HEY JEWS

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/study-finds-close-genetic-connection-between-jews-kurds-1.75273

Shana tova, Jews!

I went to services today. How do Abraham and Sarah and God get off being such jerks to Hagar and Ishmael? I mean I have only dabbled in reading the Hebrew Bible but WTF, Abraham and Sarah seem like kind of awful ppl but God's all like "it's cool you are my chosen ppl*"

Anyhow, tonight's Rosh Hoshanna meal chez quincie is bratwurst with mustard and sauerkraut on challah. Yeah yeah yeah I know I'm not doing it right.

*to be fair I go to services at a Reconstructionist synagogue, and the Reconstructionists have written the "chosen ppl" bit out of their siddur.

also the sermon was 100% about Black Lives Matter.

nice

We had a great sermon from the rabbi emeritus re: the binding of Isaac and an interpretation that Abraham heard two voices, each reasonably purporting to be the voice of God, one saying to sacrifice Isaac, the other commanding him to free him, forcing him to choose the kind of God he wanted to serve. Sermon perhaps peaked when he declared he'd rather spend an eternity in hell with Gandhi than in heaven with Fred Phelps.

Shanah tovah! I kinda wanted to go to services, but didn't, b/c I still haven't yet out here.

I went to services today. How do Abraham and Sarah and God get off being such jerks to Hagar and Ishmael? I mean I have only dabbled in reading the Hebrew Bible but WTF, Abraham and Sarah seem like kind of awful ppl but God's all like "it's cool you are my chosen ppl*"

I've come to the conclusion that trying to read the OT as a set of modern moral lessons is a fool's errand. Fascinating bunch of stories though.

I'm actually a huge fan of scholars using the OT as a sort of jumping off point, chiseling modern moral lessons out of big blocks of wtf. Certainly literal interpretations are dead ends, so I'm not even sure what application the OT even has beyond setting the stage for fruitful further discussion.

We had a great sermon from the rabbi emeritus re: the binding of Isaac and an interpretation that Abraham heard two voices, each reasonably purporting to be the voice of God, one saying to sacrifice Isaac, the other commanding him to free him, forcing him to choose the kind of God he wanted to serve. Sermon perhaps peaked when he declared he'd rather spend an eternity in hell with Gandhi than in heaven with Fred Phelps.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, September 14, 2015 6:20 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha I was at services with you! That rabbi was pretty good. The shofar player was pretty weak though. Also was not expecting 3 hours o_o

shofar was weak like clock radio speakers

lets just say his "tekiah gedolah" made me think he needs help blowing out birthday candles (ohsnap)

Hey Mordy, in particular, but also others -- is there a Jewish theological basis for the idea of a "holy site"? I've been thinking about that a lot in light of the temple mount, and I've been wondering whether placing too much emphasis on a specific site is akin to idolatry. Of course this assumes that religion has any internal consistency at all.

the simple answer is yes. the temple mount is the best example of a holy site in judaism - supposedly the closest place to G-d on earth - and even today jews are not supposed to enter the place where the holy of holies was located. also during prayer you're supposed to face in the direction of the temple mount. beth-el also a holy spot where jacob supposedly slept on the stone. tombs of the righteous also traditionally considered holy (tho iirc there is some dispute about exactly what that means) so that would be hamaras hamachpalah in hebron, kever rachel, joseph's tomb, etc. there's definitely a 'holy sites' basis in judaism - though what that exactly means for sites other than the temple mount is probably subject of some dispute? even rabbis today who say jews should not go up to the temple mount don't say it's bc it's idolatry or the wrong emphasis but bc it's too holy. and of course "israel" is the ultimate holy site in that there are a host of mitzvot that you can't even perform unless you're in the holy land.

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/195668/in-or-out-the-spinoza-case

like pete rose here

interesting, thanks for the link.

http://www.tabletmag.com/scroll/195697/the-tag-of-her-earlobe-that-died-from-lord-and-taylor

Tag Tanuchah Shemet everyone!

i ate way too many sufganiyot this year. i won't even say how many bc it's humiliating. at shul last night they had a donut making bar and i went nuts.

