Thanks to streaming internet video, I now present to you the winner of Hidon ha-Tanakh 5770, Or Ashual. Or is a student at Ulpanat Amana in Kfar Saba and her father was a runner-up in Hidon ha-Tanakh twenty-seven years ago. I was able to just catch the end, and as usual, the knowledge of Tanakh [...]
I have three book recommendations for this week. The first is 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War by Benny Morris. I can’t think of any other book that gives such a blow-by-blow description of the battle fought to establish the State of Israel. For reviews of Morris’s book see here and here. Another [...]
The Hebrew lyrics can be found here. A more modern rendition, a bit mizrahi: Zehava Ben singing a mizrahi version: With English subtitles: People in Taiwan (?) dancing to the song:
For a humorous take on customs associated with Yom ha-Atzmaut, see this article (Hebrew) by Gil Slovik. Here are two of them. זריזין מקדימין למצוות, ועל כן נהגו הרשויות להתחיל לתלות דגלים ברחובה של עיר שלושים יום קודם החג. פתח רבנו תם ואמר: ראו מה נאים מעשיה של רשות זו, שתולה דגלים בכל שדרה ועל [...]
Since the establishment of the State of Israel, Jews have been witnesses to the formative period of a liturgical response to this momentous event. This process is continuing to this very day, and may continue for years to come. The many different liturgical responses that have been composed are reflective of different religious, cultural, and [...]
Eddy Portnoy has an interesting article in Tablet on Shomrei Shabbos organizations. As secular Yiddish groups like women’s rights organizations and sports clubs established themselves in the early 20th century, so too did Orthodox groups begin formalizing their unions. Chief among them was the establishment of an official Shomrei Shabbos organization. After the organization was [...]
Channel Two in Israel is reporting that a forty year-old unmarried teacher was fired from her teaching position in a religious school (unnamed) because she became pregnant through IVF. (hat tip) A while ago I posted about a court case in NY in which the firing from a Seventh-Day Adventist school of an unmarried teacher [...]
In modern Hebrew the word חילוני, ḥiloni, is used to describe someone who isn’t religious. Some people prefer the word חופשי, ḥofshi, since it expresses something positive, that someone is “free,” while ḥiloni is from the root חלל, “profane” or “violate.” I always thought that the word ḥiloni was fairly modern, but it turns out [...]
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