Polónia

 

 

"The Difficulty of Confronting the Holocaust: Mass Murder in Jedwabne, Poland", Jan Gross (2021) 

 

União Soviética

 

 

 

"Victory and Disillusion: the ‘Black Years’ of Soviet Jewry after the Holocaust", Zvi Gitelman (2014)

Leon Kass

 

 

Reading Ruth with Leon Kass

 

Israel

 

 

 

A 1,500-year-old amulet bearing God's name, found in northern Israel 40 years ago 

and handed to the Israel Antiquities Authority in May 2021

Antissemitismo

 

 

 

A clip of Rabbi Wolpe's speech at the Israel Rally in Beverly Hills on May 23, 2021

 

 

וְיָשְׁב֗וּ אִ֣ישׁ תַּ֧חַת גַּפְנ֛וֹ וְתַ֥חַת תְּאֵנָת֖וֹ וְאֵ֣ין מַחֲרִ֑יד כִּי־פִ֛י יְהֹוָ֥ה צְבָא֖וֹת דִּבֵּֽר

But every man shall sit Under his grapevine or fig tree With no one to disturb him. For it was the LORD of Hosts who spoke. 

Micah 4:4

Vida

 

 

Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz

 

 

Shavuot

 

 

Rabbi Wolpe's Sermon - Shavuot service (Today)

Israel

 

 

 

Explosions light-up the night sky above buildings in Gaza City 

as Israeli forces shell the Palestinian enclave, early on May 18, 2021

 

Israel

 

 

 

A synagogue in the southern coastal city of Ashkelon was hit by a rocket 

fired by Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip, May 16, 2021

Israel

 

 

"Missiles from Gaza to Tel Aviv, Israel beeing protected by an Iron Dome" 

 

Israel

 

 

 

Relatives walk out of the damaged home of Nadine, 16, and Khalil Awaad, a father and daughter

 who were killed by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip, in their village of Dahmash, May 12, 2021

Israel

 

 

 

The scene where an apartment building was hit by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in Ashkelon, southern Israel

 

Jerusalém

 

 

Yom Yerushalayim

Vida

 

 

 

The world’s largest colony of northern gannets squabble, mate and build nests on Bass Rock in Scotland

 

 

Do not be like servants who perform the will of your master for a reward.

Pirkei Avot 1:3

 

Brevard S. Childs

 

 

In my first years in college, I never would have suspected I would end up in Biblical Studies. Majoring in English, I had vague plans of teaching the “Great Books,” especially those from the Middle Ages and Renaissance written in English and Italian (which I also studied), in a liberal arts college. But as my existential involvement in Judaism grew, I decided to make the change into Jewish Studies, specializing in Bible, which I saw as its most linguistically rigorous subfield.

The larger spiritual motivation has never left me, nor has my commitment to placing the Bible within the broad sweep of Jewish tradition. I emphasize that this does not equal a commitment to an ahistorical harmonization of biblical texts—either with each other or with subsequent rabbinic interpretation—or any kindred intellectually indefensible moves. It does mean, however, that biblical scholars with such a commitment will keep certain key points in mind that secular scholars, especially those fleeing an intense religious upbringing, are more likely to ignore or reject.

What are some of those points?

One is that that those diverse texts, composed over the course of perhaps a thousand years, constitute a “Bible” only because subsequent tradition so defined and delimited them. How one interprets a text is a function of the community of interpretation in which the interpreters are located and which they hope to nourish and serve. As I see it, there should be room within religious Jewish communities for historical-critical scholarship—intellectual honesty in our times demands it—but historical-critical scholarship alone does not constitute “Torah.”

In order for biblical scholarship to be defined as “Torah,” it must recognize that the meaning of a scriptural text cannot be limited to the intentions of the original authors or the cultural meanings that the texts offered their first hearers, important as these are. It must pay respectful attention to the processes of recontextualization and appropriation within the continuing Jewish tradition, including those within the Bible itself. It cannot reflexively brand those processes as wrong, definitively and irreversibly superseded by the characteristically modern focus on the authors of the text and their historical worlds.

Similarly, such scholarship should recognize that the Bible has multiple uses and that, in the Jewish case, standing legitimately among them are those that encourage faith in God, identification with the people Israel over the millennia, and the enriching of practice (such as that of prayer). Needless to say, these are not the uses to which biblical scholarship in most contemporary colleges and universities is addressed.

