The Story of the Looped Tzitzit

As is the custom, I wear a tallit katan, vernacularly know as "tzitzit", under my shirt.

Today, something rather unique happened (although it may have happened to me previously some decades ago I think).

I usually dress in our darkened bedroom (wake-up for me is 5:20 as shacharit is at 6) but go into another room to select a shirt.  Which is what I did this morning.

It was there that I discovered I had managed to do this:

For those wondering what the "this" is: I seem to have slipped my belt through the part of the tzitzit that connects the fringes to the actual material that creates a four-cornered garment.

Wonders of wonders.

It meant, however, that I had to reloop myself so as to put on my camera and cellphone.

Being Jewish.

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So Many Jewish Mothers

A recent book in French is out

A CATHOLIC EDUCATION

by Catherine Cusset

From a review:

Catherine Cusset’s coming-of-age novel manages, as does real life, to be both heart-wrenching and humorous. Sex and love—of course—but also the importance of friends and enemies, of truth and lies, faith and failure are explored by a devout little Catholic Goody Two-Shoes as she evolves into an atheistic, two-timing adult.

Marie is a ten-year-old who just wants to please. She relishes the drama of the biblical stories her father reads to her at night. She is a star student, the teacher’s pet. And she truly believes that the more devout she is, the better the chances that her mismatched parents will stay together. None of which stops her from shoplifting with her best friend and accomplice Nathalie. Nor does it stop her from faking piety, telling the priest at her first confession not about her long string of thefts but only about once stealing a pencil. She is absolved, and the wrath of God does not, she realizes, descend on her.

By age fourteen, Marie, perhaps influenced by her atheist Jewish mother, has lost her faith in God and Catholicism. 

Oops.

Jewish mother?

She's ... Jewish.

And she has a friend:

"Olga is the Russian, divorced, Jewish, redheaded mother of my friend Nathalie. She terrifies me. She never stops screaming and scolding her daughter, not because Nathalie doesn’t do her homework or get good grades, but because she doesn’t practice the piano every night. To Olga, nothing is more important – which to me, seems like a strange sense of priorities. When our parents discover we’ve been stealing things – another little girl tells on us – Nathalie and I are forbidden to go to each other’s house. Forbidden to be friends...Just before my First Communion, on my way to church for a general rehearsal, I happen to run into Olga and immediately tell her that the event is about to happen. She speaks to me with such friendliness that I’m stunned: “Come and see us when you finish at church on Saturday, so I can see you in your white robe.” I do just that. I ring the bell, anxiously. What if the dragon has forgotten she invited me? What if she’s shouting at her daughter again and asks me how I dare come to her house against all the rules? But she gives me a big hug, for the first time, kisses me, as sweet as a lamb, a smile on her face..."

So many Jews.

The author's mother is also Jewish.


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Two Halves of the Rambam Together

I was privileged to attend tonight the opening of a special display of a Mishneh Torah, the classic Halachic codex of the Rambam, commissioned and completed ca. 1457 in northern Italy and illustrated in the Renaissance style of the time. 

It was at the Israel Museum in the presence of the Rishon Letzion Yitzchak Yosef, the Apostolic Nuncio in Israel Archbishop Guiseppe Lazzarotto, Msgr. Cesare Pasini, the Vatican's Prefect of its Biblioteca Apostolica with a nice talk by Prof. Moshee Halbertal who spoke of the Rambam's approach that to be religious, one must learn to love, which is beyond fearful respect and can only be achieved through knowing God which, in turn, can only be gained by learning of his works in nature.

The two halves of the volume were separated some two centuries ago and ended up in the Vatican and in Germany and that second Jewish-held half was only recently located and purchased by the Israel Museum jointly with New York's Metropolitan Museum.

The two halves

The Nuncio

and also with James Synder, Museum Director (red tie)

The attendees

The Chief Rabbi and the Nuncio

James Snyder speaking

P.S.  The title of the evening was a play on words - יד ביד - which is 'Hand in Hand' - but refers to the fact that the Rambam's work contained 14 sections which, in gammatria is יד, I think was lost to many of those who attended.

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Counting for a Minyan

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The BBC Goes Not Nittel on Christmas

Here in England, I meet up with Judaism's ghost.

