It seems that as of late almost everyone, including the Hillary Clinton, has been talking about women in Israel. Whether it is women in the army, on advertisements, or the gym at the Technion. While there are definitely misogynistic Israelis and much that could be improved, I think that many people have an over simplified view of things.

The person whom I think embodies some of these conflicting trends is Mika Karni. Karni is an Israeli singer who refuses to limit herself because of how she dresses, looks, or sings.

A few months ago I wrote about her involvement with an all-female choir made up of religious women. Earlier this week they performed at the Great Synagogue (no men allowed), and she was interviewed by Rabbanit Yemimah Mizraḥi.

Below is a clip from an Israeli reality show Meḥubarot in which Karni talks about her becoming more involved in Judaism and the tension that it has created in her family.  The whole episode can be found here.  It has much of the TMI and vulgarity of reality shows, but I think that the parts with Mika and her family illustrated the potential tensions that are created when there is a difference in religious observance and belief within a family.

Here is a video of her performing with her daughter, she has recently been performing with her family, on one of Israel’s most popular morning radio shows, Slotsky and Domingo.

Here is a video of her singing the classic song Ein Gedi (translation).

This is one of her most popular songs, Mitchell.

Tonight at 10:00 p.m. on Channel 10 in Israel, the documentary “Ovadiah Yosef” will be broadcast. A preview can be viewed here. Some people were upset that the advertisement just said “Ovadiah Yosef” and not “Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef.” The preview includes the connection between the Yosef family and the Irgun/Etzel. Apparently, most of his family was involved with the Irgun, and on the night of his wedding one of his brothers threw a grenade at a British Army truck, killing the inhabitants. This is what his brother described in the movie, but I am unable to find any evidence that on night of March 28, 1944 such an incident occurred, or at least on that scale. On March 23 there was an attack by the Irgun, so maybe the wedding was earlier than the invitation stated (it is in the video), or something else happened that night.

When a link to the movie will hopefully become available, I’ll post it.

See a similar post at Adderabbi.

Update: The TV profile can be viewed here, but I don’t know for how long.

Table of Contents
Introduction , Martin Goodman

Part I: The Issues
1. Using Rabbinic Literature as a source for the History of Late-Roman Palestine: Problems and Issues, Philip Alexander

2. The Palestinian Context of Rabbinic Judaism, Fergus Millar
3. Research into Rabbinic Literature: An attempt to define the Status Quaestionis , Peter Schafer

4. The Status Quaestionis of Research into Rabbinic Literature , Chaim Milikowsky
5. Current Views on the Editing of the Rabbinic Texts of Late Antiquity: Reflections on a debate after twenty years , Peter Schafer & Chaim Milikowsky

Part II: The Rabbinic Texts
6. The State of Mishnah Studies , Amram Tropper
7. The Tosefta and its Value for Historical Research: Questioning the historical reliability of case stories , Romen Reichman
8. Halakhic Midrashim as Historical Sources , Gunter Stemberger
9. The Talmud Yerushalmi , Sacha Stern
10. Problems in the use of the Bavli for the History of Late-Roman Palestine: the example of Astrology , Richard Kalmin
11. Literary Structures and Historical Reconstruction: the example of Amoraic Midrash , Alex Samely
12. The Future of Ancient Piyyut , Wout van Bekkum
13. Targum , Robert Hayward
14. The Epistle of Sherira Gaon , Robert Brody
15. Hekhalot Literature and the Origins of Jewish Mysticism , Peter Schaefer

Part III: History
16. ‘Rabbinic Culture’ and Roman Culture , Seth Schwartz
17. Material Culture and Daily Life , Catherine Hezser
18. Rabbinic Literature and the History of Judaism in Late Antiquity: Challenges, methodology, and new approaches , Moshe Lavee
19. Rabbinic Perceptions of Christianity and the History of Roman Palestine , William Horbury
20. Politics and Administration , Aharon Oppenheimer
21. Economics and Society , Hayyim Lapin

Conclusion , Martin Goodman

I also want to add that two very good books have been written about Massechet Avodah Zarah during the past decade. The first is Christine Hayes’s Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accounting for Halakhic Difference in Selected Sugyot from Tractate Avodah Zarah, and the second is Alyssa Gray’s Talmud in Exile: The Influence of Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah on the Formation of Bavli Avodah Zarah. Christine Hayes argued against a historical-reductionist reading of the differences between the Yerushalmi and Bavli interpretations of Mishnah Avodah Zarah, one that looked to economic or political differences for explanations of these differences. She claimed that internal issues related to exegesis, language, literary structure, etc., played a central role. Alyssa Gray argued that the editors of Bavli Avodah Zarah had before them an edited version of Yerushalmi Avodah Zarah.

