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December 2019
1A. The best answer as to why Chanukah is not a major holiday is that it is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. With the sole exception of Purim, only the holidays mentioned in the Bible - like Pesach and Shavuot - require cessation from ordinary activities. The Books of the Maccabees, which are not included in the Jewish Bible, describe the retaking of the Temple in 165 BCE, more than 300 years after the last of the Davidic line was king in Jerusalem. Thus Judah Maccabee and his family were not descendants of King David or of his tribe of Judah, but the Hasmonean dynasty that the Maccabees founded did rule successfully for over a hundred years, until the Romans ultimately turned over kingship to the Herodians. The Talmud actually has quite a bit to say about Chanukah, including even down to a discussion of the order in which each light (candle or oil) of the menorah should be lit.
The Books of the Maccabees, Macabees 1 and 2, that are mentioned above were written in the first century BCE and are examples Biblical apocrypha. Both books are part of the canon of Scripture for Greek and Russian Orthodox, and the Roman Catholic churches, but they are not included in the Bibles of Judaism or most Protestant sects.
2A. The attempt to explain and unravel the meaning of Biblical passages is called Midrash. Midrash also refers to a specific exposition or rabbinic commentary on a Biblical story, usually emphasizing a lesson or point of law. Finally, the word Midrash is applied to the entire collection of literature to which this interpretive activity gave rise. The rabbis of old, assuming that no word of the Biblical text was superfluous, generated a vast Midrashic literature, including most of the Talmud. However, the work is never done and Midrash continues to be created, as we interpret the Scriptures in the light of modern experiences. The word itself derives from a Hebrew root meaning "to inquire, study, investigate”. A synagogue is to serve as a “Beit Midrash”, a house of study, as well as a house of prayer (Beit Tefillah) and a house of assembly (Beit Knesset).
November 2019
1A. In 1654, the first “American” Jewish community was established by a group of 23 refugees from Recife, Brazil. Individual Jews certainly had come to America and the New World before this, but this was the first permanent community on American territory. These refugees established the nation’s first Jewish congregation, Shearith Israel or “remnant of Israel”, which is still an active congregation. In 1630, Holland captured Brazil from the Portuguese. The Dutch were then, as now, among the most hospitable of nations to the Jewish people and so they invited Jewish settlement in Brazil. Recife soon had a substantial Jewish community. When the Portuguese recaptured Brazil, they expelled the Jews, most of whom returned to Holland. But some found new homes in the Caribbean and one boatload migrated to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, where they and allies in the Dutch West India Company overcame the fierce opposition of the colony's strict Calvinist governor, Peter Stuyvesant. This “remnant” thus became the cornerstone of the world’s greatest Jewish community. By the way, the first New England Jewish community was founded not long after, in 1658 in Newport, Rhode Island, by a group of 15 emigrants from Barbados. Both these groups were predominantly Sephardic Jews.
2A. Fifty years ago, bagels were nowhere near as popular as they are today. The bagel did not start moving out of its niche as an Ashkenazi Jewish ethnic food until the latter decades of the 20th century. New York City, and Montreal and a handful other cities developed bagel making with the influx of Eastern European Jews in late nineteenth century. New York even had its own union, Bagel Bakers Local #338. Two inventions in the 1960s – the frozen bagel and the Thompson bagel-making machine – paved the way for bagels to enter the mainstream of breakfast foods in America. And then came the franchises. Just two years after the addition of bagels to their menu in 1996, Dunkin’ Donuts had become the largest retailer of bagels in America. (Incidentally, this chain was started by a Boston area Jewish man, Bill Rosenberg, a friend of my wife’s uncle.). The Wikipedia entry asserts that the first bagel was developed in Central Europe, possibly in the medieval city of Krakow, Poland as early as 1610. There is also a legend that bagels were created by Viennese Jewish bakers to commemorate the 1683 victory over the Turks in the siege of Vienna.
