Judaism is a 3,000-Year-Old Love Affair With a Land

David Wolpe, April 25, 2016
 

 

Covered in prayer shawls, ultra-Orthodox Jewish men read from a Torah scroll 
during the Jewish holiday of Passover in front of the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray, 
in Jerusalem's Old City on April 24, 2016.

On Passover, Jews all over the world change one sentence in their daily prayers; instead of praying for rain, we begin to pray for dew. For in Israel the time for the grain harvest has begun, and if the winds blow and the rains fall, the grain cannot be harvested and will will rot in the field. Dew on the other hand, will moisten the grain without damaging it. That simple change in the prayer marks a profound truth about Judaism that touches on modern politics as well.

Twenty-five years ago I was returning from a two-day trip to New York. I ran into my teacher, the late Rabbi Henry Fisher. We began talking, and he asked me if I had changed my watch to accommodate New York time. “No,” I said, “I kept it on Los Angeles time.” “Why?” he asked? “Because,” I answered, “I would soon be home.”

Rabbi Fisher then told me that that is why Jews all over the world prayed for rain or dew when it was needed in Israel, no matter where they lived. The assumption of Jewish history is they would soon be back in Jerusalem. They kept their clocks to the time at home.

It has also been a tradition for many centuries in Judaism to leave a corner of one’s house unpainted, to remind us that this is a temporary dwelling. We are here only until we are gathered back to Israel.

Such practices remind us that politics should not obscure a deep truth about Judaism—it is a 3,000-year-old love affair with a land. Nobel Prize winning writer Shai Agnon expressed this idea with his usual wit. Elie Wiesel writes: “Shai Agnon had a marvelous word in Stockholm when he received the Nobel Prize. He said, ‘Majesty, like all Jews I was born in Jerusalem, but then the Romans came and moved my cradle to Buczacz.’” Agnon recalls the destruction of the Temple 2,000 years ago as scattering all Jews from their birthplace, the place to which he returned in his lifetime to become a storyteller for his people and the world.

The Western wall may be the least aesthetic of all the world’s great shrines. But Jews coax the mute wall to words by placing notes in its cracks and crevices, filling up the yearning of the ages, reminding themselves that this is the heartland of their history. Throughout unparalleled wanderings, it was always to this spot that they hoped to return.

The realization of a dream, like the landing of a plane, reintroduces the friction of hard surfaces, of forces pushing against each other. The Jewish return to Zion and the revival of Hebrew as a spoken language is an astonishment of history, but it has also been fraught and painful. Yet anyone who questions the Jewish attachment to Israel ignores an ancient, enduring passion. For generations, Jews in every corner of the globe prayed for the land they had never seen, that many would never see. But they believed their children or their children’s children might one day walk its streets and harvest its crops, for they remembered the prophecy of Amos: “For I shall plant you in your land, and you shall no more be plucked up (9:15).” Israel is home. 

David Wolpe 

http://time.com/4306874/passover-prayer-and-israel/

Páscoa

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Aliyah

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Normal men do not know that everything is possible.

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Will Eisner

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Christine Hayes & Paula Fredriksen

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Salomão

"The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon", Edward Poynter (1890)

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In every generation

The night of the Passover seder is cloaked in an aura of sanctity and ancient times. The basic format of the evening is as follows: On the first night of the festival of Passover, one or more families gather together to recount the story of the Exodus from Egypt and to share a joyous family feast.

The structure of this celebration has its roots in the original first night of Passover, when Israel left Egypt. Such was its character in the days of the prophet Isaiah as well; he speaks of “a night when a festival is hallowed” (Is. 30:29). This was its basic nature during the Second Temple era, when the famed sage Hillel would “wrap [the Pesacĥ offering] up with matzah and bitter herbs and eat them together.”

Likewise, in the dark days that followed the Destruction of the Holy Temple, R. Eliezer, R. Yehoshua, and their colleagues sat together on this night in Bnei Brak. It continued in the era of Yannai, the poet of the land of Israel who penned the hymn entitled Az Rov Nissim while living under Byzantine rule. So it was in the days of Rabbi Yosef Tuv-Elem in northern France, and in this fashion its observance continued to the time when the classic song Ĥad Gadya was composed, at the close of the Middle Ages.

