It seems as if Koren Publishing will be putting out a new edition, not a reprint of the first edition, of the very good and long out-of-print Steinsaltz Reference Guide to Talmud in the Spring of 2011. (hat tip)
Thanks to relative quiet of the past few years, the concrete wall that was constructed in order to protect the residents of the Southern neighborhood of Gilo is being removed. Ynet is reporting that the concrete wall was part of the eruv around Gilo, and that this section of the eruv must be rebuilt. Having at one point lived in one of the Southernmost apartment blocks of Gilo, I can testify that the eruv existed before the concrete blocks were put in place. We happened to move a few months before the shooting started from the direction of Beit Jalah, good timing. It was a tiny and cramped apartment, but we had one beautiful view overlooking the wadi and into Beit Jalah. I would see the eruv with my own eyes whenever I parked behind the building, and my guess is that when they put up the concrete blocks they had to dismantle part of the eruv in order to make room for them.
Update: According to a report that I just heard on Israel Radio, one of the religious Israeli newspapers is reporting that the eruv was taken down by mistake, and that the concrete wall was never part of the eruv. Whatever may be the story, I am sure that the residents of Gilo will soon be able to carry on Shabbat ke-hilkhato.
Photo by Noam Moscowitz
For those who are interested in some interesting articles on the first chapter of B Avodah Zarah. See this chapter by Alyssa Gray and this article by Yehuda Brandes. For numerous others see this good resource.
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
Kikar ha-Shabbat is reporting (via Rabbi Yosef’s Facebook page) that Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef cancelled the recitation of seliḥot that were suppose to be recited late at night in the synagogue found in the apartment building where he lives, because of complaints by the neighbors. Some of the neighbors said that the noise makes it difficult for their children to sleep. Rav Ovadiah is quoted as saying that “we won’t perform a mitzvah at the expense of someone else” and suggested that people say the seliḥot in their own synagogue. According to this report, the seliḥot were said last night at the synagogue in Rav Ovadiah’s building, but from now on will be recited in the morning.
This Friday, the 3rd of Elul, is the 75th yarzheit of Rav Kook, and lots of people are writing about it. One interesting column is by Yair Lapid on Ynet. One of Rav Kook’s famous acts was his trip that he took to the new moshavot (also here) with Rabbi Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld and a number of other rabbis, seeking to reach out to the secular settlers who were working the land. This is known as מסע המושבות and some descriptions of the trip can be found here.
So what does Yair Lapid have to do with Masa ha-Moshavot? In his column Lapid describes where he would go on a new round of travels today, and who he would take with him. Lapid, while I don’t have reason to doubt his sincerity, is also a likely politician in the next round of Knesset elections, says that he wants to reach out to sectors of the population that he feels are less connected to the majority of Israelis. He mentions West Bank settlers and ḥaredim as two main populations that he would reach out two.
He also writes about who he would take along with him, Rabbi Shai Peron and Prof. Ruth Gavison being among them. Lapid finishes with a suggestion to think about. He claims that the common cultural heritage used to be the Tanakh, but he feels that the Tanakh is too decisive for today’s world, a claim with which I wouldn’t be surprised if Bible scholars disagree. So what should be our new shared cultural heritage…the Talmud! Lapid sees the Talmud as a better example of a body of literature that encourages open dialogue and pluralism.
ולסיום נקודה למחשבה, אולי הצעה: הבסיס התרבותי שעליו הוקמה המדינה היה התנ”ך, בן–גוריון, כידוע, היה אחד האחראים לכך. התנ”ך מאוד החלטי באופיו ובשפתו, הוא כמובן מעיד על זכותנו על המקום הזה, על ההיסטוריה וכו’. לעומתו בתלמוד קיימת ההכרה בכך שיש כל מיני אופציות בתוך היהדות ושמותר לי לא להסכים, ושהמחלוקת מוסיפה לכולנו ולא מפחיתה. מבחינה זו הייתי מעלה הצעה שדווקא התלמוד, שיש בו הרבה יותר מקום לשאלות ולשיח ולספקות, יהפוך לבסיס התרבותי שלנו. מבחינה זו אני חושב שכולנו צריכים קצת פחות דיאלוג תנ”כי ויותר דיאלוג תלמודי.
If Lapid does run for the Knesset, maybe he should set aside a symbolic seat for the Stam.
Tomer Persico has a post (Hebrew) discussing Elchanan Shilo’s article, “A Continuous Judaism Between Halakhah and Hiloni”, and some reactions to the original article. See here for a previous post on Shilo’s article.
Rabbi Jason Miller, a Conservative rabbi, has written a post titled Yes, Orthodox Judaism Changes Too. One of Rabbi Miller’s claims is that Orthodoxy, to varying degrees, also changes, it is just at a slower pace than the more liberal movements.
The Judaism of 2010, in any of the denominations, looks different than the Judaism of past centuries. That’s because the times change and the Jewish religion changes too, whether people like it or not.
Orthodox Judaism does not have a monopoly on “Torah true Judaism.” If Judaism is truly going to be true to the Torah, then we must all embrace the Torah’s dictum that says the Torah does not reside in the heavens. It belongs to humanity and it is up to us to see that it remains vibrant and evolves.