Ghost story, that should be:

Mark Gatiss’s dramatisation of The Tractate Middoth (BBC2) by...MR James. Don’t let the title put you off: this is a terrifying story of a haunting in a library. 

More:

Gatiss's adaptation of James's spine-tingling tale will air on BBC2 at 9:30pm on Christmas Day, followed at 10:05pm by MR James: Ghost Writer, a documentary about the revered master of discomfiture, which Gatiss will front...[Sacha] Dhawan, meanwhile, appears...[i]n The Tractate Middoth, he plays a young library assistant drawn into the supernatural world surrounding an obscure Hebrew text, 

A Talmudic text on Christmas?

The scenario is simple. A rich, diabolically misanthropic clergyman has surrounded himself with ancient books. He has a “soul like a corkscrew”. He has two possible heirs – one, John, he hates; the other, a harmless widow with a daughter, he despises. As he dies, he resorts to mortmain (“the hand of the dead”), the will that outlasts the body. His vast property he leaves, by one will, to his male heir. A later will leaves everything to the heiress. Yet he has secreted the revised will in an ancient and particularly sinister [???] book: The Tractate Middoth. He has donated this to a rare book library – but which one? And, if it is found (which, 20 years later, it is), what dark forces will theTractate release?Gatiss makes confident changes to his source text. He moves the main action from the Edwardian period to the 1950s. He introduces characters, a deathbed scene (which James might have thought a trifle heavy-handed) and Doctor Who-style visual effects. He makes the young hero a jaunty Cambridge undergraduate, not a beaten-down assistant librarian. It all works, although for those who love the story it jolts a bit.Two things combine to make the M R James story as perfect in its “movement” as a Swiss watch: brevity and a feather-light touch.

Just two comments.

1.  Tractate Middoth is not all that obscure or sinister. 

2.  On Christmas, there is a custom not to learn Torah.  And Christmas Eve is called 'Nittel' Nacht.  More here.

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Are You Coming to Limmud UK?

Here's my schedule:

We are delighted to confirm that you will be presenting the following sessions:

   Sun 22 Dec 16:20-17:20 - “Apartheid roads” (and other Judea & Samaria lies you were told)

   Mon 23 Dec 21:10-22:20 - Going all the way up the Temple Mount: when a Jewish right meets a Muslim rock

   Tue 24 Dec 13:30-14:30 - The "impurity" of the  “purity of arms” myth

   Tue 24 Dec 21:10-22:20 - Panel: A ‘Jewish-democratic’ state: A reality, an aspiration, or an illusion?     (presenting with Avner Gvaryahu, Ruvi Ziegler, Talia Sasson)

   Tue 24 Dec 22:40-23:40 - Think and drink (3 of 3)       (presenting with Limmud Social Programming Team, Odeya Kohen Raz, Paul Kay)

   Wed 25 Dec 09:20-10:20 - Settling the debate? A roundtable on the past, present and future of the Israeli settler movement     (presenting with Avner Gvaryahu, Manfred Gerstenfeld, Miri Eisin, Sara Hirschhorn)

   Wed 25 Dec 16:20-17:20 - Menachem Begin’s birth centennial – a retrospective

I just hope that the 'think and drink' event doesn't turn into a 'drink and sink' one.

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Tits and Balls With Sarah Silverman

The Guardian's Harriet Sherwood's factual and reliable reporting:-

Thousands of Jews pray every day at the Western Wall, the last remnant of the retaining wall of the Temple Mount, pushing scraps of paper bearing handwritten prayers into the cracks between its ancient golden stones. Men and women are forbidden from praying together; a small section of the wall is cordoned off for women.

The site, known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif, is also revered in the Islamic faith and is the home of the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa mosque.

Well, since that's in an article about the Women of the Wall, too bad she didn't mention the Islamic prohibition on Jews praying at Judaism's most sacred site, the Temple Mount.

She could have at least noted that Jews on the Temple Mount are worse off than women at the Kotel.


P.S.  Sarah Silverman's tweet was this:

@SarahKSilverman

SO proud of my amazing sister @rabbisusan & niece @purplelettuce95 for their ballsout civil disobedience. Ur the tits!#womenofthewall
 

which prompted me to write

‏@ymedad

so that's the "Woman with the Balls with the Women of the Wall"?