This continuum of the Passover observance endured not only in its basic appearance, but even in its finer details: The child who asks the four questions (whether or not he can carry a tune) voices words and phrases almost identical to those of the child who asked those very same questions at his family’s seder when the Holy Temple stood in Jerusalem almost 2,000 years ago.

Thus, the Passover seder enables the members of every generation to emulate their ancestors in an act of retelling that is constantly reinvigorated. An eminence of yore lingers over the rhetorical, ornate ceremony, each detail filled with recollections and significance. Raising and placing down the cup, covering and uncovering the matzah, opening the door, breaking the matzah: all of these acts are parts of an established ceremony, perhaps the most ancient ceremony observed continuously by Jewish people throughout the generations.

However, at the same time it should be noted that despite its sanctity, ritual and ceremony, the seder night is not a time of pompous, frozen decorum, of the precise and heavy repetition of what has already been performed repeatedly for thousands of years. For like the other Jewish holidays and festivals, each seder night unites within itself elements of austerity with intimacy, sobriety with cheer, and a set text with the possibility of endless variations and styles.

Although the external format of the seder is fixed, it is not rigid. It is designed to accommodate changes and novel interpretations, and this approach is even ideal. Not only have various additions and new sections occasionally been added to the text of the Haggadah over the course of the years, but the text of the Haggadah itself practically beckons to be perfected by the seder participants themselves.

In every generation, Jewish parents and children must contemplate anew the messages of the Haggadah. The Egyptian bondage and the redemption from Egypt are subjects that need to be discussed. Upon investigation, we will find that many aspects of our life meet, identify with, and collide with the Passover Haggadah. Essentially, all the seder participants are asked to make additions and improvements to the Haggadah, to “[tell] of the Exodus from Egypt…all that night” — at the very least.

For this reason, there are no set, restrictive rules that dictate how the Haggadah should be read, or who should read it. If everyone agrees, the family members may ask the head of the household to read and explain; alternatively, they may all read in unison. If they wish, the family may sing the Haggadah, or if they so prefer, they may recite it without singing. Whoever would like to ask a question — the wise son, the wicked son, or the simple-natured son — whether young or old, is invited to do so. And whoever is able to answer, to participate in the discussion, may do so as well — the more the better.

The seder night expresses the character of Judaism in the fullest sense, as taught concisely by one of the hasidic masters. The Torah teaches, “You shall be holy people to Me” (Ex. 22:30). When shall this be? When your holiness is human. Thus, the atmosphere at the seder should not be one of irreverence or silliness; a feeling of respect for the sacred should permeate it — but with humanity. One is allowed to laugh; one is allowed to question; one is allowed to have fun. The afikoman is “stolen,” the Exodus from Egypt is reenacted, and this Jewish family, now celebrating the Passover seder, renews its connection with the entire Jewish people, in all their exiles and throughout all generations. We recall the past, give thanks for God’s goodness, grieve over misfortune, and anticipate the future redemption, when “for you there shall be singing as on a night when a festival is hallowed” (Is. 30:29).

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/in-every-generation-the-seder-night/

Hannah Arendt

 Entretien avec Roger Errera (1973)

Will Eisner

(1941)

Max Liebermann

"Women plucking geese" (1871)

"The Eight Day", Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Our parsha begins with childbirth and, in the case of a male child, “On the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised” (Lev. 12:3). This became known not just as milah, “circumcision”, but something altogether more theological, brit milah, “the covenant of circumcision”. That is because even before Sinai, almost at the dawn of Jewish history, circumcision became the sign of God’s covenant with Abraham (Gen. 17:1-14). Why circumcision? Why was this from the outset not just a mitzvah, one command among others, but the very sign of our covenant with God and His with us? And why on the eighth day? Last week’s parsha was called Shemini, “the eighth [day]” (Lev. 9:1) because it dealt with the inauguration of the Mishkan, the Sanctuary, which also took place on the eighth day. Is there a connection between these two quite different events? The place to begin is a strange midrash recording an encounter between the Roman governor Tyranus Rufus 1 and Rabbi Akiva. Rufus began the conversation by asking, “Whose works are better, those of God or of man?” Surprisingly, the Rabbi replied, “Those of man.” Rufus responded, “But look at the heavens and the earth. Can a human being make anything like that?” Rabbi Akiva replied that the comparison was unfair. “Creating heaven and earth is clearly beyond human capacity. Give me an example drawn from matters that are within human scope.” Rufus then said, “Why do you practise circumcision?” To this, Rabbi Akiva replied, “I knew you would ask that question. That is why I said in advance that the works of man are better than those of God.” The rabbi then set before the governor ears of corn and cakes. The unprocessed corn is the work of God. The cake is the work of man. Is it not more pleasant to eat cake than raw ears of corn? Rufus then said, “If God really wants us to practise circumcision, why did He not arrange for babies to be born circumcised?” Rabbi Akiva replied, “God gave the commands to Israel to refine our character.”2 This is a very odd conversation, but, as we will see, a deeply significant one. To understand it, we have to go back to the beginning of time.

