Photo by Natalie Weinberg.

Rosh Hashanah with the Chief Rabbi

Ten years ago, the first day of Rosh Hashanah—the two-day Jewish New Year—fell on September 18. That was one week after September 11, 2001, when almost 3,000 people were killed by Muslim terrorists. On that Rosh Hashanah, rabbis did not lack for sermon topics.

Endless Devotion  Hillel Halkin,  Jewish Review of Books.  Prayer, says Sacks, is the "language of the soul in conversation with God."  But the struggle to keep it from becoming routine is intrinsic to every religion in which prayer is a regular duty.  SAVE

The Chief Rabbi's Achievement  David Wolpe,  Jewish Review of Books.  Sacks has a gift for providing plausible, if not entirely sufficient, interpretations of the most problematic questions of theology.  SAVE

Where Faith is Weak, Life is Weak  Jonathan Sacks,  Jewish Chronicle.  Intermarriage, assimilation, and vulnerability are not the causes but the symptoms of a transcendent malaise affecting a people once aflame with devotion.  SAVE

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The Life of Prayer

Prayer has never been easy, as the Psalmist well knew: "For there is no word on my tongue; You, O Lord, know them all" (139: 4). And even if there are words on the tongue, the results can be distressingly uncertain, or worse: "My God, I call out by day and You do not answer; by night, there is no respite for me" (22:2). It hasn’t gotten easier since then.

The Siddur and Us  Shma.  Is the prayer book a statement of beliefs, or something else—and if something else, what?  SAVE

Jewish & Pentecostal Worship  Sharon Alexander,  Zeek.  In their different approaches to ecstasy and praise, the Jewish and Pentecostal prayer services also exhibit certain parallels.  SAVE

Jospel?  Jack Zaientz,  Teruah.  Thoughts on Jewish Gospel, plus a workshop. (With video)  SAVE

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Prague Haggadah, 1526.

Passover & the Repudiation of Idolatry

Asking questions is a trademark of the Passover seder. Prior to it, we can ask another question—this one having to do with a passage in the Haggadah about the second of the four sons.

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Genizah fragment with Maimonides’ signature.

Sifting the Cairo Genizah

Everyone knows about the Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered over 60 years ago, and about the new light they shed on the sectarian Judaism of late antiquity, the beginnings of rabbinic Judaism, and possibly the prehistory of Christianity. Fifty years before that, the Cairo Genizah similarly revolutionized the picture of the Jewish Middle Ages.

Digitizing the Genizah  Friedberg Genizah Project.  Since 2004, a concerted program has been identifying, cataloguing, and transcribing the manuscripts of the Cairo Genizah as well as photographing and publishing them online.  SAVE

What the Geonim Wrought  Robert Brody,  Printing the Talmud.  For roughly 500 years, the cultural and intellectual centers of the Jewish world were located east of the Mediterranean, and the master teachers of the age devoted themselves to transmitting, explicating, and applying the Talmud as a guide to Jewish life. (PDF)  SAVE

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Chagall, "The Praying Jew," 1914.

Three Blessings

The Jewish prayer book (siddur) is thick with texts: blessings, thanksgivings, and petitions, instructions, theological claims, and historical memories. Some traditional texts bear especially outsized burdens. In this respect, few can rival three lines that begin "Blessed are you O God, King of the Universe, Who has not made me . . . " and conclude, respectively, "a goy [Gentile]," "a slave," and "a woman."

Benedictions of Identity  Joseph Tabory,  Bar-Ilan University Press.  On the three blessings and efforts by traditionalists to adapt them to contemporary circumstances (originally published in Kenishta: Studies of the Synagogue World). (PDF, 2001)  SAVE

“. . . Who Made Me a Woman”  George Jochnowitz,  Commentary.  A startling variant of a controversial blessing appears in a 14th-century vernacular prayer book from southern France. (PDF, 1981)  SAVE

As I Am  Philologos,  Forward.  On the morning blessings and the two Hebrew words for "Jew."  SAVE

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