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…e documents proving the Jewishness of a person’s mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and great-great grandmother when applying to get married in Israel. The RA comments that “Needless to say, this is a near impossibility for most people,” and goes on to argue, “Where one is part of a Jewish community and has been living as a Jew, there is no need to instigate an investigation into that person’s Jewishness. We affirm that trust is the default po…
…node, and together all of the outer courts, or nodes, would make up a semi-centralized network, taking the pressure off of Moshe. The point is, instead of having an inefficient single judicial authority, the network of lower courts would distribute the authority and the work. Now — the monkeys! The Hamadryas baboons inhabit Ethiopia, Somalia, Saudi Arabia and parts of Yemen. They live in areas where vegetation and safe places to sleep are sparse;…
…f it: the sons giving their mother a tallit. When our heritage is passed mi-dor le-dor – from generation to generation – we expect it to go only in one direction, not the other. I was thrilled by the beautiful gift, and even more thrilled that they understood how important such a thing would be to me, and how precious, coming from them. They also gave me a bicycle, by the way, which sent an altogether different message. At the women’s service 15 y…
…m, having learned that the famine was over, she tells her Moabite daughters-in-law to return to their own people. She has nothing to offer them, since she can no longer bear sons who could marry them and take care of them. And an unwed woman at that time was at great risk. Orpah, although tearful, turns back. Naomi says, “See, your sister-in-law has returned to her people and her gods. Go follow your sister-in-law.” But Ruth perseveres: “Do not ur…
…lieve that the book of Isaiah was written during the Babylonian exile by a number of people in addition to Isaiah. Isaiah himself was a prophet of the nation of Judah and was one of the first to leave a written record of his prophecies, or proclamations. The book of Isaiah is one of the longest in the Bible, containing sixty chapters. The sayings of Isaiah are contained in the first 39 chapters. Most of the rest, written around 550 BCE, were poems…
…s are quite explicit about their intentions to expel, kill or subjugate non-Muslim or non-Arab residents of the territories they control or plan to conquer. The bizarre accusation against Israel of genocide is frightening when we consider that genocide is actually taking place in Darfur (incidentally, related to pan-Arab racial imperialism) and in other places. All people interested in human rights and civil rights, as well as those interested in…
…on context – a Google search turned up coming out as Canadian, as a cancer-survivor, as a neo-con, as an atheist. So this is the meaning of the text: be honest with yourself in all that you do. Lying with a man as with a woman is a metaphor for lying to yourself, (perhaps the English resonance of lying is not coincidental!), for not facing the truth of your life and sharing it with others. If we are not honest with ourselves, we cannot be present…
…omeone holding a Torah that is not entitled “Rabbi.” We also noted that non-Ashkenazi Jews are under-represented. There are two wonderful prints of watercolors of Yemenite Jewish men by the Romanian-Israeli artist David Gilboa, and the previously mentioned work by Rafael Avraham Shalem, and many ethnically ambiguous works, but in general this is an exhibition with many exclusions. Additionally, only three works in the exhibition were created by wo…