The Torah tells us that for six days God created the universe and on the seventh he rested, declaring it holy. His last creation, on the sixth day, was humanity: the first man and the first woman. According to the sages, Adam and Eve sinned by eating the forbidden fruit already on that day and were sentenced to exile from the Garden of Eden. However, God delayed the execution of sentence for a day to allow them to spend Shabbat in the garden. As the day came to a close, the humans were about to be sent out into the world in the darkness of night. God took pity on them and showed them how to make light. That is why we light a special candle at Havdalah, not just to mark the end of Shabbat but also to show that we begin the workday week with the light God taught us to make. The Havdalah candle therefore represents the light of the eighth day – which marks the beginning of human creativity. Just as God began the first day of creation with the words, “Let there be light”, so at the start of the eighth day He showed humans how they too could make light. Human creativity is thus conceived in Judaism as parallel to Divine creativity,3 and its symbol is the eighth day. That is why the Mishkan was inaugurated on the eighth day. As Nechama Leibowitz and others have noted, there is an unmistakable parallelism between the language the Torah uses to describe God’s creation of the universe and the Israelites’ creation of the Sanctuary. The Mishkan was a microcosm – a cosmos in miniature. Thus Genesis begins and Exodus ends with stories of creation, the first by God, the second by the Israelites. The eighth day is when we celebrate the human contribution to creation. That is also why circumcision takes place on the eighth day. All life, we believe, comes from God. Every human being bears His image and likeness. We see each child as God’s gift: “Children are the provision of the Lord; the fruit of the womb, His reward” (Ps, 127:3). Yet it takes a human act – circumcision – to signal that a male Jewish child has entered the covenant. That is why it takes place on the eighth day, to emphasise that the act that symbolises entry into the covenant is a human one – just as it was when the Israelites at the foot of Mount Sinai said, “All that the Lord has said, we will do and obey” (Ex. 24:7). Mutuality and reciprocity mark the special nature of the specific covenant God made, first with Abraham, then with Moses and the Israelites. It is this that differentiates it from the universal covenant God made with Noah and through him with all humanity. That covenant, set out in Genesis 9, involved no human response. Its content was the seven Noahide commands. Its sign was the rainbow. But God asked nothing of Noah, not even his consent. Judaism embodies a unique duality of the universal and the particular. We are all in covenant with God by the mere fact of our humanity. We are bound, all of us, by the basic laws of morality. This is part of what it means to be human. But to be Jewish is also to be part of a particular covenant of reciprocity with God. God calls. We respond. God begins the work and calls on us to complete it. That is what the act of circumcision represents. God did not cause male children to be born circumcised, said Rabbi Akiva, because He deliberately left this act, this sign of the covenant, to us.

Now we begin to understand the full depth of the conversation between Rabbi Akiva and the Roman governor Tineius Rufus. For the Romans, the Greeks and the ancient world generally, the gods were to be found in nature: the sun, the sea, the sky, the earth and its seasons, the fields and their fertility. In Judaism, God is beyond nature, and his covenant with us takes us beyond nature also. So for us, not everything natural is good. War is natural. Conflict is natural. The violent competition to be the alpha male is natural. Jews – and others inspired by the God of Abraham – believe, as Kathryn Hepburn said to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, that “Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we are put in this world to rise above.” The Romans found circumcision strange because it was unnatural. Why not celebrate the human body as God made it? God, said Rabbi Akiva to the Roman governor, values culture, not just nature, the work of humans not just the work of God. It was this cluster of ideas – that God left creation unfinished so that we could become partners in its completion; that by responding to God’s commands we become refined; that God delights in our creativity and helped us along the way by teaching the first humans how to make light – that made Judaism unique in its faith in God’s faith in humankind. All of this is implicit in the idea of the eighth day as the day on which God sent humans out into the world to become His partners in the work of creation. Why is this symbolised in the act of circumcision? Because if Darwin was right, then the most primal of all human instincts is to seek to pass on one’s genes to the next generation. That is the strongest force of nature within us. Circumcision symbolises the idea that there is something higher than nature. Passing on our genes to the next generation should not simply be a blind instinct, a Darwinian drive. The Abrahamic covenant was based on sexual fidelity, the sanctity of marriage, and the consecration of the love that brings new life into the world.4 It is a rejection of the ethic of the alpha male.