We found out that our favorite local Israeli/Eastern-Euro grocery carries REEEEALLLY good sufganiyot.

my daughter made sufganiyot at the temple's Hannukah thing this year, which I think briefly made my wife regret not coming lol

good news jews!
http://www.wsj.com/articles/new-vatican-document-says-church-doesn-t-seek-conversion-of-the-jews-1449784616

Excellent

weirdest thing about the document:

Jews are saved through Christ but in a mysterious way that we dont see. Conclusion of document is that Christian should relate to Jews as "people of God of Jews and Gentiles, united in Christ."

The "Church understands God's eternal covenant with Jews as being part of God's eternal covenant with the Church."

why is that weird? provided that your point isn't simply your belief that theological declarations are weird. I mean I'm not gonna take the time to spell out Catholic theology here but the view is readily sensible within the Catholic tradition of thinking of the Church as a collective body ("body" in a organic sense, not just an extensional "set of people").

it's definitely weird, even from the Church's POV. that you can be saved through Christ and a part of the covenant with the Church through your rejection of Christ and the Church? that's why they call it a mystery.

ok yes if that's all you mean then fine, it is a mystery.gif. but Catholics talk about mystery every week.

since vatican 2 the Church does not take Jews to have rejected Christ. this is just spelling that out a little further. not up to "scientific precision" I guess but if that's the standard

how do they understand this in light of inerrancy of the NT and passages that seem to totally contradict the idea that the Jews did not reject Christ? it that part of the mystery?

fwiw i asked a professor friend in the field and he says: There is a huge literature of new readings of the NT that downplay the dualism of Jew vs Christian. Much of it relies of rhetorical criticism saying that the verse was based on a fight with a specific group of Jews and does not include Jews as a whole. Some of it is based on reconceptualization as to what a verse like that could mean to a Jewish speaker which the apostles were. There are many other strategies used to explain the texts. Texts like Revelation are the easy ones via rhetroical criticism, the lines in the Pauline texts are harder. But all of this is part and parcel of a broader modern reading of the Bible. The same was Hirsch or Hertz dealt with a score of issues including science with the net result is a modern reading of the Jewish Bible, the Catholic Church is dealing with a broad number of issues in their 21st century reading.

that seems otm. I would say that those readings go back to vatican 2 so aren't specifically 21st century but the point still stands.

think "inerrancy" is too strong an attribution to a historical text. Catholics aren't Muslims (or Protestants): the texts were written by human authors and they must be interpreted.

also re. "rejection": it is one thing to say something, and another to do something. the acts of the Jews are to be seen as in line with the NT, if not their words. putting a lot of emphasis on "belief", attitudes toward propositions, etc., is again a rather Protestant take on Christianity.

what is the status of the catholic canon? is it divinely inspired? do the pauline texts have more force than the later ones in terms of necessary fidelity?

what do you mean by "the catholic canon"? Augustine? Aquinas? Newman? papal declarations? there's not really anything equivalent to the Midrash or to hadiths.

i really meant the canonical NT

as seen by the catholic church

hmm then still confused, what do you mean by the texts later than Paul's?

I mean yeah the idea is that the texts are divinely inspired but that doesn't mean they're so clear that anyone who reads them will understand them right away. the latter view is what fundamentalists (by definition in fact) believe, and Catholics aren't fundamentalist.

more on the topic:
https://kavvanah.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/the-gifts-and-calling-of-god-are-irrevocable-another-jewish-perspective/

my daughter's mixed media har sinai for parshat yisro

http://i.imgur.com/hoFNmqU.jpg?1

Sheep ❤️

Oh wait those are clouds nm

Mordy maybe you have thoughts on this: my daughter's gan is in a conservative synagogue, but her teacher is orthodox. I feel like sometimes the teacher is crossing the line into orthodox territory, for example telling them that boys wear tzitzit (or at least that's what K came home and told me -- maybe it was just because there's a boy in her class who wears them).

