrew's Church, now on the grounds of the Menachem Begin Heritage Center.The site consists of a series of rock-hewn burial chambers based on natural caverns. In 1979 two tiny silver scrolls, inscribed with portions of the well-known apotropaic Priestly Blessing from the Book of Numbers and apparently once used as amulets, were found in one of the burial chambers. The delicate process of unrolling the scrolls while developing a method that would prevent them from disintegrating took three years. They contain what may be the oldest surviving texts from the Hebrew Bible, dating from around 600 BCE.

Imigrantes


  
 Migrants trying to reach Greece are rescued by members of the Greek coastguard and locals just off the island of Rhodes

Rabbi David Wolpe


"Why Faith Matters"

17 de abril de 2015


Not like a cypress,
not at once, not all of me,
but like the grass, in thousands of cautious green exits,
to be hiding like many children
while one of them seeks.
And not like the single man,
like Saul, whom the multitude found
and made king.
But like the rain in many places
from many clouds, to be absorbed, to be drunk
by many mouths, to be breathed in
like the air all year long
and scattered like blossoming in springtime.
Not the sharp ring that wakes up
the doctor on call,
but with tapping, on many small windows
at side entrances, with many heartbeats.
And afterward the quiet exit, like smoke
without shofar-blasts, a statesman resigning,
children tired from play,
a stone as it almost stops rolling
down the steep hill, in the place
where the plain of great renunciation begins,
from which, like prayers that are answered,
dust rises in many myriads of grains.

"Not Like a Cypress", Yehuda Amichai
 

França


An 1806 French print depicts Napoleon Bonaparte emancipating the Jews

Sexo


"Sacred Sperm" (CLIP)

Paulo


"The Conversion of Saul", fresco by Michelangelo (1542–45)

Curaçao


Mikve Israel-Emanuel Synagogue, Willemstad (1732)

Mikve Israel-Emanuel is the oldest continually active Jewish congregation in the Americas (since 1654). The wheels of the community were put in motion by Jaoa d’Yllan, a Portuguese Jew by way of Amsterdam who petitioned the Dutch West India Company to send a group of settlers to the island. Most were Amsterdam Jews who had fled the Iberian Peninsula in the aftershocks of the Portuguese Inquisition. 

11 de abril de 2015

Vida


Ruppells Griffon Vulture

Noé


"Drunkennes of Noah", Giovanni Belllini (1515)


I, Koheleth, was king in Jerusalem over Israel. I set my mind to study and to probe with wisdom all that happens under the sun. - An unhappy business, that, which God gave men to be concerned with! I observed all the happenings beneath the sun, and I found that all is futile and pursuit of wind: 
     A twisted thing that cannot be made straight,
     A lack that cannot be made good.
I said to myself: "Here I have grown richer and wiser than any that ruled before me over Jerusalem, and my mind has zealously absorbed wisdom and learning. And so I set my mind to appraise wisdom and to appraise madness and folly. And I learned - that this too was pursuit of wind:
     For as wisdom grows, vexation grows;
     To increase learning is to increase heartache.

Ecclesiastes 1, 12-18
JPS

Paula Fredriksen


 "Paul and Augustine on the Redemption of the Jews"

"Lemon Tree" de Eran Riklis



Trailer

9 de abril de 2015

Vida




Do not accept these rains that come too late.
Better to linger. Make your pain
An image of the desert. Say it's said
And do not look to the west. Refuse

To surrender. Try this year too
To live alone in the long summer,
Eat your drying bread, refrain
From tears. And do not learn from

Experience. Take as an example my youth,
My return late at night, what has been written
In the rain of yesteryear. It makes no difference

Now. See your events as my events.
Everything will be as before: Abraham will again
Be Abram. Sarah will be Sarai.

"Do Not Accept", Yehuda Amichai
 

Medo


"Looking At Fear. That Extraordinary Jewel", Jiddu Krishnamurti 

Noé


"The Flood with Noah's Ark", Jan Brueghel the Elder 

Sefarad


 "Por Que Llorax Blanca Nina",  Jordi Savall, Montserrat Figueras
Sephardic Jewish music from Sarajevo