God created physical nature: the nature charted by science. But He asks us to be co-creators, with Him, of human nature. As R. Abraham Mordecai Alter of Ger said. “When God said, ‘Let us make man in our image’, to whom was He speaking? To man himself. God said to man, Let us – you and I – make man together.”5 The symbol of that co-creation is the eighth day, the day He helps us begin to create a world of light and love.
 

---

1   Quintus Tineius Rufus, Roman governor of Judaea during the Bar Kochba uprising. He is known in the rabbinic literature as “the wicked”. His hostility to Jewish practice was one of the factors that provoked the uprising. 
2   Tanhuma, Tazria, 5.
3   This is also signalled in the Havdalah prayer which mentions five havdalot, “distinctions”, between sacred and profane, light and darkness, Israel and the nations, Shabbat and the weekdays, and the final “who distinguishes between sacred and profane.” This parallels Genesis 1 in which the verb lehavdil – to distinguish, separate – appears five times.
4    That, as I have pointed out elsewhere, is why Genesis does not criticise idolatry but does implicitly criticise, on at least six occasions, the lack of a sexual ethic among the people with whom the patriarchs and their families come into contact.
5    R. Avraham Mordecai Alter of Ger, Likkutei Yehudah.

Shai Held

 Limmud  2016 : Rabbi Held & Rabbi Inger

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Turquia

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Jacob Katz

Hannah Arendt

 

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Yossi Klein Halevi

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Hilary Putnam ע״ה

Caraítas

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Gershom Scholem

"Conception of Tselem, the Astral Body in Jewish Mysticism" (1975)

Truly man has a term of service on earth;
His days are like those of a hireling -
Like a slave who longs for [evening's] shadows,
Like a hireling who waits for his wage.
So have I been allotted months of futility;
Nights of misery have been apportioned to me.
When I lie down, I think,
"When shall I rise?"
Night drags on,
And I am sated with tossings till morning twilight.
My flesh is covered with maggots and clods of earth;
My skin is broken and festering.
My days fly faster than a weaver's shuttle,
And come to their end without hope.
Consider that my life is but wind;
I shall never see happiness again.
The eye that gazes on me will not see me;
Your eye will seek me, but I shall be gone.
As a cloud fades away,
So whoever goes down to Sheol does not come up;
He returns no more to his home;
His place does not know him.

On my part, I will not speak with restraint;
I will give voice to the anguish of my spirit;
I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
Am I the sea or the Dragon,
That You have set a watch over me?
When I think, "My bed will comfort me,
My couch will share my sorrow,"
You frighten me with dreams,
And terrify me with visions,
Till I prefer strangulation,
Death, to my wasted frame.
I am sick of it.
I shall not live forever;
Let me be, for my days are a breath.

What is man, that You make much of him,
That You fix your attention upon him?
You inspect him every morning,
Examine him every minute.
Will You not look away from me for a while,
Let me be, till I swallow my spittle?
If I have sinned, what have I done to You,
Watcher of men?
Why make of me Your target,
And a burden to myself?
Why do You not pardon my transgression
And forgive my iniquity?
For soon shall I lie down in the dust;
When You seek me, I shall be gone.

