Menachem Mendel

The Israeli author Yochi Brandes has published a new book, Sheva Imahot, Seven Matriarchs. The book is described as a modern midrashic interpretation of some of the female biblical figures. Brandes has a foot in a number of Israel’s different religious and cultural communities. The following description is from here.

She was born in Haifa and raised in Petah Tikva in an ultra-Orhodox family. She attended ultra-Orthodox schools affiliated with the Beit Yaakov education network. But unlike most of her peers, she continued on to university and completed a master’s degree in Jewish Studies at the Conservative Movement’s Shechter Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem. She taught Bible in schools, colleges and cultural institutions for many years.

See here, here, and here for discussions about a previous book by Yochi, Melachim Gimmel. I have never read any of Yochi’s books, although our paths did cross at one point in our lives and I have enjoyed her appearances on the radio discussing issues of religion in Israel. I don’t think that any of her books have been translated into English, so if any book publishers are reading this…In the meantime, those who understand Hebrew can see her talk about Parashat Va-Yishlah here, “Rape in the Bible – Who is the Real Victim?.” Her talk addresses inner-biblical interpretation and the relationship between biblical narrative and law.

March 2nd, 2010 | Category: Bible Studies, New Books | Comments (2)

H-Levant has published a review of Matthias B. Lehmann’s Ladino Rabbinic Literature and Ottoman Sephardic Culture. Below are some excerpts.

Beginning in the eighteenth century, a number of Ottoman rabbis had undertaken the task of fighting the ignorance they believed was plaguing their communities by producing works of Jewish ethics (musar) in Judeo-Spanish (also known as Ladino). This development was inspired in part by a particular strain within Jewish mysticism (Lurianic Kabbalah) which suggested that every Jew would necessarily play a role in the mending of the world required for redemption. The spread of ignorance among their coreligionists thus threatened to undo the proper order of things. It was with this in mind that these Ottoman rabbis–all capable of publishing in the more highly esteemed Hebrew language of their religious tradition–chose to write in their vernacular instead. While they democratized rabbinic knowledge by translating it for the masses, these “vernacular rabbis” (to use Matthias Lehmann’s term) also attempted to instill in their audiences the sense that their texts required the mediation of individuals with religious training. Thus, they explained that common people should gather together to read their books in meldados, or study sessions, always with the guidance of someone trained in the study of Jewish law. Upholding the privileged position of religious scholars in this way, such study sessions were also meant to assure that members of the popular classes spent their time in acceptable ways, rather than enjoying leisure time out in public, drinking and smoking in coffeehouses and taverns, or promenading without a clear destination.

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The rabbis’ Judeo-Spanish books–Lehmann argues–had the unforeseen effect of decentralizing their own authority, as they expanded their reading public to include women and various groups from the popular classes to whom Hebrew reading materials remained largely inaccessible. This trend was exacerbated as individuals began to read by themselves rather than resorting to the reading sessions their rabbis had prescribed. Having made space for secular topics in their writings, the Ottoman rabbis portrayed in Lehmann’s study helped lay the foundation for the secular Judeo-Spanish reading public that emerged in the final decades of the nineteenth century. Decades before western European Jews and their local Ottoman allies announced their intention to reshape the face of Ottoman Jewry according to new models, the authors of Judeo-Spanish musar literature–however inadvertently–had helped to set this process into motion. By advancing this argument, Lehmann locates the origins of the modern transformations of Ottoman Jewish communities in an earlier era than has been suggested by previous scholarship. He similarly gives evidence of the internal motors that drove this transformation from within the empire, adding a new dimension to the explanatory framework which has so long focused on the introduction of change into modern Ottoman Jewish communities from the outside, most notably from Europe.

March 2nd, 2010 | Category: Book Reviews, Rabbinic Literature | Leave a comment

Professor Meira Pollack of Tel-Aviv University will speak at JTS on Monday, March 8, 3:40 p.m. Her topic will be,

“Karaites Against Rabbinites? The Developing Methods of Biblical Interpretation”

March 1st, 2010 | Category: Bible Studies, Middle Ages, Public Events | Leave a comment

Crooked Timber writes about someone who is suing over a harsh review of their book…in a journal devoted to law. So you don’t think that it’s some litigious American at work here, it’s almost all Euro. You can read more about it here at Opinio Juris.

February 25th, 2010 | Category: Academia, Book Reviews | Comments (2)

Here is an informative obituary of Naphtali Wieder (1905-2001) from the Independent.

February 25th, 2010 | Category: Liturgy | Comments (1)

Rabbi Benjamin J. Segal has started to blog about the book of Psalms at A New Psalm.

February 25th, 2010 | Category: Bible Studies | Leave a comment

Dr. Thamar E. Gindin has posted Hebrew summaries of a series of lectures that she gave on the historicity of the Scroll of Esther. The summaries can be found here. Also see this post (Hebrew) on the burial places of Esther and Mordechai by Orli Rahimian.

February 25th, 2010 | Category: Ancient History, Ancient Judaism, Purim | Leave a comment

Since the coverage of the visit to Dubai by certain foreigners is sometimes bordering on the comical, and the apparent quick exit to Iran by some of the above mentioned foreign nationals, a little Purim levity is called for. On a serious note, I’ll be glad to have the Mossad borrow my name to kill some Hamasnik. It would hopefully be a greater contribution to the security of Israel than all of those weeks I spent reading books (shhh) while on miluim (army reserve duty). Here are a few thoughts that I had about this episode. I’ll add more as they come to me. In all seriousness, these people put their lives on the line and we should all thank them for it. Now for some jokes.

1. Maybe this really was a destination wedding? People came from all over the world to stay in the same hotel, there was lots of sun, people played, or pretended, to play tennis. It sounds like one to me.
2. Who gets all of the frequent flyer miles? That is probably one of the biggest downers of using an alias.
3. Seeing that there were a large number of young men and women who very well may have been Jewish, could this have been a trial run by a new competitor for Birthright?
4. How about a Srugim-like show about young men and women who work in the Mossad. Word on the street is that they are making an Israeli-version of the Office, well, do I have an office for you.

Update: This article from the London Times makes a nice Purim connection.

On the official website of Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, is the biblical verse from Prophets, 11:14 — “where no counsel is, the people fall, but in the multitude of counsellors there is safety”. Unfortunately, so many of its “counsellors” seem to have been caught on CCTV, wearing wigs and other disguises, that it was as if an early Purim carnival was being held in Dubai’s hotels and airports.

Update II: They have way more friends than I do.

February 24th, 2010 | Category: Israel, Popular Culture, Purim | Comments (1)

This Shabbat is Parashat Zachor, the maftir that grammarians and Torah readers love to ponder upon. For a discussion of the issues related to this Torah reading and the mistaken custom of some synagogues, see here and here. In today’s installment of his program, באופן מילולי, (“Literally Speaking”) Dr. Avshalom Koor discussed a few things-Parashat Zachor, Zeicher/Zecher, kamatz, patach, etc. Today’s program can be heard here for the next few weeks.

Update: See also this post from Rav Tzair.

February 23rd, 2010 | Category: Hebrew, Purim, Synagogue | Leave a comment