Nor can they be. Scholarship in those venues usually speaks to a community of interpretation that is religiously neutral, presupposes naturalism (often naively), and prefers analysis to synthesis. That is, because such a community is composed of people from a wide variety of religious backgrounds or none at all, the focus is on the human authors to the exclusion of the more nettlesome—yet (to religious people) more important—question of God’s involvement and how it should be honored. And, given the diversity of the texts that have come to make up the Bible (a term that itself necessarily means different things to different communities), the focus likewise shifts from the implications of the entire collection to a more fine-grained and descriptive account of its individual parts.

How, precisely, academic scholarship in this common mode can productively interface with the characteristic theological commitments of Judaism or Christianity (without which, ironically, there would be scant interest in the Bible at all) is a very large question—and one that deserves much more philosophically and theologically sophisticated thought than it has received, especially among Jews.

Neither the secular academic approach to the Bible nor the religiously driven one is likely to refute the other or to go away. A more nuanced model of the relationship is called for. In particular, both religious traditionalists and critical scholars need to be more self-aware when claiming to relate what the text “really” means.

Among the books that have influenced me are those of the late Protestant scholar, Brevard S. Childs. At its best, his “canonical method” both focuses on the finished product as received by a particular religious community and yet respects and brings into fruitful conversation different stages in the production and reception of a given text, including its recontextualizations and interpretations over the centuries.

Childs’s method is not without its weaknesses and cannot be imported wholesale into a Jewish framework. Nevertheless, the combination of rigorous, non-apologetic historical-critical learning with robust religious commitment is one that is today very much needed for those biblical scholars who wish (ultimately) to place their work within the ongoing Jewish tradition and thus to advance the cause of Torah.

Prof. Jon D. Levenson

 

Benjamin Sommer

 

 

"Does God Have a Body?"

 

Benny Morris

 

 

 

"Turkey's Destruction of its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924" (2019)

 

 

וַיֹּ֣סֶף אִ֭יּוֹב שְׂאֵ֥ת מְשָׁל֗וֹ וַיֹּאמַֽר 

Job again took up his theme and said:

חַי־אֵ֭ל הֵסִ֣יר מִשְׁפָּטִ֑י וְ֝שַׁדַּ֗י הֵמַ֥ר נַפְשִֽׁי 

By God who has deprived me of justice! By Shaddai who has embittered my life!

כִּֽי־כָל־ע֣וֹד נִשְׁמָתִ֣י בִ֑י וְר֖וּחַ אֱל֣וֹהַּ בְּאַפִּֽי 

As long as there is life in me, And God’s breath is in my nostrils,

אִם־תְּדַבֵּ֣רְנָה שְׂפָתַ֣י עַוְלָ֑ה וּ֝לְשׁוֹנִ֗י אִם־יֶהְגֶּ֥ה רְמִיָּֽה 

My lips will speak no wrong, Nor my tongue utter deceit.

חָלִ֣ילָה לִּי֮ אִם־אַצְדִּ֪יק אֶ֫תְכֶ֥ם עַד־אֶגְוָ֑ע לֹא־אָסִ֖יר תֻּמָּתִ֣י מִמֶּֽנִּי 

Far be it from me to say you are right; Until I die I will maintain my integrity. 

Job 27:1-5

Vida

 

 

 

Two egrets fight over a mudskipper in the Mai Po Nature Reserve in Hong Kong

 

David Ben Gurion

 

 

 

David Ben Gurion, left, and Yitzhak Ben Zvi, right, as law students in Turkey (1912)

 

 

One's prayer is not heeded unless God is approached with one's heart in one's hands

Taanit 8a

Monte Meron

 

 

 

Mourners in Jerusalem carry the body of Rabbi Eliezer Goldberg, 

who died during Lag BaOmer stampede at Mount Meron, April 30, 2021

 

Gueto de Varsóvia

 

 

 

Rav Yitzchak Meir Kanal’s photo taken by a German soldier (1941)

 

Makom

 

 

"Pilgrimage": Sermon by Rabbi David Wolpe

 

Rabbi Levi said: "God appeared to Israel in infinite images reflecting the appearence of each individual, and all felt personally addressed"

Pesikta de Rav Kahana