December 2001 1. 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 describe the retaking of the Temple in 165 BCE, more than 300 years after the last of the Davidic line was king in Jerusalem. The Books of the Maccabees are not part of the Hebrew Bible, although these books are included in the Catholic Bible. 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 for over a hundred years. 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 the candles should be lit.. 2. The nominal objective of the Crusades was to gain control and free access to the Holy Land. The emerging Christian lands of the West - principally France, Germany, and England - sought to displace the Muslim Turks as the masters of Jerusalem and its environs. Heeding the call of Pope Urban II, the First Crusade began in 1096 CE as a series of mass migrations towards the Holy Land. These mobs pillaged the Jewish communities in their path, murdering thousands. By 1099 more disciplined fighters ultimately captured Jerusalem and parts of Israel, forming Crusader kingdoms which lasted almost 200 years. Eastern Christians are still smarting over the sack of Constantinople by the frustrated troops of the Fourth Crusade, who attacked and savaged their fellow Christians. This historic injustice was mentioned during Pope John Paul's recent visit to this region. In all there were eight Crusades, spanning from 1096 to 1270 CE. Unlike the first, most were unsuccessful in adding new territory under Christian control. 3. Jews have often witnessed heroism - today in responding to terrorism, yesterday in the founding of Israel, throughout the Diaspora, and even back into Biblical times. The period just after the re-entry into Canaan, when the Israelites were establishing themselves after the Exodus and the years of wandering in the desert, required charismatic leaders to periodically save the Israelites from their external enemies and their own idolatrous ways. These times saw exceptional people like Deborah, Othniel, Samson, and Gideon arise to deliver the people from peril. Their efforts are recounted in the Book of Judges, which is attributed to the prophet Samuel. The period of the Judges begins after Joshua leads the people into Canaan sometime around 1200 BCE and ends with the establishment of the Israelite monarchy with Saul closer 1020 BCE.
	November 2001 1. All the religious leaders mentioned challenged the Lord in one way or another. As recounted in Genesis 18:23 -32, Abraham bargained with Lord about the number of innocent people to be found to avoid the destruction of the wicked city of Sodom. On many occasions, Moses questioned the Lord, for example when he tries to avoid the initial directive to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. In Exodus 6:12, Moses appeals to the Lord to release him because "the Israelites will not listen to me; how should the Pharaoh heed me, a man of impeded speech". Levi Isaac of Berdichev was a beloved Hasidic rabbi who lived in the Ukranian town of Berdichev at the end of the eigthteenth century. Though heavily persecuted for much of earlier life by opponents of Hasidism, he did not become bitter. Among his community, he came to be seen as the defender of the Jewish people, perpetually pleading with God on their behalf. Seeing a youth smoking on the Sabbath' Levi Isaac asked him whether he realized what he was doing' and the young man replied "Yes' I am sinning knowingly/" The Rabbi looked to heaven and said "God, see the holiness of Your people who would rather admit that they sin than tell a lie"! Finally, Genesis 32:23-33 recalls the episode when, after crossing the ford of the Jabbok, Jacob wrestled all night with the divine stranger. The stranger would not give his name, but told Jacob His name would thereafter be "Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed". 2. In his 1938 season with the Detroit Tigers, Hank Greenberg hit 58 homers, just missing the Babe's mark of 60 but setting the record for right-handed batters. Hank was a powerful first baseman and outfielder with the Tigers in the 30's and 40s, although - like fellow Hall of Famer Ted Williams - he spent some of his prime years fighting in World War II. In 1937, he led the league with a whopping 183 runs batted in. In the fever of the 1934 pennant race, Hank agonized but decided to play on Rosh Hashanah, leading a Detroit victory with two home runs. On Yom Kippur he did not play and the Tigers lost, leading one diehard Detroit fan to complain that the Jewish holidays came every year, but the Tigers had not won a pennant since 1909. We, the Bambino-accursed sufferers of Boston, understand this fan's pain all too well. 3. Khazaria was a land in southern Russian, north of Armenia, spreading above the Caspian and Black Seas. In the mid-700s a powerful king, wanting to choose a religion for himself and his court, invited representatives of several religions to visit his country. According to tradition, King Bulan chose to become a Jew and many in his kingdom followed suit. There were sporadic contacts between this isolated land of Khazaria and others in the Jewish world of the time. The kingdom lasted for about two hundred years, until the late 900s, when it was conquered by an expanding Russian state, then centered in Kiev. So, yes, there has been Jewish royalty outside the land of Israel. As for the other possibilities, Ashkenaz is the Hebrew word for Germany, the original heartland of today's Eastern European Jews. Ethiopia does have a tradition of emperors with Jewish roots, dating back to the time of the Queen of Sheba. Though Ethiopian rulers were accorded the title "Lion of Judah", they were not known to be practicing Jews. Yemen, an ancient land at the southwest corner of the Arabian Peninsula, has had a large Jewish population for many centuries but no tradition of Jewish royalty.
