The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Judaism

Scholar Claims Dead Sea Scrolls ‘Authors’ Never Existed

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I thought that this article was interesting and that it might not be so far fetched.

Biblical scholars have long argued that the Dead Sea Scrolls were the work of an ascetic and celibate Jewish community known as the Essenes, which flourished in the 1st century A.D. in the scorching desert canyons near the Dead Sea. Now a prominent Israeli scholar, Rachel Elior, disputes that the Essenes ever existed at all — a claim that has shaken the bedrock of biblical scholarship.

Elior, who teaches Jewish mysticism at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University, claims that the Essenes were a fabrication by the 1st century A.D. Jewish-Roman historian Flavius Josephus and that his faulty reporting was passed on as fact throughout the centuries. As Elior explains, the Essenes make no mention of themselves in the 900 scrolls found by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947 in the caves of Qumran, near the Dead Sea. “Sixty years of research have been wasted trying to find the Essenes in the scrolls,” Elior tells TIME. “But they didn’t exist. This is legend on a legend.”

Elior contends that Josephus, a former Jewish priest who wrote his history while being held captive in Rome, “wanted to explain to the Romans that the Jews weren’t all losers and traitors, that there were many exceptional Jews of religious devotion and heroism. You might say it was the first rebuttal to anti-Semitic literature.” She adds, “He was probably inspired by the Spartans. For the Romans, the Spartans were the highest ideal of human behavior, and Josephus wanted to portray Jews who were like the Spartans in their ideals and high virtue.”

Click here and read the whole thing.

Explaining My Judaism

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The Blues Brothers Are On a Mission From God.

I keep writing and rewriting the opening paragraph of this post. I don’t like the title. I hate it. It sounds ridiculous and idiotic and it sets a poor tone, but for now it will do.

Sometimes I’d like my religious beliefs to be based solely upon critical reasoning and logical thought. It’d be really nice and exceptionally convenient if they fit together like a cool set of legos. I’d start by providing you with an outline and then follow up with sections that built upon each other.

It would be like a pyramid with a wide base that served as a foundation and then blocks upon blocks until it reached the narrow top. And the best part would be that it would be easy to simple to understand. You’d look at the bottom and by the time you reached the top you’d have a clear understanding of why I believe what I believe.

Or maybe what I am really saying is that I’d like that. I’d like to be able to just whip out an explanation that didn’t leave me asking questions or shaking my head because some things just didn’t make sense.

But the thing is that when we are dealing with matters of faith then we are forced to take positions that require accepting that faith is sometimes all we have. It is hard to do and it makes for all sorts of interesting situations and compromises.

Faith is what let’s me accept some things and question others. To some people I am sure that this sounds ridiculous. One could easily argue that most of us are brainwashed as children to accept a particular religion as being the truth. From that perspective we could also argue that those who convert as adults deserve special consideration because they made a choice to believe, it wasn’t just spoonfed to them.

But that is a different story for a different time.

When I think about faith I think about a number of things. I think about love. When someone says that she loves me do I simply accept her word or do I require her to prove it. And if I require her to prove it, what do I need for proof.

Must she bear my children or would it be enough to have sex with me. Does she need to live with me and take care of me to prove it, or could it be proven by words.

Now all that might sound ridiculous, but to me it is tied into faith. When she says that she loves me I can take her word and accept it to be the truth or I can doubt it.

Ultimately I make my decision based upon a couple of factors, but faith is the primary mover. It is a bit disconcerting to make decisions that way, but sometimes it is all you have.

Ok, is it just me or is this post a prime example of gibberish and blather.

The Cheapest Blood

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There is an ongoing discussion among my Jewish friends and I. Actually there are many ongoing discussions but for the purpose of this post we’ll focus on one. What is our role as a Jew. It is not so much a religious discussion as a question of what does it mean when you’re the only Jew in school or the office.

You see for whatever reason many of us seem to feel that when we are the only Jew around we have to assume the mantle of spokesperson for the Jews. It is especially noticeable during the holiday season or times like now when Israel is at war. Because now people start to approach us to ask questions or make statements about Israel.

Now let’s be clear about something there is no one person or organization that speaks for all of us. And there are many Jews who have never been to Israel or are relatively uneducated about it. They don’t know much about the history and can’t really discuss the politics with any degree of expertise. If you ask me that is ok. I play basketball with a Chinese guy who can’t tell you a thing about Chinese politics. He is an American who was born and raised in Los Angeles. He happens to be Chinese, but that doesn’t mean he knows Mao from Kung-Pao.Although I frequently ask him to Free Tibet.

