Israel

 

 

"David Grossman on Zionism and Home"

 

Ruth Wisse

 

 

 

"Jewish Literature, Jewish Education, & Jewish Courage": A Conversation with Ruth Wisse

Pessach

 

 

Passover: Sermon by Rabbi David Wolpe (2020)

 

A 6a Praga

 

 

"Boils: The 6th Plague Unlocks the Torah", Lex Rofeberg

 

A.D. Gordon

 

 

(before 1922)

 

Vida

 

 

 

Agalychnis lemur, also known as the lemur leaf frog, in Panama

 

S. An-ski

 

Israel

 

 

 

"Mizrahi Nation" – Matti Friedman in conversation with Janusz Makuch

 

Mark Rothko

 

 

"Untitled" (1955)

 

Hungria

 

 

 

Cantor Immanuel Zucker sings Psalms at the reopening ceremony of the Rumbach Synagogue, Budapest (June 10, 2021)

Felix Salten ("Siegmund Salzmann")

 

(c. 1910)

Shoah

 

 

 

"Distant Journey", directed by Alfréd Radok - Trailer (1948)

Vida

 

 

 

An image made from video by China Central Television shows elephants, 

which had wandered 500km north from their natural habitat, resting in a forest near Kunming

Israel

 

       "Here’s the Truth About the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (A Comprehensive History)", Ben Shapiro 

 

Tikvah

 

 

"Building Tikvah: A Conversation with Roger Hertog"

 

שִׁ֗יר הַֽמַּ֫עֲל֥וֹת בְּשׁ֣וּב יְ֭הֹוָה אֶת־שִׁיבַ֣ת צִיּ֑וֹן הָ֝יִ֗ינוּ כְּחֹלְמִֽים 

A song of ascents. When the LORD restores the fortunes of Zion —we see it as in a dream—

אָ֤ז יִמָּלֵ֪א שְׂח֡וֹק פִּינוּ֮ וּלְשׁוֹנֵ֢נוּ רִ֫נָּ֥ה אָ֭ז יֹאמְר֣וּ בַגּוֹיִ֑ם הִגְדִּ֥יל יְ֝הֹוָ֗ה לַעֲשׂ֥וֹת עִם־אֵֽלֶּה 

our mouths shall be filled with laughter, our tongues, with songs of joy. Then shall they say among the nations, “The LORD has done great things for them!”

הִגְדִּ֣יל יְ֭הֹוָה לַעֲשׂ֥וֹת עִמָּ֗נוּ הָיִ֥ינוּ שְׂמֵחִֽים 

The LORD will do great things for us and we shall rejoice.

שׁוּבָ֣ה יְ֭הֹוָה אֶת־[שְׁבִיתֵ֑נוּ] (שבותנו) כַּאֲפִיקִ֥ים בַּנֶּֽגֶב  

Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like watercourses in the Negeb.

הַזֹּרְעִ֥ים בְּדִמְעָ֗ה בְּרִנָּ֥ה יִקְצֹֽרוּ  

They who sow in tears shall reap with songs of joy.

הָ֘ל֤וֹךְ יֵלֵ֨ךְ ׀ וּבָכֹה֮ נֹשֵׂ֢א מֶשֶׁךְ־הַ֫זָּ֥רַע בֹּא־יָבֹ֥א בְרִנָּ֑ה נֹ֝שֵׂ֗א אֲלֻמֹּתָֽיו   

Though he goes along weeping, carrying the seed-bag, he shall come back with songs of joy, carrying his sheaves.  

Psalm 126

 

Isaac Bashevis Singer

 

Master of the Universe, fill my heart with love for my people, and rest for the soul.
Let me see the Creator in each and every creature, its mercy for each thing it creates.
There’s not a single drop of water or particle of dust in which your light is lacking, or that is outside your domain.
There is no creature without its creator.
Those who know this live always in joy.
Their parents are but bodies that are here today, and are tomorrow in their graves.
All their friends, all their possessions and honors, are like a passing shadow.
They are themselves like passing clouds, like Jonah’s tree.
But you – you have always existed and will always exist.
You are the only true being, the essence of all things.
Only for you are all problems solved, all challenges effortless.
There is nothing devious in you – no retribution, injustice, or fault.
Evil lives in all things temporary, not in what exists eternally.
You know why you created evil – and who are we to question your integrity?

