DOES IT MATTER WHETHER OR not our sacred writings are historically accurate? This question comes up every year at our synagogue Torah study, as people go to great lengths to try and explain the fantastical events of the text, especially…
Tag: Learning Jewishly
“A little Torah is all anyone knows.”
Minute Mitzvah: Put It Back
Today: Return lost items. Explanation: The Talmud tells us that an item is only and truly “lost” when its owner despairs of its return. Your job is to not let that happen. Granted, this is one of those mitzvot which…
Minute Mitzvah: Stuff & Nonsense
Today: Don’t crave someone else’s stuff. Explanation: One of modern life’s biggest distractions is feeling materially inadequate, especially in a gotta-have-it society like our own. Why dwell on your deficiencies? As Pirkei Avot says, “Who is rich? One who is…
Tell me what you know of Torah,” asked the greybeard rabbi.
“I only know a little,” responded the young student.
The rabbi smiled. “That’s all anyone knows of Torah.”
“Everybody Have a Nagila!”
IT’S THE WORLD’S SINGLE MOST recognizable Jewish song — covered by such luminaries as Harry Belafonte and Dick Dale — yet its genesis may surprise you. Another fine contribution from myjewishlearning dot com…
Why I Love: Torah Study
IT’S THE ENDLESS INTELLECTUAL PUZZLE. It’s that Hebrew writing closely resembles Klingonese (well, it does; come to think of it, so does some of the sentiment). It’s belonging to the 3,000-year-old Permanent Floating Book Club. It’s the spectra, vagaries and…
365 Names of God: King
KING A translation of the Hebrew word “melech” (מלך), this Name has fallen out of favor in Liberal Judaism circles due to two factors: 1) It’s male-gendered, and thus anthro/patriomorphic (and conceptually inaccurate); and 2) as people who live in…
Sailing the Sea of Talmud (And Related Waters)
IF YOU STUDY ANYTHING, AS the salesman sang in the opening scene of “The Music Man,” “You’ve got to know the territory.” Case in point: Every Wednesday morning for the past few years, I have conducted an hour-long living-room learning…
5 Thoughts: The REAL First Fandom
1. WHAT IF WE LOOKED AT Torah as if it were another created world, a la the works of Tolkien, Rowling or Lucas? and its adherents as members of (perhaps) humanity’s oldest text-based fandom? 2. For one thing, they already…
Midrash Noach
DESPITE THE ALLURING INTRICACIES OF Mosaic law of the past few months, it’s nice to be once again studying the Torah’s classic origin tales. This week we see a sea change (literally) in the way humans relate to their world…
First Graf: The Jewish Catalog
WHAT HAPPENED WHEN THE COUNTER-CULTURAL agents of the 1960s (re)discovered their Yiddishkeit (Jewishness)? A trio of them (and many others) produced the now-classic The Jewish Catalog: a do-it-yourself kit. As the subtitle implies, the book is chock-full of homemade ways…
The Loudest Silence
THE TRICK IS: HOW TO scream at the top of your lungs without making a sound. That’s one of the lessons taught by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, a Chasidic teacher who lived in Ukraine at the turn of the 19th…