Denmark – “We all have evil within us. Even small children are evil towards each other,” Danish-Norwegian artist Nina Maria Kleivan tells Haaretz as she explains why she chose to dress up her baby daughter as the most evil historical figures of the 20th century.
… In the controversial photo-series “Potency,” Kleivan’s daughter Faustina, then a few months old, depicts such infamous personalities as Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, Chairman Mao, Idi Amin, Augusto Pinochet, Slobodan Milosevic, and Adolf Hitler. The aim is to illustrate just one thing: We all begin life the same. We all have every opportunity ahead of us. To do good, or inexplicable evil. (Haaretz reports)
While many will critique this artistic statement as offensive, it seems clear ffrom the article that the artists does not idolize any of history’s most wicked leaders. In order to raise consciousness, art often attempts to shock, to draw people out of their comfort zone and make them think. This particular artistic effort may be particularly distasteful, but I do not see myself as an art critic, leaving this craft to people far more able than I am.
But I do find fault with her thesis. By dressing up a child as Hitler, she almost makes the appearance of such tyrants a matter beyond the free moral choice of the child. Are the Hitlers and the Stalins and the Pol Pots predestined, and more importantly, are their followers predestined to follow them? Read the rest of this entry »
Continuing the theme I explored in an earlier post about Muammar Qadhaffi’s possible Jewish roots, we read in the New York Times about people discovering they are Jewish, after all. The theme from one of the last prophecies in Sefer Yesha’yahu, that the Gentile Nations will bring back those who were captured or assimilated in their midst, to Judaism and the Jewish People, resonates strongly (see my Qadhaffi post, linked to above, for an analysis of that prophecy).
WARSAW — When Pawel looks into the mirror, he can still sometimes see a neo-Nazi skinhead staring back, the man he once was before he covered his shaved head with a yarmulke, shed his fascist ideology for the Torah and renounced violence and hatred in favor of G”d. Read the rest of this entry »
The order of the Biblical parshiyot from Schemot 25 through the end of that book presents a particular chronological and thematic challenge. In the parshiyot Terumah and Tetzaveh (chs. 25-30), G”d tells Moshe Rabbenu to command the Israelites to make a Mishkan, that G”d may reside in the Israelites’ midst. Then, in the beginning of Ki Tissa, the command is relayed to the people, and immediately afterwards the Torah reports the sin of the Golden Calf. Finally, in Vayaqhel and Piqudei(chs. 35-40), the work is carried out and brought to a successful completion.
This gives rise to a chronological question and a difficult philosophical corollary. Since Moshe ascended Mount Sinai when G”d spoke the Ten Utterances (erroneously known as Ten Commandments), and remained there for forty days, only coming down after the Golden Calf was celebrated, Shemot 31 could not have come before ch. 32! Read the rest of this entry »
Languages evolve constantly. New technologies, new philosophical concepts and ideas, and new social organizations and interactions necessitate new words. Cultural encounter also leads to incorporation of foreign loan word for foreign phenomena, whether to label them as something desirable, or as pejorative influences to be rejected.
Mishnaic and Talmudic Hebrew brought Greek and Latin terms to Hebrew (Apotika=Hypotheka, Dinar, Drachon, Itztaba=Stoa, Sanhedrin, Siqriqon=Sicarii, Biberin=Vivarium; other examples in the Jewish Encyclopedia). Mediaeval Hebrew incorporated Arab and Greek philosophical terms (just leaf through Maimonides’ Guide for abundant examples), and the twentieth century, technological terms.
In recent decades, such words have often come from English – in all languages, including Hebrew. However, earlier in the 20th century, German dominated, and, as DPA documents in Haaretz, Hebrew not inly includes many Yiddish terms, but outright German loan words, too:
When an Israeli gets out of bed on a dark morning, she will flick on a light Schalter (switch in English) and wash down a Biss (bite) of toast with a Schluck (sip) of coffee – all Hebrew words that stem from the German language. Read the rest of this entry »
The Israeli press is in uproar. Over the last week, serious accusations have been levelled at sixteen Israeli NGOs and the New Israel Fund, which is a or the major funder of these organisations. In a nutshell:
“Without the New Israel Fund, there would be no Goldstone Report, and Israel would not be facing international accusations of war crimes,” read the advertisement, making reference to a an Israeli philanthropic organization that funds a number of Israeli rights and progressive social change organizations.