P.P.S.

To be clear, I support in principle the aims of WOW.  I only hope that any gain they achieve will assist my rights on the Temple Mount (see p. 9-10 here). 

 

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Dear German Jewish Parents

Dear parents, Jews in Germany, who have just been blessed with the birth of your son, I have read of your dilemma:

The Berlin Jewish Hospital has announced it will cease to conduct circumcisions following a ruling by the district court in Cologne to outlaw them. According to the hospital's spokesman, "As a result of the lack of legal clarity, the institution has been forced to cease circumcision surgeries for religious purposes until further notice."

My advice?

Go to Chabad.

They circumcised in Soviet Russia, so Germany should be no problem.

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Mocking Maxie

I had a letter published in the London Review of Books, a bastion of far-left thought (but not thinking).  I posted it here (with the unedited version) and it's about Marilyn Monroe and her Judaism.

Maxie Blumenthal got really upser and tweeted.  I riposted.

Here:

Was I too harsh?

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Receiving the Tablets - 21st Century Version

In  honor of Shavuot, the holiday commemorating the receiving of the Law at Sinai:

(sent to me by Bob L.)

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Samaritan Paschal Sacrifice

The Paschal Sacrifice of the Shomronim. Here.

No blood.


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Islam Is Not Apart; Judaism Is

In a book review article, "In the Supreme Shrine", Christopher de Bellaigue writes:

"What sets Islam apart from other religious traditions, including Judaism and Christianity, is that its founder elevated a pilgrimage into a binding obligation for all able-bodied believers who can afford it."

"Apart"? Judaism obliges every adult male to make a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem thrice yearly ("Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord GOD", Exodus 23:17; "All are bound to appear [at the Temple]", Haggigah 2:1) and before that the the Tabernacle in Shiloh, as did Elkanah. By the way, in the third sentence below, what is the subject of "its"?

...the Hajj does much more than answer a need for spiritual obliteration. It has a declamatory function, and that is to state the political and historical truth of Muhammad’s mission. The Hajj is a summons to orthodoxy and a reminder of Islam’s ownership of its origins.

Is it the Haj?  The orthodoxy?  Islam?


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The Night and Sexual Relations

I found this extract in a BBC story on the myth of the consecutive 8-hour sleep need:-

A doctor's manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day's labour but "after the first sleep", when "they have more enjoyment" and "do it better".

Well, we knew that in Judaism.

Tractate Berachot 3

For it has been taught: R. Eliezer says: The night has three watches...In the first watch, the ass brays; in the second, the dogs bark; in the third, the child sucks from the breast of his mother, and the woman talks with her husband.

Moreover, in this doctorate of Anat Kutner, The Night in the Late Middle Ages in Ashkenaz (in Hebrew), the 7th chapter describes in great detail sexual customs. From page 234 on there are discussions based on Halachic sources.

On page 250, Rav Aaron of Navorna is quoted in his Orchot Chayyim, p. 75, that the middle of the third watches of the night is conducive to sexual relations. This follows the Rambam, Deot 5:4

Although a man's wife is permitted to him at all times, it is fitting that a wise man behave with holiness. He should not frequent his wife like a rooster. Rather, [he should limit his relations to once a week] from Sabbath evening to Sabbath evening, if he has the physical stamina.

When he speaks with her, he should not do so at the beginning of the night, when he is sated and his belly [is] full, nor at the end of the night, when he is hungry; rather, in the middle of the night, when his food has been digested.

He should not be excessively lightheaded, nor should he talk obscene nonsense even in intimate conversation with his wife. Behold, the prophet has stated (Amos 4:13): "And He repeats to a man what he has spoken." [On this verse,] our Sages commented: A person will have to account for even the light conversation that he has with his wife.

[At the time of relations,] they should not be drunk, nor lackadaisical, nor tense - [neither both of them,] or [even] one of them. She should not be asleep, nor should the man take her by force, against her will. Rather, [the relations should take place] amidst their mutual consent and joy. He should converse and dally with her somewhat, so that she be relaxed. He should be intimate [with her] modestly and not boldly, and withdraw [from her] immediately.

