Mumbai Wedding

As the afternoon sun hit its peak, Haran and I pulled up to his small one-and-a-half-bedroom flat on the outskirts of East Mumbai, India, some 20 minutes from the airport. The building's shiny tin roof showed that money was in short supply. But inside the apartment, with Indian hospitality, Haran's wife Geeta served me perfectly spiced hot tea.

Bene Israel of Mumbai, India  Shalva Weil,  Beit Hatfutsot.  The community is small and struggling, but it may get a new lease on life from the consolidation now taking place among Indian Jewish communities.  SAVE

Bene Israel  Jewish Virtual Library.  The original tradition is that the Bene Israel are the descendants of the survivors (seven men and seven women) of a shipwreck off the Konkan coast at Navgaon, about 26 miles south of Mumbai.  SAVE

One Last Guardian  Associated Press.  Shalom Israel tends to the last of Calcultta's Jewish community. "I am trying," he says, "to keep it surviving as much as I can."  SAVE

The Last Jews of Calcutta  Robert Hirschfield,  Forward.  Calcutta's Jewish-founded schools no longer teach Jewish studies. But, says one Calcutta Jew, "they are the Jewish legacy to this city."  SAVE

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Back From Heaven

In May 2011, Gallup conducted its annual "Values and Beliefs" poll, seeking to quantify religious demographics and beliefs in America. One question struck a national nerve, eliciting a consensus that defied religious or cultural distinctions. The question: Do you believe in heaven? The answer: Yes, overwhelmingly.

The Paradisaical Publishing Phenom  Julie Bosman,  New York Times.  Is Heaven is for Real for real? "We became fully convinced that this story was valid," said the book's publisher. "And also that it was a great story."  SAVE

Eternal Life  Lisa Miller,  Daily Beast.  Do Jews believe in heaven? In fact, Jews—to wit, Daniel—invented heaven.  SAVE

A Jewish Vergil  Simcha Paull Raphael,  Rowman & Littlefield.  Sheol, Olam Haba, Gehenna, Gan Eden: a guide through 4,000 years of Jewish thought on the afterlife.  SAVE

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Among the Mourners of Zion

We are a nation of mourners this month, collectively observing the Jewish rituals of grief in memory of . . . well, something or other. The occasion for mourning is the Omer, which began on Saturday night; the reason for mourning is more mysterious.

The Foods of Shivah  Dorothy Lipovenko,  The Jew and the Carrot.  Ten cups of wine? Eggs? Bagels? What—and why—Jews feed the bereaved.  SAVE

Manuals for the Dying  Avriel Bar-Levav,  Sh'ma.  Historically, the work of caring for the dying predated the rituals that came to govern it. (PDF)  SAVE

Mourning, Memory, and Art  Richard McBee,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  In order to mourn, artists have long realized that it helps to be able to visualize that which has been lost.  SAVE

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Not Everything is Illuminated

Judaism is famously infatuated with text; and the New American Haggadah, with contemporary authors Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander listed as editor and translator, respectively, is the latest in a long line of love letters by Jews to their object of adoration.

Illuminated Manuscripts, Hebrew  Jewish Virtual Library.  It may well be that such manuscripts stretch back to the Hellenist period; and in every period, not just the text but the surrounding artistic climate is illuminated.  SAVE

Birds' Head Haggadah Revealed  Richard McBee,  Jewish Press.  The third century C.E. saw the first great period of Jewish visual creativity. Six hundred years later a second flowering occurred.  SAVE

The Hamburg Haggadah  New York Public Library.  A digital version of each of the Haggadah's elaborately illustrated pages.  SAVE

The Golden Haggadah  British Library.  An online presentation of some of the Golden Haggadah's stunning color images.  SAVE

Feast Your Eyes  Jewish Ideas Daily.  A collection now on display at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem features the only known Hebrew illuminated manuscript produced by a woman, a 19th-century Haggadah.  SAVE

Birds’ Heads and Frog’s Buttocks  Marc Michael Epstein,  Jewish Review of Books.  Illuminated Jewish manuscripts illustrated not only the literal biblical text, but midrash as well.  SAVE

Newish or Jewish?  Leon Wieseltier,  Jewish Review of Books.  There is immodesty in the notion that newness, and one's own signature, will suffice. The New American Haggadah is abundantly a labor of love, but love is not enough.  SAVE

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Reading between the Lists

As long as humans have been writing, humans have been making lists and ranking things. The new Daily Beast/Newsweek list of "America's Top 50 Rabbis for 2012" is, like most American lists, whether of rabbis, cars, or colleges, designed to shape reality as much as reflect it.

American Jews, American Judaism  Ruth R. Wisse, Jack Wertheimer,  Standpoint.  Two leading scholars meet to discuss the state of contemporary American Jewish life and the challenges to it from within and without. Is there cause for optimism?  SAVE

Haunted Houses  Allan Nadler,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  The most consistent feature of synagogues in the land of the free is a chronic inchoateness marked by extreme architectural, spiritual, and liturgical malleability, and an almost endless shiftiness.  SAVE

Spirituality Lite  Aryeh Tepper,  Jewish Ideas Daily.  The Jewish Renewal Movement is brimming with avowedly noble aspirations. Why are the movement and its writings so shallow?  SAVE

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