Job 7
(JPS)

Palmira

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A-WA

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Purim

Purim in Tel Aviv, (1932 & 1933)

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Why I’m becoming a Jew and why you should, too

Nick Cohen, The Guardian

It took me 40 years to become a Jew. When I was a child, I wasn’t a Jew and not only because I never went to a synagogue. My father’s family had abandoned their religion so he wasn’t Jewish. More to the point, my mother and my grandmother weren’t Jewish either, so according to orthodox Judaism’s principles of matrilineal descent, it was impossible for me to be a Jew. All I had was the “Cohen” name. I once asked my parents why they had not changed it. After saying, quite rightly, that you should never seek to appease racists, they confessed to thinking that antisemitism was over by the 1960s. After Hitler, humanity would surely see where the world’s most insane hatred led and resolve to put it to one side. Bertolt Brecht said: “Do not rejoice in his defeat, you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again.”

My parents did not believe Brecht, at least not in the 1960s. Nor did I for a while. I was and remain an atheist who knows that communalist and identity politics crush individuality. I had no wish to join a tribe, let alone a religious one. Still there was no escaping the “Cohen”. When I first responded to the antisemitism that has spread so far from the extreme left into the mainstream that it now threatens to poison the Labour party, I am ashamed to say I considered two disgraceful replies.

I might, I thought, not stop at opposing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and pledging support to leftwing Israelis and Palestinians who wanted a just and peaceful settlement for both peoples, but go on to behave like a grotesque from a Howard Jacobson satire. I would reassure fanatics that their “anti-Zionism” (that is, their call for the total destruction of the world’s only Jewish state) was not remotely racist.

Fortunately for my self-respect, I never sank that low. Whenever I hear Jews announce their hatred of Israel’s very existence, I suspect that underneath their loud bombast lies a quiet plea to the Islamists and neo-Nazis who might harm them: “I’m not like the others. Don’t pick on me.” Unfortunately, I assured anyone who asked (and some who did not) that, despite appearances to the contrary, I wasn’t Jewish. And that was as dishonourable. I sounded like a black man trying to pass as white or a German arguing with the Gestapo that there was a mistake in the paperwork. I stopped and accepted that racism changes your perception of the world and yourself. You become what your enemies say you are. And unless I wanted to shame myself, I had to become a Jew. A rather odd Jew, no doubt: a militant atheist who had to phone a friend to ask what on earth “mazel tov” meant. But a Jew nonetheless.

As one of the finest liberal ambitions is to find the sympathy to imagine the lives of others, you should become a Jew too. Declare that you have converted to Judaism or rediscovered your Jewish “heritage” and see the reaction. It’s not just that, if you are middle class and fortunate, you might experience racism for the first time, which in itself would be a “learning experience” worth having. You might also learn the essential lesson that antisemitism is not about Jews. Like rape, it’s about power.

Whether the antisemitic conspiracy theory is deployed by German Nazis or Arab dictators, French anti-Dreyfusards or Saudi clerics, the argument is always the same. Democracy, an independent judiciary, equal human rights, freedom of speech and publication – all these “supposed” freedoms – are nothing but swindles that hide the machinations of the secret Jewish rulers of the world.

Describe the fantasy the Tsarist and Nazi empires developed that bluntly and it is impossible to understand how the Labour party is in danger of becoming as tainted as Ukip by the racists it attracts.

But consider how many leftwing activists, institutions or academics would agree with a politer version. Western governments are the main source of the ills of the world. The “Israel lobby” controls western foreign policy. Israel itself is the “root cause” of all the terrors of the Middle East, from the Iraq war to Islamic State. Polite racism turns the Jews, once again, into demons with the supernatural power to manipulate and destroy nations. Or as the Swedish foreign minister, Margot Wallström, who sees herself as a feminist rather than a racial conspiracist, explained recently, Islamist attacks in Paris were the fault of Israeli occupiers in the West Bank.

Or consider the otherwise bizarre indulgence of ultra-right religious extremists by people who otherwise describe themselves as liberals and leftists. The belief that Jews fuel radical Islam allows them to overlook superstition and the tyrannical denial of equal rights. They’re against Israel and that’s all that matters.

I could describe at vitriolic length how disgusted leftwing Jewish friends are that Labour members chose Jeremy Corbyn, despite his support for an Anglican cleric who linked to extremist sites that blamed Jews for 9/11, and his defence of an Islamist who recycled the libel that Jews dined on the blood of Christian children from the bottom of a medieval dung heap.

But even if a chastened Labour expels this or that antisemite or disciplines the Jew-baiters at the Oxford University Labour club, I do not see how its leaders can challenge the conspiratorial world-view they shared for decades. They would be renouncing everything they once believed in.