I would also add that change within Orthodoxy is usually much more decentralized, and therefore is less uniform than in the somewhat more hierarchical, ironically, Reform and Conservative movements.
I think that Rabbi Miller’s post touches upon one of the most important questions, what is legitimate halakhic change. This question has been discussed endlessly, and I don’t think that there is really any one answer. One of my favorite answers was from a teacher a mine who used to say, “Who can change halakhah? Whomever people will listen to.”
There have been two interesting responses from different people within Orthodoxy to Rabbi Miller’s post. The first one is from Rabbi Hyim Shafner. Rabbi Shafner writes that,
Perhaps though halachik change or the lack thereof alone is not what determines how true to the Torah one’s Judaism is. Perhaps it is a group’s shmirat hamitzvot, keeping of all the mitzvoth, and passionate commitment to torah study and Torah values that determines its Torah true-ness. If this is so then a movement which makes halachik decisions that are based on strong halachic precedent, even if these changes diverge from or expand current traditions, is still Torah true if its observance of mitzvot is total.
On the other hand if a group says it is committed to halacha but does not observe it as part of its culture it is not Torah true. Such might be the case, for instance, for the bulk of Conservative Jews today, who do not keep shabbat, kashrut or taharat hamishpacha, or indeed for some parts of the Charedi world whom though they may keep with much passion the mitzvoth between humans and God, might not keep with the same care the mitzvoth between human beings, required even toward those outside their community. I submit that it is not one’s lack of halachic chiddush that makes one Torah true, but how one observes the rest of Judaism along with the said halachic changes that determines one Torah true-ness.
I can identify a lot with Rabbi Shafner’s theory of halakhic change, but I think that one has to recognize the sometimes complex interplay between Rabbinic leadership on halakhic change and Rabbinic reaction to halakhic change that is coming from laity. As an aside, for many years Conservative rabbis argued about who actually was this Catholic Israel that could be the source and, to some extant, the determinant, of halakhic change. Was it limited to the observant laity? All members of Conservative synagogues? As with many good arguments, it has never really ended.
Another reaction was from Gil Student at Hirhurim. Along with a new and improved web site, as of late Gil seems to be a Centrist Orthodox Jew on the defensive, trying to go on the offensive against what he believes are illegitimate heterodoxical practices creeping into Orthodox Judaism. He even made a public call, one that I thought was borderline ridiculous and out of place, to pressure Rabbi Avi Weiss financially into rescinding his decision to allow a woman to lead kabbalat shabbat services. If you don’t like what’s going on there, don’t daven there and stop acting like you know what’s best for the members of another community.
Responding to Rabbi Miller’s post, Gil wrote the following.
If the Seridei Eish were alive today, he’d be turning over in his grave over this violation of chikuy ha-minim. The time has come to reclaim Orthodoxy and make the unequivocal statement that such reforms are unacceptable. There is still time for mainstream Orthodox organizations to state that these innovations are unacceptable and, if need be, to take appropriate action against members who are damaging the public perception of Orthodoxy by deviating substantially from Jewish traditions.
Hopefully all of the arguments will remain “for the sake of heaven” and not descend into the rantings of assorted rabbis, laity, politicians, halakhic wannabe’s, and other assorted Jews.
Elyashiv Reicher, a journalist and teacher who lives in Yeruḥam, has posted an interesting statistic on his blog, דרומי. Reicher notes that the majority of kibbutzim that have been established in the last two decades have been urban kibbutzim. There are currently over two thousand people living in numerous communal frameworks within urban areas in Israel. Many of these groups have settled in disadvantaged neighborhoods or cities, and Reicher notes with some irony that as the traditional agricultural kibbutz is slowing dying out, some of its second and third-generation members are trying to form a new version of the kibbutz. See this video about the past, present, and future, of the kibbutz movement. (hat tip)
I thought of Reicher’s post while reading an article in the NY Times about how religious needs and values affect choices of where to live and with whom to live. The article profiled a Christian kibbutz-like home in New York. The Jewish side of the story was about a young woman and her needs for a shabbat-friendly building and lots of room for shabbat meal guests. Having lived in a Jewish communal house for one year of college and spent some time on a kibbutz in Israel, I was wondering if there are any Jewish communal homes in America these days. I am not one for long-term communal living, but it can be a rewarding experience in the short-term.
I found a number of examples here in America, mostly from university-age groups. Here are a few examples: the Ravenna Kibbutz in Seattle; the Berkeley Bayit; the UCLA-Westwood Bayit; the Columbia Bayit. I guess that some people may say that the Upper West Side, Old Katamon, etc., are examples of communal-living lite, although nothing beats the close quarters of real communal living that allows for mutual growth, development, activism, and creativity, along with tension, animosity, and other annoyances.
Although not an urban kibbutz, in Israel there are many examples of גרעינים תורניים, groups of religious individuals and families that settle together in a city or a town and are active in communal, cultural, and educational affairs. Similar to the urban kibbutzim, they are people with a mission, and they want to make a difference.
These are examples of groups of people that have had a large impact on the neighborhoods and cities in which they are located, showing how a small group of people can sometimes make a big difference.
According to this post at the Inside Google Books blog, 129,864,880 is the estimated number of books in the world as of the other day.