We have only one comfort in this world – that you are our maker and that we have the power to serve you with joy, awe, and love, all our lives – and that you have given us the ability to understand such things.
Though we may not know the purpose of life, or why you sent us into this world to suffer, we understand that it is our duty to build and not to destroy, to comfort and not to torment, to bring joy rather than sorrow to your creatures.

There is only one joy: to increase and not to lessen the world’s joy.
Seek happiness, but not on account of your neighbors or family, for you are they and they are you, you are bonded, children of God.

God, guard my tongue from evil, my lips from deceit, my mind from sin.
Open my heart to your commands, let my heart seek your teaching, and let all my actions serve a higher purpose.

Those who fear God are the only ones who do not hurt each other, neither in fact nor in principle. They will never wage war against each other, and for this reason they are the symbol of peace, as it is written: “and your children’s peace shall grow.”

 

Untitled (Prayer, c. 1952)

Translation by David Stromberg

Cidadãos Normais

 

 

 "How Did Ordinary Citizens Become Murderers?", with Christopher Browning & Wendy Lower (2018)

 

Alemanha

 

"Final Account": Trailer 

 

Vida

 

 

Domesticated pigeons fly over the Syrian city of Raqqa

 

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

Vida

 

 

 

An Arctic fox on Alexandra Land, an island in the Franz Josef Land archipelago in the Arctic Ocean

Sarah Bernhardt

 

 

Funeral of Sarah Bernhardt (Paris, 1923)

 

Teshuvah

 

 

Daniel Gordis

 

Esther

 

 

"The Rabbis Read Esther in the Diaspora", Aaron Koller 

 

Gueto de Varsóvia

 

 

 

The original German caption reads: “Jews pulled from a Bunker” (in the Warsaw Ghetto)

Picture taken at Nowolipie street looking East, near intersection with Smocza street.

In the back one can see ghetto wall with a gate (1943)

 

 

Ask now about the former days, long before your time, from the day God created human beings on the earth; ask from one end of the heavens to the other. Has anything so great as this ever happened, or has anything like it ever been heard of? Has any other people heard the Voice of God speaking out of fire, as you have, and lived? Has any god ever tried to take for himself one nation out of another nation, by testings, by signs and wonders, by war, by a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, or by great and awesome deeds, like all the things the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes? 

Deuteronomy 4:32-34

Sarah Halimi

 

 

Vida

 

 

 

 A flock of lesser flamingos wades through Lake Magadi in the Great Rift Valley in Kajiado, Kenya

Younes Dardashti

 

 

(Medley)

 

Mark Rothko

 

 

"No 21" (1949)

Chava Rosenfarb

 

 

 

"The Tree of Life": A Synopsis by her daughter, Goldie Morgentaler

 

 

Aggadah captures the heart.

Shabbat 87a

 

Genocídio Arménio

 

 

 

Armenian deportees in Erzurum, photographed by Viktor Pietschmann (1915)

Of the 40,000 Armenians deported from Erzurum, fewer than 200 reached Deir ez-Zor

Irão

 

 

 

"Mahaleh or Ghetto?: The Challenges of Writing a Jewish History of Iran", Lior Sternfeld (2019)

 

 

מַה־בֶּ֥צַע בְּדָמִי֮ בְּרִדְתִּ֪י אֶ֫ל־שָׁ֥חַת הֲיוֹדְךָ֥ עָפָ֑ר הֲיַגִּ֥יד אֲמִתֶּֽךָ 

What is to be gained from my death, from my descent into the Pit? Can dust praise You? Can it declare Your faithfulness? 

Psalm 30:10

Vida

 

 

 

A reed warbler feeding a cuckoo

Cuckoos lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, which raise the chicks in place of their own offspring

 

Tzedakah

 

 

Rabbi David Wolpe

 

Gueto de Varsóvia

 

 

Market in Warsaw ghetto, Nazi-occupied Poland (1941)

 

"Mighty Ira"

 

 

Trailer

Akedah

 

 

 

"The Akedah and the Shaping of Jewish Memory", David Gottlieb

 

Irão

 

 

"Vashti", Galeet Dardashti 

 

Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin

 

 

 

"What Could Have Been?”: Alternative History and the Torah’s Imagination"

Vida

 

 

 

Storks stand in their nest in Kizilcahamam, outside the Turkish capital of Ankara

 

 

God loves novelty.

