Judaism articles from June 1997

Judaism archives from June 1997

God of Judgment, God of compassion: A reading of the Rosh Hashanah Service. (special Jewish holiday)
June 22, 1997... The liturgy for Rosh Hashanah declares, "today the world is born," but this celebratory statement is immediately qualified: "Today all creatures everywhere stand in judgment."(1) My exploration of the structure, themes and dynamics of the Rosh...

My Yom Kippur prayer. (poem)
June 22, 1997... Heed the sound of the shofar: Bless my family with this New Year. O God your voice makes me tremble, I am whispering Bless my family with this happy New Year. Heed the sound of the shofar: Let me tremble, not with fear Bless my family with...

From Peshat to Derash and back again: Talmud for the modern religious Jew.
June 22, 1997... The emerging focus of contemporary American Jewish thought is . . . the Talmud! Two reasons come to mind for what may, in this age of postmodernism, seem like a surprising mm to traditional sources. The immediate reason is that this remains an...

Who is a Jew: Prime Minister Begin and the Jewish question. (former Israeli head of state Menachem Begin)
June 22, 1997... Since the question of conversion according to Halakha and, by implication, the definition of Jewish identity, is once again on the political agenda of the Israeli government, I thought that an account of my earlier encounter with it, when the...

The future of Jewish values in Israel.
June 22, 1997... Israel was built by the zionist movement to save and restructure the Jewish people. Not surprisingly, it was founded upon what Max Kadushin defined as Jewish value concepts, that is to say core values and the penumbra of meanings and behaviors...

As if this could be anywhere. (poem)
June 22, 1997... Evening prayers at the Wall sway through the hour when the color of its stone is textured persimmon that reddens, then darkens through purple, and ends in its natural gray, under spotlights and stars. The words are less than clear. Some rise...

The sins of the fathers: A theological investigation of the Biblical tension between corporate and individualized retribution.
June 22, 1997... Many scholars maintain that the hebrew bible contains two opposing views of divine retribution: a superior one that portrays divine retribution as individualized and an inferior one that operates on a principle of corporate responsibility....

Inventing Yiddish: Observations on the rise of a "debased" language.
June 22, 1997... In a New York times magazine article last year, Jonathan Rosen described the resurgence currently enjoyed by Yiddish in the United States. Evidence of this new interest in the language includes not only an increase in Yiddish courses at U.S....

Isaac Bashevis singer in New York. (excerpt from Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Life)
June 22, 1997... After the cataclysmic events of 1944 and 1945, Bashevis's life in the late 1940s calmed down considerably, at least outwardly. Although he had expressed his anguish quietly, his enormous distress over the loss of his brother, his culture, and his...

Shalom Bayit. (poem)
June 22, 1997... To braid a challah in a quiet house is to work, settling yeast into water, salt into flour, eggs into dough, separations yielding, fingers sticky, sweet, warm with morning buoyancy to braid a challah in a quiet house is to remember a flecked...

The friendly university: Jews in academia since World War II.
June 22, 1997... In the movie Pete and Tillie, the character played by Walter Matthau was asked why, since he was three-quarters Lutheran and only one-quarter Jewish, he insisted on calling himself Jewish. "I'm a social climber," he replied. The rapid economic...

Jesus as an historical Jew. (religious figure)
June 22, 1997... In 19751 was the first official Jewish guest invited to the World Council of Churches, meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. I was permitted a few minutes to speak to the assembly. I reminded them only that their Lord was not born in Nairobi nor in Kansas...