	October 2001 1. In 1911, the garment workers of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory were trapped by a horrible fire. The conflagration erupted near the factory's front door, the only open path because the rear door was padlocked. As nothing else could have, it called attention to the miserable, unsafe conditions in the sweatshops of the Lower East Side. The owners, the lawyers who successfully argued for their acquittal, and almost all the workers were Jews. But the repercussions went well beyond the Jewish community. Public outrage led to better regulation of factories, especially for fire protection, and to workmen's compensation. The ILGWU (International Ladies Garment Workers Union) was a major force in pushing for and consolidating these reforms. 2. Two books of the Torah enjoin us to celebrate Sukkot. Not long after the chapter in which Moses comes down from Sinai, Exodus 23:14 the Israelites are instructed, "Three times a year you shall hold a festival for me". This, the 88th of traditional 613 mitzvot, sets out the basic requirement. More detail is contained in Leviticus, which is generally more concerned with priestly rituals. In Chapter 23, starting at verse 33, the Lord instructs Moses to say to the Israelite people" …there shall be a Feast of Booths to last seven days...". Verse 43 provides the reason "in order that future generations may know that I (the Lord) made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I the Lord your God". The Book of Ezra also notes that this practice of living in booths had been discontinued but was revived by Ezra in early Second Temple times. Then as now, Sukkot is a good time to slow down and consider the essential aspects of life.. 3. 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 shlemiel is a gauche sort of born loser, while his cousin the shnoook is a timid, wimpy schlemiel, a real patsy. Chronically unlucky souls will also identify with fellow schlimazels, those who always manage to pick exactly the wrong thing for any occasion. Of course, shmos know what it is like to be hapless fall guys. At least they are better than your everyday shtunks, who are the mean and nasty kind of jerks 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".
	September 2001 1. 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. 2. The Yom Kippur morning haftarah encourages us to overcome our discomfort and look at fasting in a constructive way. Isaiah maintains that fasting and inward self-mortification are by themselves of no value, but that the fasts the Lord desires are "to let the oppressed go free…share your bread with the hungry…clothe the naked…do not ignore your own kin". We fast so we can understand the hunger of others …and then hopefully do something about it. As Arthur Waskow paraphrases this passage, it is this "outward help to others that God demands and recognizes as the deed that brings atonement. The notion of a "Second Isaiah" comes from the observation that there are two distinctly different styles in the single book of Isaiah, the first extending through the first 39 chapters. The "second Isaiah", the putative author of the remaining chapters, completes the book, exhibiting much more lyricism and far less concern with past history. 3. The origins of Hebrew are obscure, but by Biblical times - the centuries around 1000 B.C.E - it was in widespread use. Its sacred writings are well preserved in the Bible. The language continued to evolve to a form known as Mishnaic Hebrew, but then ceased to be used as a vernacular around 200 C.E, about the time the law code of the Mishna was organized and written down. It remained a written language of devotional literature, liturgy and poetry. Because Hebrew was not spoken in everyday usage, though, it was not evolving and therefore was considered "dead" for many centuries. This began to change with the coming of the Haskalah, the drive for Jewish Enlightenment that began in Germany during the mid-1700s and ultimately led to the Reform and Conservative movements. During the Haskalah, some Azhkenazi Jewish leaders and scholars began writing in Biblical Hebrew, much as some scholars today correspond in Latin. In the late 1800s, the Lithuanian Jew Eliezer Ben Yehuda began pushing for a revival of Hebrew as a spoken tongue. When he arrived in Palestine in 1881, the campaign began in earnest and Mishnaic Hebrew with the Sephardi pronunciation ultimately carried the day. By 1922, Hebrew - with English and Arabic - was proclaimed one of the three official languages of the Palestinian Mandate. Today, the national tongue of Israel is a versatile, expressive language employed by millions for everyday living.