Kotzker Rebbe

Gueto de Varsóvia

 

 

 

Jews marched out of the ghetto during Warsaw Ghetto Revolt in April and May, 1943

 

Irão

 

 

 

 "Iranian Jews in the 20th Century: Between Iranian Nationalism, Communism and Zionism", Lior Sternfeld

 

Esnoga

 

 

 

This 1768 parchment by Jekuthiel Sofer emulated the 1675 Ten Commandments 

at the Amsterdam Esnoga synagogue

 

Younes Dardashti

 

 

"Kharabat"

 

When God gave the Torah, no birds sang. No ox bellowed. The sea was calm. Not a creature stirred.

Exodus Rabbah 29:9 

 

Vida

 

 

 

A grey whale is seen at Ojo de Liebre Lagoon in Guerrero Negro, Mexico

 

73!

 

 

 

Israelis watch a fireworks show during Independence Day celebrations in Tel Aviv on April 14, 2021 

 

Yom HaZikaron

 

 

 

People stand still as one minutre siren sounded across Israel, marking Memorial Day 

which commemorates the fallen Israeli soldiers and victims of terror in Ayalon highway, Tel Aviv, April 13, 2021

Sarah Bernhardt

 

 

(1905)

 

Turquia

 

 

 

"The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924", Benny Morris

 

Mauthausen

 

 

 

A view of Mauthausen, from the 'Prussian Blue' series,  Yishai Jusidman

 

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

 

 

 

"Restoring Our Moral Culture": A Conversation with Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

 

Teshuvah

 

 

"Rededicating the Temple", Rabbi David Wolpe

Vida

 

 

A royal Bengal tiger at Bardiya National Park in Nepal

 

Gueto de Varsóvia

 

 

 

The remains of the Warsaw ghetto, which the German SS dynamited to the ground in 1945 after slaughtering some 60,000 Jews

Chava Rosenfarb

 

 

Address to Graduates (2006)

 

Rio Sambação

 

 

 

Detail of choir windows in St Mary’s church, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany (c. 1360s)

The Red Jews wait at the banks of the river Sambation

 

A Prayer for Yom HaShoah 

Rabbi Sacks composed this prayer in 2013 

 

Today, on Yom HaShoah, we remember the victims of the greatest crime of man against man – the young, the old, the innocent, the million-and-a-half children, starved, shot, given lethal injections, gassed, burned and turned to ash, because they were deemed guilty of the crime of being different. 

We remember what happens when hate takes hold of the human heart and turns it to stone; what happens when victims cry for help and there is no one listening; what happens when humanity fails to recognise that those who are not in our image are nonetheless in God’s image. 

We remember and pay tribute to the survivors, who bore witness to what happened, and to the victims, so that robbed of their lives, they would not be robbed also of their deaths. 

We remember and give thanks for the righteous of the nations who saved lives, often at risk of their own, teaching us how in the darkest night we can light a candle of hope. 

Today, on Yom HaShoah, we call on You, Almighty God, to help us hear Your voice that says in every generation: Do not murder. Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbour. Do not oppress the stranger. 

We know that whilst we do not have the ability to change the past, we can change the future. We know that whilst we cannot bring the dead back to life, we can ensure their memories live on and that their deaths were not in vain. 

And so, on this Yom HaShoah, we commit ourselves to one simple act: Yizkor, Remember. 

May the souls of the victims be bound in the bond of everlasting life. Amen

Abraham Joshua Heschel

 

 

 

"Spiritual Audacity: The Abraham Joshua Heschel Story" - Trailer

 

Sarah Bernhardt

 

 

Nadar (1864) 

 

Samaritanos

 

 

 

The Samaritans, Kilburn, B.W., Palestine. Middle East (ca. 1899)

 

Vida

 

 

A white-throated kingfisher in a field in Lahore, Pakistan

 

Yom Kippur

 

 

 

"Service on the Day of Atonement for Jewish Soldiers in the Prussian Army

 during the Franco-Prussian War, outside Metz" (1870)

 

 

One should forgive one's enemies, but not before they are hanged.

Heinrich Heine

Marc Chagall

 

"Goat and Violin" (1922)

 

Rabbi Norman Lamm

 

 

 

"Rabbi Lamm in His Own Words: The Role of Torah in the Modern World"

 

The whole world became like a wall before him.

Genesis Rabba 68:10