October 2019
1A. The Jewish year – like the civil year – has twelve months, but the Jewish months are lunar months, always beginning on a new moon. But twelve lunar months are shorter by several days than a solar year, so a “duplicate” month – second Adar – is inserted periodically (in seven out of every nineteen years) to keep the seasons from wandering. With this adjustment, the Jewish and civil calendars progress through the years quite harmoniously. And we can look at the moon to fix the most important holidays. Rosh Hashanah occurs on the first of Tishrei when the moon is new, as small as it can get. Ten days later, on the tenth when Yom Kippur falls, it is still getting larger each night; it’s swelling or waxing. And the fifteenth of Tishrei, Sukkot, will always occur when the moon is at its fulfillment – the full moon - the best time to sleep outside with the abundant moonlight. And as the moon of Tishrei wanes, there is the holiday Simchat Torah, marking the beginning of the rainy season in Israel and the new Torah reading cycle, on the twentieth day of the month. So for holiday time, don’t look at your watch but at the moon on a clear night!
2A. Moses Maimonides is by all accounts the greatest Jewish thinker, Talmudist, and codifier of the Middle Ages. He has been an inspiration for all who wish to have a faith based on reason. He also strongly influenced Christian and Islamic theologians who followed him. In addition to his roles as court physician and leader of the Jewish community in Egypt, this remarkable man was a prodigious author on all aspects of Jewish law. One of his best known works, “Guide of the Perplexed”, was written in his old age. This book advanced the theses that science can add to our understanding of spirituality and that science and scripture were in fact complementary. Much of the religious establishment of the time, both Jewish and Christian, could not tolerate these ideas. The revealed word of God in scripture alone – which they interpreted – could be the only legitimate basis for belief. In his wonderful book, “The Hidden Face of God”, MIT-trained physicist and biologist, Gerald Schroeder, follows this path of Maimonides into the modern world. He finds that the dazzling discoveries about our DNA and the universe do indeed provide positive reasons for faith.
September 2019
1A. Many meaningful traditions have become associated with Rosh Hashanah over the years. Chapter 23 of Leviticus mandates a celebration on the first day of the seventh month (Tishri) and calls for the blowing of the shofar. The suggestion is one of rest and renewal, though the day is not yet called Rosh Hashanah. By the time of the codification of the Mishnah in the first centuries of the Common Era, the day had come to mark the new year and the passing of judgment on the world, when our fortunes written in the Book of Life. Not much later, during Talmudic times (200-500 C.E.), Babylonian Jews began to treat Elul – the month before Tishri – in a special way. They studied, thought, and prepared for the renewal in their lives for forty days, the thirty days of Elul plus the ten days of Tishri through Yom Kippur. The custom of Tashlich originated last of all. Tashlich comes from the Hebrew “you will cast” and this is quite descriptive as we cast out the contents of our pockets and throw bread into a nearby body of water. According to Aurthur Waskow, in his wonderful book on Jewish holidays “Seasons of Our Joy”, there is no mention of Tashlich until late Medieval times. Then it spread from Europe to the Sephardic regions in the sixteenth century, primarily through the influence of the mystical Kabbalists of the town of Safed in Galilee.
2A. As we all know, Yiddish is a magnificently expressive language. As one journalist once observed, “I speak ten languages – all of them in Yiddish”. It certainly has an especially rich set of ways to describe various sorts of scoundrels, many of which have been adopted by today’s American English. For example, a shikker is a drunk, not to be confused with a schnorrer, who is a moocher and chiseler. And the schlemiel is a bungling, gauche sort of person, while the schlimazel can be concisely described as a born loser. It is written ”a schlemiel is one who always spills his soup, the schlimazel is the one upon whom it always lands”. Their cousin is the schnook - a timid, gullible soul, a real patsy. Of course, schmos also know what it is like to be hapless fall guys, which they are. At least they are better than your everyday schtunks, who are the mean and nasty kind of folks who sneer when they cut you off in traffic. Of this entire list, only “shayner Yid” is complimentary - and very much so. This is somebody who is admirable in character and virtue; it is a wonderful tribute to say one is a shayner Yid, literally a “beautiful Jew”.
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