Make Yourself a Teacher

The meanings of "Torah" are inexhaustible, but its plainest sense is "teaching." It does not exist apart from being communicated. That circulation between human beings, and between humans and God, both gives Torah life and teaches us that Torah itself teaches life.

Talmud: The Back Story  Yehudah Mirsky,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Modern Talmud scholarship yields a story of fragmentary texts being worked and reworked into the sources we have today. Can we put the pieces back together into a coherent, compelling story?  SAVE

How Should We Read Aggadah?  Elli Fischer,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  The latest generation of scholarship digests and interprets earlier histories, memories, and traditions in a way that allows them to speak to the current moment.  SAVE

The “Snake Oven”  Aleph Society.  The oven in the famous talmudic dispute was made of separate pieces meant to be taken apart, then put together again. When the oven was rebuilt in this way, was it the same oven?  SAVE

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Hitting the Jackpot

Who doesn't like Purim? Besides the costumes and candy, the story itself has all the politics, sex, and violence of a juicy HBO series. In case you missed it: "Haman the son of Hammedatha, the Agagite, the enemy of all the Jews, had plotted to destroy the Jews, and had cast a pur—that is, a lottery—with intent to crush and exterminate them."

Israel New Lotto  thelotter.com.  Information and instruction about how to invest, as Rabbi Avraham Shapira would view it, in Israel's national lottery.  SAVE

I Won the Lottery Because I Donated to Synagogue  Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu,  Israel National News.  Now here's a return on investment . . . .  SAVE

Randomness and Revelation  Ely Merzbach,  Bar Ilan University.  According to one mathematics professor, the principle of probability allows God to intervene in human affairs without contravening the natural laws that God Himself created. (PDF)  SAVE

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Jewish Ethics, from Ancient Bible to Modern Bus

The next time someone tells you that ethical behavior doesn't need a foundation in religious teaching, step onto an Israeli bus (it doesn't have to be the gender-segregated variety) or open a mass-circulation Israeli newspaper and see how religion puts Jewish ethics on steroids.

The Pale God  Aryeh Tepper,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Spinoza begins the process of turning God from an interventionist to a grandfatherly figure sitting in a corner.  SAVE

Hope in a Democratic Age  Alan Mittleman,  Oxford University Press.  Mittleman explains that hope should be viewed as not merely a sentiment but an ethical choice and a virtue that is critical to modern democracies.  SAVE

The Business of Ethics  Havruta.  A Hartman Institute symposium on the responsibilities of the Jewish community toward the needy (PDF; 2010); also briefly summarized here.  SAVE

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Siren Songs

"For your voice is sweet and your appearance pleasant" (Song of Songs 2:14). On the basis of this verse, Jewish law prohibits a man's listening to kol ishah, a woman's voice in song. Unlikely as it may seem, this prohibition has sparked a controversy that could shake the foundations of Israel's self-defense and self-definition.

Kol Ishah Reviewed  Yehuda Henkin,  Urim Publications.  Thirty years ago, Saul Berman wrote an influential and relatively liberal interpretation of the kol ishah prohibition. But there has been an answer. (PDF)  SAVE

Sad Sexual Obsessions  Eric H. Yoffie,  Jerusalem Post.  Does the Israeli rabbinate's increasing focus on gender issues have an unattractive psychological component?  SAVE

Religion and the IDF  Aryeh Tepper,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  Almost a third of the officers in Israel's army now wear kippot. Is the IDF about to become the long arm of rabbinic law?  SAVE

Voice of a Woman  Shmuel Rosner,  New York Times.  If Orthodox Jews believe they are forbidden by law to hear a woman sing, how far should the Israeli military go to facilitate their observance?  SAVE

Gender Trouble  Yehudah Mirsky,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  For "Hardalim," the objections to women's singing go beyond modesty and gender separation; they are also a matter of national identity.  SAVE

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Jerusalem's Ego and Id

Biography is not the same as history. Biography charts the outer and inner life of a person—character, spirit, morality, emotion, perhaps even soul. History, by contrast, incorporates different narratives and pieces of evidence, seeks out new data, then rises above all the fragments with a synthesis.

Montefiore on Montefiore  Todd Leopold,  CNN.  There have been many reactions to Jerusalem: the Biography. Here, the author responds to the challenge put to him and delivers his own verdict on the book.  SAVE

Melisende’s Psalter  British Library.  Like her ancient predecessor, King David, Queen Melisende commissioned artwork for the Book of Psalms. Now preserved at the British Library, it can be seen online.  SAVE

Lord Shaftesbury: God’s Reformer  Marena Fisher,  Yale Standard.  Lord Shaftesbury, the paradigmatic Victorian reformer, dedicated his life to improving the condition of the poor, rehabilitating felons—and restoring the Jews to their homeland.  SAVE

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