Die israelische Presse ist in Aufruhr. Während der letzten Woche wurden schwere Vorwürfe gegen sechszehn israelische NGOs und dem New Israel Fund – einer der wichtigsten Geldgebern oder sogar der wichtigste Geldgeber diesen Organisationen – erhoben. In wenigen Worten:
“Ohne dem New Israel Fund würde es keinen Goldstone-Rapport geben und würden gegen Israel international keine Vorwürfe von Kriegverbrechen erhoben” liesst man in der Anzeige, die auf eine israelische philanthropische Organisation verweist, die eine Reihe von Menschenrechten- und sozial-progressive geselschaftliche Organisationen finanziert.
In the spirit of the halakha that one begins studying matters relevant to a holiday thirty days before the onset of that holiday, I am interrupting regular programming for this remarkable (and serious) television report, tackling the question whether the Libyan revolutionary leader Mu’ammar Al-Qadhafi is Jewish.
As a matter of introduction, I should note the remarkable prophecy at the end of the book of Yesha’yahu (66:18-21):
… the time cometh, that I will gather all nations and tongues; and they shall come, and shall see My glory. And I will work a sign among them [i.e. among the Gentile Nations], and I will send such as escape of them unto the nations, to Tarshish, Pul and Lud, that draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the isles afar off, that have not heard My fame, neither have seen My glory; and they shall declare My glory among the nations. And they shall bring all your brethren out of all the nations for an offering unto HASHEM, upon horses, and in chariots, and in fitters, and upon mules, and upon swift beasts, to My holy mountain Jerusalem, saith HASHEM, as the children of Israel bring their offering in a clean vessel into the house of HASHEM. And of them also will I take for the Kohanim and for the Levites, saith HASHEM.
According to most commentaries, the emphasized verse at the end says that also from among the gentile nations will G”d take Kohanim. The problem is that while any gentile can choose to convert and become part of the Jewish people, there is no conversion process to the Kohen-hood. Now one could argue, as IIRC R’ David Kimchi proposes, that this is not to be taken literally, but rather to mean that also from among the nations will G”d choose pious, righteous people, for religious leadership by example. Such as Shemaya and Avtalyon, who were either the sons of converts, or were themselves converts, and on account of their great piety and scholarship became the top leaders of the Nation of Israel, including presiding over the Sanhedrin.
But most commentators take the verse literally. They resolve the difficulty by stating that among those who were believed to be gentiles, there will be discovered many Jews, who had assimilated away over the ages, who had forgotten they were Jewish. Some of those Jews will be the descendents of Kohanim, however, that would not be enough for them to still be Kohanim. Kohanim must descend from a Kohen on the paternal line, and none of the female ancestors may have been women legally prohibited from marrying Kohanim. Thus, the posit that some of the originally exiled and assimilated Kohanim and their descendants will unknowingly always have married Jewishly born women who were not divorcees.
This reminds me of a large painting of a bride on her wedding day, which is displayed in the Jewish Museum of Berlin. The bride stands by the window, and on the window sill lays a Bible, but not a Jewish Bible. It prominently features a cross on the cover. But the woman was Jewish, one of the possibly 100’000 Jews who are estimated to have converted to Christianity out of social ambitions, in the 19th century. However, she did not marry out. While she did marry in the church, intentionally or not, since she married a grandson of Moses Mendelsohn, theirs was a Jewish couple. Their story is only unique in that we can identify the players, but that story repeated itself countless times, and it is a recurring story that people discover they are really Jewish, and decide to return to the Jewish fold. Some of those people even discover that both their parents were Jewish, or that, unbeknownst to them, they had married a Jew. Such is the touch of Providence.