	August 2001 1. Many scholars feel the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls is the greatest event in the history of archeology. At least from the point of view of understanding Judaic and Christian history, nothing else comes close. Since the first discovery in 1946 of a cave in Judean desert containing seven ancient scrolls, over the next decade another ten local caves were found to also contain treasures. In total, the remains of about 870 separate scrolls have been found, consisting of thousands of fragments. All are devoted to religious subjects and date from the first or second century B.C.E., before the books of the Bible had been fixed or "canonized". This cache includes the oldest known versions of every book of the Bible (except Esther), many with "editions" of books never before seen. There are previously unknown psalms and prophecies, new stories of Abraham and Noah, and new writings claiming Moses as the author. There was a very torturous path in making the immense amount of Dead Sea Scroll material publicly available but this finally happened in 1991, so translations are now available to all of us. 2. The Talmud assigns the lighting of the Sabbath candles as primary but not exclusive obligation for women. When a woman cannot fulfill this duty, a man is supposed to carry on and perform the ritual. This applies even to single member households. The observant man or woman should still be lighting Sabbath candles and then saying the proper blessing. 3. Many ritual customs have roots in a particular passage in the Bible - like the mezuzah, the tzitzit or fringes of the talit, and the elimination of leavening during Passover. A mezuzah, which literally means "doorpost", fulfills the mitzvah of Deuteronomy 6:9 - "And you shall write these commandments on the doorposts of your house..". Each mezuzah contains a piece of parchment on which this passage and the Shema are written. The commandment for tzitzit can be found in Numbers 15:38, where God tells Moses to "speak to the Israelite people and instruct them to make for themselves fringes on the corners of their garments throughout the ages; let them attach a cord of blue at each corner". Passover rituals are very well described in Exodus. In verse 13:7 Moses says to the assembled masses "throughout the seven days unleavened bread shall be eaten; no unleavened bread shall be found with you, and no leaven shall be found in all your territory".
	July 2001 1. The "best" answer is that prayer was instituted by the Patriarchs, in the sense that prayer appears to be a very early development in religion. Individual prayers, generally entreaties to God for help, were offered by Abraham. Institutional or group prayer seems to have evolved later, but was common by Second Temple times, and thus was practiced at the same time as animal sacrifices were still being offered. Authorities differ on whether the Torah explicitly commands us to pray, although the Oral Law (Talmud) certainly does. 2. The First Temple was built while Solomon was King of a united Israel about 950 BCE. The prophet Jeremiah urged his countrymen not to oppose the new power of Babylon, lest they risk destruction. However, King Zedekiah of Judah did just that, and the Babylonians vanquished him and razed the First Temple in 586 BCE. The Second Temple period was made possible when Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered the Babylonians and, in 539 BCE, allowed the Jews to return from exile in Babylon. Rebuilding of the Second Temple was completed about 520 BCE and religious practice was restored not long after under Nehemiah and Ezra. This Temple was destroyed during Jewish rebellions in 70 CE by Roman legions commanded by Titus. The famous Arch of Titus in Rome commemorates this event. Titus later succeeded his father Vespasian as Emperor. So Solomon, Jeremiah, and Zedekiah were involved with the First Temple. And Cyrus, Nehemiah, and Titus are associated with the Second Temple. 3. All of the traditions mentioned are associated with Shavuot. Unfortunately, we do not celebrate it as prominently as previous generations, but in many ways this is the most important of all the holidays. The Talmud teaches that the giving of the Ten Commandments via Moses occurred on this day. To commemorate this, many observant Jews study Torah the whole night right through to the morning prayer service. During Shavuot, we read the Book of Ruth, which is written on single scroll or "megilla". Shavuot is also one of the three major harvest festivals in the Jewish year, the one when the first fruits are traditionally available. Starting in the mid-1800s in Germany, the Reform movement introduced the custom of confirming 16 year olds during the Shavuot service. Many Conservative and Orthodox congregations now share this custom. Confirmation is thought to recognize a further stage of development in the life of a Bar or Bat Mitzvah. This year, Beth Elohim had the largest confirmation class in our history!