Orthodox by Design is not about the accuracy of Artscroll’s translations or even about its ideological program. It is not even about “Artscroll Orthodoxy” per se. Jeremy Stolow is a scholar of media studies. He is not a scholar of Judaica, neither its textual tradition nor its social milieu. For Stolow, ArtScroll is a case-study for an examination of media and marketing in the “late capitalism” that marks America’s cultural productivity in the past thirty years. This media studies scholar sees ArtScroll as an instance of what Pierre Bourdieu termed “cultural production”; his interest is to “trace how [religious authority] is exercised and how it is transformed through the multilayered tissues of affect, technology, and institutionally coordinated actions that are redefining the place of media in the world today. “(29). What ArtScroll is doing, according to Stolow, is marketing a particular kind of “Judaism.” And Judaism, in Stolow’s book, is neither a religion, a body of texts, nor a lifestyle. It is a commodity.

…

As I read him, Stolow is “queering” the term “revolution” in the so-called “ArtScroll Revolution.” It is not only that ArtScroll is transforming American Judaism via its haredi ideology of authenticity to counter American Judaism’s assimilatory project. That is standard fare. ArtScroll is also transforming American haredism by accommodating to the upwardly mobile nature of its constituency and, in doing so, promoting (perhaps unwittingly) a project of acculturation all its own. Whether ArtScroll is succeeding more at promoting its bourgeois haredism or whether American consumerism and late capitalism is succeeding more in bringing haredism closer to its materialist and capitalist embrace is anyone’s guess and, in part, depends on whether one is “inside” or “outside” the community in question.

An unprecedented effort is under way in the Five Towns, in Riverdale, N.Y., and in Brookline, Mass., to find bone marrow matches for four young people fighting leukemia.

In Woodmere, Zach Englander, a 20- year-old Yeshiva University student, was diagnosed six weeks ago with the form of cancer that attacks the blood. Over Pesach, Matt Fenster, a father of four in Riverdale, was found to have an acute version of the disease. …

Efforts are also under way to help a pregnant young mother in North Woodmere, and Sarah, a 9-year-old in Brookline.

In each community, friends and family of the patients have organized bone marrow testing drives and fundraising efforts to pay for the tests. Bone marrow comprises the stem cells found inside large bones that produce the components of blood — red, white and platelet cells. Transplants are an effective means of treatment. …

So far, ‘Match 4 Matt,’ the Riverdale-based effort that organized the twin bone marrow drives at the Salute to Israel Parade and at the Concert for Israel in Central Park, has tested over 2500 people and raised close to $100,000 to pay for the tests. …

Testing will take place at Yeshiva Sh’or Yoshuv (1 Cedarlawn Avenue, Lawrence) and at HAFTR High School (635 Central Avenue, Cedarhurst) on Sunday, May 30th between 9-5. Eligible donors must be between the ages of 18-60 and in general good health. If you have been tested after 2001, you do not need to be retested. [For more info see here.]

For more information look at the Gift of Life website.

Vos iz Neias brings an AP report about a newly restored MS of the Mishneh Torah which will be displayed at the Israel Museum.

Experts at Israel’s national museum have completed the restoration of a 15th-century Hebrew manuscript with exquisite illustrations made by master Italian artisans, officials said Thursday.

…

The museum has half of the original book, which was divided into two parts in the 19th century. The other half is owned by the Vatican Library.
The manuscript displayed to reporters Thursday was created in Italy just as the era of great illuminated manuscripts was drawing to a close and the art of bookmaking in Europe was being permanently altered by the advent of the printing press.
James Snyder, the museum’s director, said the manuscript was produced by one of the top Renaissance workshops and is “perhaps without parallel in character.”

The complete article can be read here.

Were Jews always as scrupulous about preserving the purity of their bloodlines as was the nineteenth-century Polish or Moroccan Jew who said the mourner’s kaddish for the child who married out?

I am aware of no contemporary source, whether it be rabbinic, ethnographic, popular, etc., which describes such behavior. Many people cite the description of Tevye’s behavior in Shalom Aleichem’s Tevye the Dairyman, but in Tevye, the daughter, Chava, converted to Christianity and did not only intermarry. Here is the description from this edition, p. 78.

I came home and found my Golde curled up like a black ball of yarn in bed, having no more tears to shed. “Get up, my wife. Take off your shoes and let us sit shiva, as God commanded. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away-we are neither the first nor the last. Let us imagine,” I said, “that we never had a Chava, or let us imagine that, like Hodl, she left for the ends of the earth, and who knows if we shall ever see her again. God is compassionate and good and knows what He is doing!”

See this interesting comparison between the literary and various stage and screen depictions of Tevye.

An early description of what happened “a generation or two ago” can be found in Reuben B. Resnik’s article “Some Sociological Aspects of Intermarriage of Jew and Non-Jew” in Social Forces, vol. 12, no. 1 (Oct., 1933), p. 98.

Among certain Jews, a generation or two ago, a father would say Kaddish (a prayer for the dead) over the child who was intermarried, as if he had died.

This is still not a contemporary description of the practice. Others have asked this question, with some explaining it as a misunderstanding of something that Rabbi Gershom Meor Hagolah did.

So, if this is no more than a myth, please stop repeating it. If it is true, let’s see the evidence.