So is Qadhafi also one of those Jews, who will come back “Tarshish, Pul and Lud, … Tubal and Javan”? Watch the report below [hat tip: SE], and leave your opinion in the comments section:
One morning last week, a young man was flying with his sister from New York’s La Guardia Airport to Kentucky. The young man, being an observant Jew, wanted to recite the morning prayers on the plane, as he had not had the opportunity to do so before going to the airport. This, he did just like in the synagogue, and as countless flying Dutchmen Jews before him, by praying while wearing tefillin. Unfortunately, that particular crew did not know what tefillin are, and in this post-shoe bomber, post-underwear bomber era, the crew grew suspicious, and after conferring with the pilot, they made an emergency stopover in Philadelphia, where a SWAT team “welcomed” the brother and sister team, arrested them, escorted them out of the plane, and treated them like wanna-be leather-straps-on-arm-and-forehead-bombers. Of course, it didn’t take too long to figure out that this was an innocent pair, though for the convenience of flight crew training, I am including a graphic (hat tip: R’JF) that should hammer this point home rather clearly. A video news report is included at the end of this post.
Anyway, ever since this incident, the blogosphere and mailing list are alight, discussing whether or not one must pray with tefillin even when flying, what the alternatives are, if any, whether we should expect such reactions in the future and hence should as much as possible abstain from praying with tefillin while flying, in this post-shoe bomber, post-underwear bomber era, and whether the crew was properly trained. These issues have already been discussed extensively elsewhere.
While the security issues are new, Jews have faced the issues with praying while travelling since time immemorial. Over a hundred years ago, a similar discussion was aired in the German Jewish press. A certain Chief Rabbi J. Kahn of Treves / Trier wrote an article attacking the practice, and suggested that travellers put their tefillin on before leaving home, even if that was before day break, when the tefillin should ordinarily not be worn. R’ Esriel Hildesheimer responded in his usual learned, witty, slightly acerbic manner. Below, I am excerpting some relevant passages.
For the benefit of the practically minded, I shall give some practical tips at the end of the post. Read the rest of this entry »
Az Yashir, the Song at the Sea, makes a number of references to holy places. What are those holy places the barely freed Israelite nation sang about, and are they all “places,” in the usual sense of the word? How far must we travel to visit them all? Read the rest of this entry »
The tragedy of the humongous loss of life as a result of the massive earthquake in Haiti cannot be overestimated. But what is worse is that many of the survivors are dying because they cannot get timely medical care. Many nations have flown in supply for the healthy survivors and medicine for the sick, but that is not enough. Many patients need a hospital. CNN reported yesterday that only one nation set up a fully functioning field hospital, with operating rooms and other life saving medical equipment: Israel.
[flash video will open in new window or tab; hat tip: FM]
At times like these we also wonder how to deal with such tragedies religiously. It is the perennial religious question, and Moses himself struggled with this. I believe that the approach I delineated in my essay [original text, in German or automatic Google translation] on the Asian Tsunami of 2004 is applicable now, too.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is making waves [e-week Europe]
having announced that people no longer have an expectation of privacy thanks to increasing uptake of social networking.
Speaking at the Crunchie Awards in San Francisco this weekend, the 25 year-old web entrepreneur said: “People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people.”
Such statements, and the trends Zuckerman describes, are of no little consequences. Dr. Kieron O’Hara of Southampton University points out that
under British law, an individual’s right to privacy is being eroded by the behavior of those who have no qualms about broadcasting every intimate detail of their life online (via social networking sites) because the privacy law is predicated in part upon the concept of a ‘reasonable expectation of privacy.’
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In the controversial photo-series “Potency,” Kleivan’s daughter Faustina, then a few months old, depicts such infamous personalities as Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Ayatollah Khomeini, Chairman Mao, Idi Amin, Augusto Pinochet, Slobodan Milosevic, and Adolf Hitler. The aim is to illustrate just one thing: We all begin life the same. We all have every opportunity ahead of us. To do good, or inexplicable evil. (Haaretz reports)
Posted by Arie Folger 
Die israelische Presse ist in Aufruhr. Während der letzten Woche wurden schwere Vorwürfe gegen sechszehn israelische NGOs und dem New Israel Fund – einer der wichtigsten Geldgebern oder sogar der wichtigste Geldgeber diesen Organisationen – erhoben. In wenigen Worten:
Mikolot Mayim Rabbim 