	June 2001 1. It took a long while for the Jews to accept that their religious practice could not be centered on the Temple in Jerusalem. The destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE was followed by the Babylonian exile. Several decades later, the returnees rebuilt the Second Temple and not long after religious practice systematized and centralized at Jerusalem by Ezra. Several centuries later the Temple was profaned by the Syrian tyrant Antiochus. Forces led by the Maccabees subsequently recaptured Jerusalem and rededicated the Temple in 164 BCE. Then in 70 CE came the destruction of the Temple at the hands of Roman legions led by the future Emperor Titus. For several generations afterwards, the Jews still nurtured hope for a return to a new Temple. It was only after the failure of the Bar Kochba rebellion in 135 CE, when Jerusalem and the Judean lands were depopulated by the Romans, that many began to see the inevitability of losing what had been the focus of their religion. The Crusades in Medieval times led to few hundred years of Christian rule in parts of Israel. The Jews fared no better. By then the Diaspora was reality. 2. The Western Wall, or Wailing Wall, is the only remnant of the Second Temple still standing. This wall, actually part of retaining wall around the Temple and not really part of the Temple proper, is in the Old City of Jerusalem, which Israel captured in the Six-Day War in 1967. Soon thereafter, Jews had free access to the Wailing Wall for the first time in many centuries. Israel declared Yom Yerushalayim, which we just celebrated in late May, to commemorate this event. 3. The Karaites not only rejected the tradition of the Oral Law but also their practices diverged from the normative Judaism of eighth century Babylon where they first became a major movement. They developed a presence throughout the Jewish world in both Ashkenazic and Sephardic lands and even maintain small communities up to this day. They have several centers in Russia, where the Nazis did not recognize them as Jewish as so spared them in World War II. Some people say the roots of Karaism go all the way back the Saducees, who questioned the Oral Law. Their rivals, the Pharisees, were credited with originating rabbinic Judaism in the early centuries of the Common Era.
	May 2001 1. Rachel, Jacobs's favorite wife, did not have children for many years, unlike her sister Leah. Her first son was Joseph, Jacob's favorite son. She died giving birth to her second son, Benjamin, and was buried on the roadside near Bethlehem. One midrash, or rabbinic Biblical interpretation, holds that she is not buried at Hebron because she stole the household idols of her father Laban when fleeing towards Canaan. When Laban caught up to Jacob's retinue, she hid the idols and in Genesis 31: 35, lied about them when her father questioned her directly. For this, she could not be buried in the Cave at Machpela with the Patriarchs and other Matriarchs. 2. The system of Kashrut ("kosher") was a response to the many dietary laws in the Torah. Although there is no single verse in the Bible barring the mixing meat of dairy foods together, the admonition "Thou shalt not boil a kid (i.e. a young goat) in its mother's milk" occurs three separate times, twice in Exodus and once in Deuteronomy. Rabbis interpreted this to mean that meat and milk products cannot be eaten or even prepared together. And this proved to be a boon to the dish and utensil manufacturers! Today the designation "kosher" means that the food is prepared according to Biblical and Talmudic regulations, usually under the supervision of a rabbi. 3. The Feast of Shavuot occurs exactly fifty days after the first day of Passover. In between, time was kept by counting the omer, which is a sheaf of barley. This was done for a "week of weeks" or forty-nine days, then the fiftieth day was Shavuot. The barley began ripening around Pesach, and by Shavuot the wheat was usually ready. This would therefore naturally be not only a time to bring the fruits of the barley harvest to market in Jerusalem but also a cause for celebration. This day is also celebrated as the date on which Moses received the Torah and the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, perhaps the most significant in the history of the Jews. There is no particular day traditionally associated with either the arrival of Joshua in Canaan or Elijah's ascension to heaven.