The point is that there shouldn’t be a reason why a Jew who doesn’t live in Israel has to be an expert on what happens there. But the world is a funny place and my friends and I have found that while we shouldn’t have to know, it is helpful. Because for better or worse what happens in Israel impacts us.

If you have spent any time reading about the protests against the war in Gaza you’ll be aware that they don’t just focus on Israel, but also on Jews.

Victor Davis Hanson in an article called Creepy Times writes:

“There is something especially nauseating about the latest Middle East war — scenes of worldwide Islamic protests with photos of Jews as apes, protesters (in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida of all places!) screaming about nuking Israel and putting Jews in ovens, parades of children dressed up with suicide vests and fake rockets, near constant anti-Semitic vicious sloganeering,”

It wouldn’t take any effort to provide additional examples including video and pictures of the actions of these people. I could relate personal experiences I have had with Anti-Israel protesters lament that Hitler should have finished the job. Sadly that is not hyperbole, it is reality.

As it happens I have been to Israel many times and have a lot of friends and family who live there. So when things happen I am always concerned. As I write this I worry about their safety including younger cousins who have been called up. The connection is personal so it is easy for me. I like knowing what is going on. I like being able to give an intelligent answer to the questions I receive.

Still, I am American. Been here all of my just short of my 40 years of life. I vote in every election, recite the pledge, sing the national anthem (poorly) and have a barbecue on the fourth of July. So when people come to me and ask why Israel is acting in a certain manner I sometimes shake my head. Ben-Gurion didn’t bestow me with any special honors. I am an ordinary American Joe who happens to love Israel.

But these protesters remind me that some people think otherwise. It is a peculiar thing if you ask me. They protest a war and allege that there is a humanitarian crisis. Yet in the process of working towards sainthood they dehumanize me and my fellows. They curse and threaten us and suggest that a genocidal maniac should have been successful in his efforts to eradicate us.

Earlier today I played in my weekly pickup basketball game. While sitting in the locker room a Nigerian man approached me and asked me to explain what was going on and to get my opinion. Midway through the discussion I looked at him and said, “To some Jewish blood is cheap, but the cheapest blood of all is African.”

For a moment I wondered if I had offended him and then he nodded and gave a wistful smile. He paused and responded, “Jack, no one cares about Africa. Most Americans don’t know much if anything about it all. They can’t tell me a thing about my country. And the world, well the world ignores the pain and suffering because we have nothing that they can sell for money. You’re right, African blood is the cheapest.”

Crossposted on Yourish

Kristallnacht

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It is 70 years since the Kristallnacht Pogrom.

“The Kristallnacht Pogrom was an organized pogrom against Jews in Germany and Austria that occurred on November 9–10, 1938. Kristallnacht is also known as the November Pogrom, “Night of Broken Glass,” and “Crystal Night.” Orchestrated by the Nazis in retaliation for the assassination of a German embassy official in Paris by a seventeen-year-old Jewish youth named Herchel Grynzspan, 1,400 synagogues and 7,000 businesses were destroyed, almost 100 Jews were killed, and 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps. German Jews were
subsequently held financially responsible for the destruction wrought upon their
property during this pogrom.”

Other links to posts/articles about Kristallnacht:

Rubicon 3
Crown Heights Info
Israel At Level Ground
CNN
Jewlicious
Leora

On a side note it is worth mentioning that they discovered the construction plans for Auschwitz.

Abba Was The Torah

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Yom Kippur was…………great.
Yom Kippur was…………terrible.
Yom Kippur was…………long.
Yom Kippur was…………hard.
Yom Kippur was…………meaningful.

Yom Kippur was…………well I am not really sure what else to put there. I suppose that if I thought about it I could come up with a few more adjectives, but I think that I am done with Mad Libs for the moment.

I spent a good part of the day with my tallis over my head and I am sure that more than a few people figured that it was an attempt to sleep. To be clear I certainly wouldn’t try to go to sleep with a wool blanket over my head, far too hot. Really it is just an attempt to focus on davening.

Davening is not something that comes easily to me. It is something that requires a fair bit of effort, especially when I am battling hunger, thirst and a raging headache. A good friend of mine once suggested that I combat lack of focus by only davening in Orthodox shuls. The idea was that I’d find it easier to focus with more likeminded people and a mechitza.

I laughed at the idea. Been to plenty of Orthodox shuls and had no problem finding plenty of people to distract me. These three guys are talking, that guy over there keeps wandering in and out and the dude over there thinks that if he doesn’t mutter loudly G-d can’t hear him.

And let’s not get started about the mechitza. I have a very graphic and active imagination. The inability to physically see women won’t prevent me from engaging in any sort of thought about them. In short, if I don’t work hard to stay focused it is easy to get distracted.