As someone who warned in the 00s about the growing darkness on the left, I am pessimistic about the chances of change. If you keep shouting “fire” and the fire brigade never comes, you tend to assume the house will burn to the ground. But perhaps familiarity breeds contempt and I am not the best judge.

If Labour MPs and members want the party to break with a past that has led to leftists allying with religious reactionaries who deny universal human rights and hate every value the centre-left professes to hold, they will have to learn to treat all racisms equally.

They will need to make a brief acquaintance with European history and understand that the left has no guaranteed immunity from fascistic ideology. They will have to see antisemitism for what it is and understand why it always leads to despotism and despair. Like me, in short, and if only briefly, they will have to become Jews themselves.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/19/why-i-am-becoming-a-jew-and-you-should-too

Purim

"In the Court of an Oriental Despot: The Book of Esther", Ronna Burger

Felicidade

Vida

Dalmatian pelican

Purim, the festival of laughter

March 17, 2016

Purim is different. Jewish festivals are certainly a time of rejoicing, yet they all contain an element of seriousness. Surely, there is a commandment to rejoice on Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, sometimes even to extremes, but this joy has its definitions and boundaries; overall, it is a serious kind of joy. 
On Purim, however, even when the festival is strictly observed according to all the rules and regulations — Megillah reading, Purim gifts, donations to the poor and Purim banquet — there is an overriding mischievous atmosphere, sometimes even a riotous one. Of course, its expressions differ from place to place and from one group to another, but Purim always involves an element of jest.

Come to think of it, this light-headedness is somewhat odd. Although Purim is a day of joy, it was preceded by an extremely difficult and threatening period. The Jewish people have always faced threats, troubles and battles with those who wanted to defeat them or conquer their land. Most of these wars, however, were not so different from the kinds of clashes that every nation experiences.

The event that preceded Purim was far more serious: it was not a war but a genocide plan, with the aim of wiping the Jewish people off the face of this earth. It was the very first manifestation of a phenomenon, which today we call anti-Semitism, extreme anti-Semitism.

In this specific case, Haman was overcome and hanged on the tree, and all his assistants were defeated. Yet history proves that he left behind numerous descendants and disciples. Anti-Semitism may have started with Haman, but by no means did it end with him. The descendants of Amalek are still in this world, and they are sprouting, growing anew in many times, and places. It does not seem that they have disappeared yet, not even in our enlightened, cosmopolitan era.

* * *

Anti-Semitism has often been explained and even justified over the course of time: the reasons given have been religious, racial, and cultural. But even if there is an element of truth in these excuses, the very proliferation of explanations points to a more basic problem, one that is not always articulated: the continuous existence of the Jewish people through thousands of years of suffering and distress is miraculous, a mystery which defies logic. Moreover, the same is true of anti-Semitism. This hatred is as mysterious as it is real, and all the explanations for it are external, and often also temporal and haphazard.

It is possible to defend ourselves against enemies who have a reason for hating us; that defense may sometimes resolve issues and even bring about mutual reconciliation. Against anti-Semitism — because of its illogical nature — there may be means of defense, but there is no way that we know of to uproot it. Over the past several centuries, Jews have tried different methods to resolve this issue: from total assimilation on the one hand, to the establishment of an independent state on the other. None of these attempts has solved the problem. They have changed or shifted the riddle; yet anti-Semitism still remains.

Therefore, we have only two possible responses left. The first is to do the best we can – as we did in the days of Esther and in other generations – to defend ourselves from evil and fight it. This should be done in any case, in order to gain some respite from the outbursts of hatred.

The second option is to laugh. We laugh not only about the downfall of anti-Semitic individuals or groups, but also about anti-Semitism’s absurdity, ridiculousness and inner contradictions. These cannot be confronted with or defeated by counter-arguments, but only with laughter: laughter about them and about us.

This laughter is the reflection of our intrinsic reactions. When faced with such an insoluble impasse, we can despair, disappear and abase ourselves — or we can laugh.

* * *

Laughter does not mean that there is a solution, for there is none. Instead, our laughter says – “I am not a part of this.” If we manage to laugh, it is because we have succeeded in extricating ourselves from its mess.