	April 2001 1. Passover is indeed the oldest of the festivals in the Jewish religion. As described in Chapter 12 of Exodus, Moses and the Israelites celebrate the very first one while still in the land of Egypt. But in II Kings 23:21-23, we find that the reforming king Josiah ordered a proper celebration of Passover as "had not been offered in that manner in the days of the chieftains who ruled Israel, or during the days of the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah". Depending on the chronology, this could cover a period of 600 years or more since the time of Moses. The passage states that Josiah did this in the eighteenth year of his reign. Josiah became king at the age of eight in 640 B.C.E. when his father was assassinated. He must have had regents who nurtured the moral and religious spirit which led to his proclamation of Passover renewal in 622 B.C.E. Unfortunately, Josiah was killed in battle by an Egyptian arrow in 609 B.C.E., ending Judah's last period of greatness in the First Temple era. 2. The term Palestine derives from the Philistines of the Bible, the same ones whom King David served as a mercenary and later absorbed. Although the Philistines occupied only five great cities near the coast, the Roman designation of Palestine was subsequently applied to the whole land of Israel. The British revived the term under their mandate over this area earlier in this century. The Philistines were most likely a Greek-speaking people who invaded Canaan about 1100 B.C.E. They were part of a general migration of "Sea Peoples" (in Greek, pelasgoi) about this time. There is circumstantial evidence that points to an Aegean origin, possibly from the island of Crete. They brought their mastery of iron with them, a capability that allowed them to dominate their new neighbors for some time. 3. The roots of Yiddish are in medieval Germany. Although it is written using the Hebrew alphabet, the grammar and phonetics are German. Starting in the 1100 and 1200's many Jews emigrated eastward to Poland from Germany, taking their language with them. Poland at that time had a very stratified society - the nobility, the clergy, and the peasants. The Jews came at the invitation of the nobility to become the middle class, serving as civil servants, managers, and traders. Their German language, written in Hebrew, formed the core of the language that spread eastward with them to Lithuania, Russia, and the Ukraine. From the native tongues of these lands as well as from Hebrew, Yiddish acquired many loan words and the mixture that resulted gives the language its uniquely expressive character. Our Me'ah teacher Eliyana Adler profoundly loves this language and notes that the eastern variants of Yiddish absorbed not only words from the surrounding Slavic languages but also phrases and even syntax. She also adds that all Yiddish dialects contain elements from Hebrew and Aramaic, especially in ritual contexts.
	March 2001 1. The Mishna, a code of laws governing Jewish life, was committed to its present form about 200 C.E. It is organized into sixty three topical areas, or tractates. The first chapter of the marvelous tractate "Pirke Aboth", or Sayings of the Fathers, gives the direct line of descent of the Oral Torah from the Revelation at Sinai in an unbroken chain to the then contemporary Judaism. The chain starts of course with Moses, then includes his handpicked successor, Joshua. After Joshua came the elders, who were the Biblical Judges down through Samuel, when the monarchy was established. The elders handed the knowledge to the prophets, who are also celebrated in the Bible. Last came the Men of the Great Assembly. This included the scribes and teachers who continued the work of Ezra after the return from the Babylonian Exile and built the Judaism of the period that created the Mishna. 2. An eruv (the singular of eruvim) is a special construction of posts and wire (representing walls and doorways), which encompass an area that then becomes a larger private domain. Mobility within the eruv is thus greatly enhanced on Shabbat. New York City and its suburbs, with their huge Jewish populations, have eruvim which encompass most of the territory. Brookline is essentially one large eruv. In most urban instances existing structures, like telephone poles and even trees, are used to circumscribe the eruv. These integrity of the eruv is usually monitored by inspectors, many of whom have begun using web sites to report its condition. Thanks to the husband of one of our Me'ah teachers, Eliyana Adler, and many like-minded people, an eruv is now being established in the Cambridge and Somerville, making these communities even more welcoming for Orthodox Jews. A January Globe feature chronicled their efforts. We are also grateful to Eliyana for being a talented, enthusiastic teacher - and for periodically suggesting improvements to the questions in this column . 3. Paul, a Jew and a Roman citizen, was initially a persecutor of the early Christian sect, but later became its greatest evangelist after an epiphany on the road to Damascus. In his efforts to reach beyond the Jewish community for converts in the larger Roman world, Paul argued that not all Jewish practices needed to be observed. The principal one eliminated was circumcision, which of course was a very painful requirement for adult male gentiles who wished to join the new sect. In 2:25-29 of his Epistle to the Romans, Paul argued that circumcision is not as important as belief. Ultimately the relaxation of this and other practices led to a complete split with Judaism.