Truth is that I prefer to daven outside, but that is a story for a different day.

Read Torah again this year. New usher gave me grief about reading, decided that he didn’t like where I was sitting and suggested that I was too far from the bima. Thanked him for his concern and told him that I started reading during the Reagan administration. This was confirmation that my headache was in full force.

Walked up to layn/lein and suddenly I hear my daughter’s voice “Go Daddy Go!” It made me smile. Smiled bigger when I heard her argue with her mother about being able to cheer for me.

Later on that day she proudly walked up to her grandparents and announced that “abba was the Torah.” Got to spend the next ten minutes trying to explain to her older sibling that she is four and he really didn’t need to correct her. He then told me that I am a person and I couldn’t be the Torah.

By that point in time my head was pounding. I was tempted to put on a Torah cover and breastplate just to prove him wrong, but I couldn’t figure out where to place the rimonim and what shoes to wear with it.

BTW, if you took that last paragraph seriously you need more sleep.

Anyhoo, I am glad that we’re in the home stretch. This time of year always makes me feel a little bit crazy.

Crossposted here.

Wrestling With Atonement- Yom Kippur Kraziness

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I am willing to bet that few people have written a post about Yom Kippur while listening to Wild Cherry’s Play That Funky Music. It is not really the sort of music that one thinks about as setting a proper mood for introspection but it happens to be what is playing on iTunes right now. In another moment I’ll shift gears and put on something more appropriate, but this will work for now.

In a relatively short period of time the sun will rise and set and rise and set and another Yom Kippur will have come and gone. And so I find myself sitting in the dark contemplating what it all means to me and what I have learned.

I’ll start out by quoting from Moments When I feel Closest To G-d:

“I have written a number of times about my struggles with G-d, how I Yelled
at G-d and the challenges I have had with davening. If you are really interested you can read more here, here and here. There are probably a couple more links but that is enough time shilling for my own blog.

If you are here you are probably interested in what I have to say or trapped beneath a heavy object and unable to do move away from the keyboard. If you are trapped and without an internet connection I encourage you to search for meaning in what I say, I do all the time because what is the purpose of living if there is no meaning in life.

That is not really tongue in cheek, it is just my wry sense of humor saying that we all need to find a reason to be here and that it is an individual thing that does not have to mirror your neighbor.”

I used to dislike Yom Kippur immensely. I didn’t really find meaning in it. It was a day that seemed to be predicated upon enduring being uncomfortable. I didn’t find the davening to be significant, meaningful or interesting. Most of the people around me spent the time in shul complaining about something and few had anything positive to say.

At some point that feeling changed, but I can’t say when. I have been trying to figure out when and what changed, but it is like grabbing smoke. The harder I try the harder it is to determine. So if you’ll bear with me I am going to to just ramble a bit.

Unetaneh Tokef grabs me

“On Rosh Hashanah it is written and Yom Kippur it is sealed
How many shall pass on and how many shall come to be;
who shall live and who shall die;
who shall see ripe old age and who shall not;
who shall perish by fire
and who by water;
who by sword and who by beast;
who by hunger and who by thirst;”

Part of me shrugs my shoulder at it all. It is easy to blow it off and say that people die, earthquakes happen, fires burn and the world goes on. Certainly I won’t say that divine punishment is the reason for natural disasters. Neither will I say that some people die early because of some unknowable divine plan. That is not how I roll.

But I have come to appreciate setting aside time to sit down and take a hard look at my life. It is not always easy to engage in that sort of introspection, to take a hard look at the good and the bad. And that is what I do.

I try to take time to consider who I am. I am a flawed individual. There are many things that I need to improve upon. It would be unfair, unreasonable and unwarranted to suggest otherwise. I have made mistakes that I am very sorry for. I have traveled upon some dark roads that I wish that I could have avoided.

I don’t expect to find salvation by admitting all my sins. I don’t believe that with a few words they can all just be forgiven and washed away. That doesn’t make any sense to me. Neither do I believe that I should engage in endless self-flagellation for them.

What I will try to do is the best I can to improve. I’ll do what I can not to repeat the mistakes of the past and to try and be better for the future. A large part of that effort will be spent on trying to help my children avoid the pitfalls that I fell for and into. It was a challenging year, but that is how it goes.

So here we are at the end of the post. Have I learned anything more about myself? Nope. Not sure that I have done much other than babble. But I am a believer in the exercise so if I am still blogging you can expect to see this kind of post again.

And for what it is worth, if I have offended or upset you my sincere apologies.

G’mar Chatima Tova. I wish you an easy fast. May you be inscribed and sealed.