Through laughter, we pull ourselves out of history and we become immune to the guilt, the blame game and the anxiety. Through laughter, we declare that we are free even of our irrational bond with Haman’s hatred. We laugh at Haman, Ahasuerus and all their successors because we are the ones who will endure. Our enemies will survive only as the punch line of jokes.

The day after Purim, we begin thirty days of preparation for Passover. As Judaism teaches us, elation must find expression in action. Our joy that “He has not assigned our portion as the others, nor made our destiny the same as multitudes,” is expressed both in good spirits and in the serious activities that follow the laughter.

* * *

Thus, we prepare for Passover. We clean the Chametz, which also purges whatever is external to us. We scour and scrub our innermost essence – our destiny assigned by the One who has “chosen us from among all the nations.”

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz

http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/purim-the-festival-of-laughter/

França

"Dirty Corner" [with anti-Semitic slogans daubed by vandals], Anish Kapoor (2015)

Irão

"Criticism of the Iran Nuclear Deal", Bernard Haykel

A-WA

"Ya Shaifin Al Malih"

Amy-Jill Levine

"From Donation to Diatribe: How Anti-Jewish Interpretation Cashes Out"

"10 Cloverfield Lane" de J. J. Abrams

TV Spot

Vida

 

A wounded Egyptian fruit bat hangs on a teddy bear in Nora Lifschitz’’s apartment in Tel Aviv. 

Lifschitz used her home to open Israel’s first shelter for fruit bats.

Akedah

"The Binding of Isaac in the Three Abrahamic Traditions", Jon D. Levenson

Novo Testamento

"A Jewish Perspective on the New Testament", Marc Brettler

Salomão

 

"Solomon Dedicates the Temple at Jerusalem", James Tissot (1902)

"Next to Her" de Asaf Korman

Trailer

Israel

A seal bearing the inscription: 'to Elihana bat Gael' (7th Century BCE)

“Finding seals that bear names from the time of the First Temple is hardly a commonplace occurrence, and finding a seal that belonged to a woman is an even rarer phenomenon,” the IAA (Israel Antiquities Authority) said in a statement. The “owner of the seal was exceptional compared to other women of the First Temple period: she had legal status which allowed her to conduct business and possess property,” it said. ("The Times of Israel", Here)

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

"The Big Questions", Templeton Prize 2016

Vida

“A dog’s sense of smell is far more developed than we humans can even imagine,” said Coppolillo. “Scientists talk about olfactory receptors, and concentrations, and parts per billion, but to put all that in perspective, think about it this way: a dog can detect a teaspoon of sugar dissolved in a million gallons of water – that’s two Olympic swimming pools.”

Here.

Moses Mendelssohn

"No fanatic is easily capable of making my cool blood boil!": 

The Secularizing Enlightenment of Moses Mendelssohn, Shmuel Feiner

Ciro, o Grande

 "The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia: A New Beginning"

Frank Oz

Stephen Colbert

"Fiddler On Our Roof", The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

Arthur Green

"Spiritual Preparation for the High Holy Days"

Yizkor

Lord, what is man that You care for him, a mortal that You notice him?
Man is like a fleeting breath, his days like a passing shadow.
In the morning he flourishes and grows;
     in the evening he withers and dries up.
Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom.
Mark the blameless, note the upright, for the end of such a person is peace.
God will redeem my soul from the grave, for He will receive me, Selah.
My flesh and my heart may fail,
     but God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.
The dust returns to the earth as it was,
     but the spirit returns to God who gave it.

(Beginning)
Koren
 

Vida

Síria

Elfrange synagogue in Damascus

Once home to a thriving and ancient Jewish community, Syria now has but a handful of Jews, who have fared poorly during the ongoing civil war. Nonetheless, the Elfrange synagogue in Damascus refuses to close its doors. Elfrange is the only one of Damascus’ seventeen synagogues that has not been shut down and robbed. It serves a membership of sixteen men, ages sixty to ninety. Since the 1990s only a few dozen Jews have remained in Syria, according to Avraham Hamra, who in 1993 left Damascus, where he served as chief rabbi, and now lives in Holon, near Tel Aviv. As many as 4,000 Jews were still living in Damascus, Aleppo, and al-Qamishli until then-President Hafez al-Assad, on the eve of Passover 1992, permitted Syria’s Jews to emigrate, as long as they didn’t go to Israel.

América

"The American Jewess" (1895-1899)

Genizah do Cairo

(JTS)