This is repeated, curtly, at Issurei Bi'ah 21:10

It is the course of holy conduct to engage in relations in the middle of the night (In Hilchot Deot 5:4, the Rambam gives a rationale that at this time a person's food will have been digested and yet, he will not be overly hungry. The commentaries to Nedarim 20b explain that in this manner, the man and his wife will have forgotten all their daytime concerns and will be able to focus their attention on each other and the holiness of the experience).

The Shulchan Aruch Orach Hayyim 240:8 adds that it is best in the middle of the night so that he should not hear any other voice and come to impure thoughts.

So, hundreds of years before the 16th century, we knew what's best.

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Curious?

Does this picture make you curious?

Interested?

Go here.

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Is This Religious Persecution - or Nigh Stupidity?

What do make of this?

Settler violates house arrest in bid to fly to Uman

Petah Tikva Magistrates' Court extends remand of 25-year-old man from Elon Moreh over suspicions he flew to Uman with another man's passport despite being under house arrest

The details

...The impersonation was exposed at the airport in Kiev when the young man was heading back to Israel. He was arrested immediately upon landing at Ben Gurion Airport. During his interrogation he claimed that his rabbi told him to go to Uman.

The suspect was put on house arrest over a year ago and was indicted for threatening police officers and reeking havoc at a police station...He managed to visit Nachman of Breslov's gravestone in Uman and then attempted to make his way back to Israel...During questioning the suspect claimed he violated his house arrest because "the rabbi ordered me to fly to Uman and I knew I wouldn't be able to issue a passport."

At a Petah Tikva Magistrates' Court hearing, the suspect's attorney claimed that aside from violating house arrest, her client hasn't committed any other felony. She also mentioned that the young man has been under house arrest for quite some time and has not violated it until now, requesting the court release him under restrictions.  However the judge ruled the police should be allowed to proceed with its investigation and extended the remand of the suspect by two days, fearing he might try to escape given recent circumstances.

Nu. Is he back in Israel? Is he under house arrest?

So, he tok a few days off.

Now, this guy would be another problem:

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Maybe Paul Will Compose A New 'U'Netaneh Tokef'?

Guess who went to schule?

The couple did, however, attend Yom Kippur services together over the weekend at the Liberal Jewish Synagogue in St John's Wood...

Yep.

Paul McCartney married American heiress Nancy Shevell.

And she's Jewish.

Maybe we'll have a new 'U'Netaneh Tokef' melody?

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My Friend, The Army Chaplain

MP sent me a heads-up on this Forward story on military chaplains in Afghanistan over the High Holidays which includes this picture of a Havdalah service at the conclusion of the Sabbath:

which notes:

Meanwhile, a Modern Orthodox rabbi and Army chaplain named Avi Weiss [first at left] will hold High Holy Day services in northern Afghanistan

I know Avi and his entire family well. Very well. After all, he has been awarded the Jungle Expert Badge.  And he's a Lt.-Col.  And he teaches Jewish songs to kids.

We wish him the best and a pleasant and secure and safe New Year and well over the Yom Kippur fast.

Oh, and there's a Chabad Rabbi, too, who has something special:

A friend of his wife knit him a camouflage-patterned gartel, the belt Hasidic Jews wear while praying, which he brought along.

A complete wrap-around.

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Hands-free in London

CR alerted me to the new Shabbat observance novelty in London:

Britain is to get its first ‘hands-free’ pedestrian crossing – so that devout Jews do not have to break a religious law that prohibits them from using electricity or operating machinery on the Sabbath.

The crossing is near a busy synagogue, and pressing a button to operate it is considered a breach of the strict rules that apply to Orthodox Jews.

Traffic will be held every 90 seconds from Friday evening until nightfall on Saturday, covering the Jewish Sabbath period.

...Transport for London, which is responsible for maintaining main roads in the capital...says the ‘hands-free’ green man has not added to the cost of improvements...The crossing (not pictured) is near a busy synagogue, and pressing a button to operate it is considered a breach of the strict rules that apply to Orthodox Jews...

But the real stroy is in the comments.

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Ellul in MoreFromTheAdmor

I posted a hassidic thought on the month of Ellul at my MoreFromTheAdmor site.

Visit and read.

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My Akeidah Post is Up at Sh'ma

Here.

There'll be a second one is two weeks.

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