Also she talks to them a lot about "davening to Hashem" and I just feel like a threes class is a little early for that.

(1) Do you think it's appropriate? (2) Do you think it's pointless to say something to the director about it?

My girls go to a Chabad school so they're being exposed to all that and more and I've definitely had conversations with my 4yo about things we believe and how they might differ from what her morah said. I suspect my tolerance (and total acceptability) threshold for Orthodox hashkafa is much higher than yours in general, but we are not fully observant so she knows that we do some things differently than what they do at school. I feel like that some level of critical interaction about what they're getting at school is probably going to be necessary whether they continue in Jewish schools or go to the public schools (about which we are undecided). I should probably mention also that not all the Chabad teachers are Orthodox (my 2yo's is non-observant) so it's not even like they are only be exposed to one context for Jewishness at school either. Maybe they've taken pains to have it that way because they are trying to attract a broader student body, ie they don't see their target audience as homogenous even though they are definitely privileging certain Orthonorms.

So I guess my answer is: I think it's probably fine but if it bothers you I imagine the conservative director will be sympathetic to your concern.

http://forward.com/news/333986/uganda-rabbi-wins-opposition-seat-in-parliament-as-authoritarian-leader-cli/

On February 19, Rabbi Gershom Sizomu, the spiritual leader of the century-old Abayudaya Jewish community, was named the winner in a heated race among eight candidates, including two main rivals from Uganda’s ruling National Resistance Movement party. Sizomu, who ran with the main opposition party, will represent Bungokho North, a rural district outside the town of Mbale, about an hour’s drive from the Kenyan border.

Wow, interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/27/world/middleeast/woman-81-to-sue-israeli-airline-over-seat-switch.html?action=click&contentCollection=Opinion&module=MostPopularFB&version=Full®ion=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

Ms. Rabinowitz has since had time to ponder. She said her son told her that “this whole idea that you cannot sit next to a woman is bogus.” She cited an eminent Orthodox scholar, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, who counseled that it was acceptable for a Jewish man to sit next to a woman on a subway or a bus so long as there was no intention to seek sexual pleasure from any incidental contact.

“When did modesty become the sum and end all of being a Jewish woman?” Ms. Rabinowitz asked. Citing examples like the biblical warrior Deborah, the matriarch Sarah and Queen Esther, she noted: “Our heroes in history were not modest little women.”

very otm. charedi obsession w/ modesty/gender separation is so unappealing. and all just ad hoc bullshit w/ little to no traditional-textual validity

i strongly remember a time when a haredi guy was selling his paintings on the street in NYC and my mom and i approached him with interest. when she spoke to him, he looked right past her and didn't respond in the slightest. when i said something he smiled and started talking to me. i don't know how common that sort of thing is -- how many haredi forbid even the slightest social contact between a man and a woman who is not a relation?

btw ms. rabinowitz sounds like a really awesome person.

i don't know exact numbers but there's a spectrum. the charedi communities i participated in skewed much more to the permissive side (though unmarried singles were still actively discouraged from fraternizing outside of shidduch dating). but there are more fundamentalist communities in the united states - satmar seems like the most obvious one. from what i understand there's a spectrum in israel too but that extends much more to the right than the one in the US (like the haredi burqa sect is exclusively found in israel).

eg the litvish (ie non-chassidic) yeshiva i went to for high school was moshe feinstein's (mentioned in the article u posted) yeshiva. so even though boys and girls were educationally and socially segregated, and pretty much men only fraternize with men and women with women and the gender roles are very formal, he still was lenient on issues of like professional and formal association between genders. iirc though touching someone of the opposite gender at all (that's not a marriage or a family member) is disallowed but he ruled that you could shake a woman's hand in a business setting (especially if she would be offended if you begged off), or that sitting next to a woman on public transportation is not an issue. i mean obviously this is still hardcore gender segregation.