Many Thoughts

a thought on חנוכה and Jewish culture As  Malka Simkovich  discussed in her recent Lehrhaus article, we often frame Hanukkah as being a clash between Jews and Greeks, between Jewish and Greek culture which are portrayed as mutually exclusive while the historical reality is more complex given the Jewish embrace of aspects of Hellenism and Hellenistic influences on the later Hasmonean kings. Over the weekend, I read David Fishman's new book "The Book Smugglers: Partisans, Poets, and the Race to Save Jewish Treasures from the Nazis". the book follows members of the Jewish intellectual community in Vilna who were forced by the Nazis to catalog and sort Jewish material for use in Nazi institutes for the study of the Jewish question as part of the philosophy of "Jewish studies without Jews." these individuals undertook to smuggle material they were supposed to be sorting back in the Vilna ghetto and hide it to ensure that even if Vilna Jewish and its institution...

Below is a revised version of my introduction to the Qinah (liturgical dirge recited on Tisha B'av)  שַׁאֲלִי שְׂרוּפָה בָּאֵשׁ written by R. Meir of R othenburg about the burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1242.  שַׁאֲלִי שְׂרוּפָה בָּאֵשׁ לִשְׁלוֹם אֲבֵלַיִךְ הַמִּתְאַוִּים שְׁכֹן בַּחֲצַר זְבֻלָיִךְ : “inquire, Oh Yea consumed in fire, for the peace of those who Mourn you, who desire/crave to dwell in the Courtyard of your Habitation.” With these words, R. Meir of Rothenberg (c.1215-1293) opens his lament over the burring of the Talmud in Paris in 1242. At first glance, this Qinah is rather strange. The majority of Qinot focus on the destruction of the temples, the 10 rabbis martyred by Rome, the crusades. Yet here, we lament the burning of books. While the Talmud is at the center of Jewish life, why should books (or more accurately, manuscript codices) be mourned, after all, one need but look around the average Jewish home to find more books than any ri...

Below are a number of useful links for Jewish studies: N.B. this post is also under pages but Im still learning how to do the blogging thing so i haven't yet managed to get it to display- working on fixing that asap. I have a google drive folder of resources, books, dissertations, articles and more in Jewish studies I regularly update which can be accessed  here:  https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B56LfmR1LfTVTEU4OE9jdmRvT28 The full text of the exhibit book from the  YU Museaum exhibit “printing the talmud; from bomberg to schottenstein” can be found at this link including object images, full essays and short descriptions of the objects. http://www.jewishhistory.com/PRINTINGTHETALMUD/home.html A collection of useful academic articles, critical editions and syllabi curated by R.Dr. Noah Benjamim Bickart. The syllabi are from classes he taught. http://noahbickart.fastmail.fm/ An early version of the “gush files” the full version is 20+ gb. This version i...

The name I have chosen for this blog, “many thoughts” is a translation of “ rabot makhshavot ” from the verse “ rabot makhshavot b’lev ish ve’atzat ha’shem he takum .” “Many thoughts are in the heart of man; but the desire/plan of God shall be upheld”.  While I have wanted to blog for a number of years and for a short while had a blog where I posted some of my creative writing, finding an appropriately descriptive yet concise name for the blog was a real challenge. As anyone who knows me is well aware, I am NOT known for brevity. I settled upon “many thoughts” as the verse it is taken from is both one of my favorites and one of the more concise summations of my theology. Furthermore, as I hope to explore a diverse array of topics, “many thoughts” seemed most apt. Reshit davar (firstly) I would like to thank my friend and Haver in Torah, Madda and melekhet ha’kodesh , Yair Lichtman for suggesting that I take some of my longer Facebook posts and adapt them as blog posts. ...