	February 2001 1. The Joseph story begins with Chapter 37 and concludes at Chapter 50, the final one of the Book of Genesis. Rabbi Mintz's Torah study group cited three "downs" in the life of Joseph: 1) when he was thrown into the well by his envious brothers as recounted in Genesis 37:23; 2) when he was taken "down" to Egypt by the traders 37:28; and 3) when he was thrown down into prison because of the accusations of Potiphar's wife 39:20. The "ups" of Joseph's amazing career included: 1) when he was put in charge of Potiphar's household 39:5; 2) when he was put in charge of Pharaoh's court 41:40; and 3) when he asked that his bones be carried "up" from Egypt to Canaan in Genesis 50:25. Waky notes that "Aliyah" carries this sense of "up." The more familiar meaning is to go "up" to the bimah to read Torah, but it also it means moving to Israel. Both meanings involve going to a higher place. 2. Tu B'shvat is often called the Festival of Trees; it is the Jewish Arbor Day and is a very propitious time for the planting of trees, especially fruit trees, in the Land of Israel. The holiday is not mentioned in the Torah or anywhere in the Bible and so there is no direct connection to Abraham. But by the time of Hillel in the second century of the Common Era, the date was fixed as the fifteenth of Sh'vat, or at the middle of the lunar month when the moon is full. The Kabbalists or mystics of Safed loved this day and contributed much to its observance, which-like any good Jewish celebration-involved much wine and many blessings. Finally, because it sounds similar, it is sometimes confused with Tisha B'Av. The latter day, however, is quite the opposite; it's an early summer day of mourning marking the destruction of both the First and Second Temples. Given this background, of the words listed the five most appropriate are blessing, fruit, full moon, wine, and Kabbalist. 3. The French Emperor Napoleon controlled the European heartland completely by 1810, but like Hitler much later, wanted to consolidate his hold by an invasion of Russia in 1812. As he marched east through Poland and Russia, he passed through Vilnius, the modern day capital of Lithuania. He found this city "more Jewish than Jerusalem." There were certainly many more Jews there, since Jerusalem was then depopulated of Jews during the Turkish rule. On the other hand, Vilnius, or Vilna, was home to many thousands of Jews and had seen an intense, flourishing Ashkenazi Jewish culture for many centuries.
	January 2001 1. Although there are other references to prophets in the Bible, the last fifteen books of the Nevi'im are named for those commonly referred the "major" and "minor" prophets. The first three books-those of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel-are considerably longer than the rest. These men are thus called the major prophets. (You will also hear references to first Isaiah or second Isaiah because there are two very distinct writing styles in this book.) The remaining twelve books are those named for the minor prophets. In his very informative book Biblical Literacy, Rabbi Joseph Telushkin hastens to remind us that "minor" refers only to the length, not the importance of the messages in these books. Amos and Jonah, for example, contain images and stories well known to millions. As for length, Obadiah, with but a single chapter of 21 verses, is the shortest book of the Bible. Perhaps we ought simply to return to the terminology of Rabbinic literature, in which these prophets are simply known as "the twelve". 2. Of the group listed, Moses is the oldest. Given the Biblical and historical clues, it is believed he lived sometime around 1300 B.C.E. (Before the Common Era). Buddha and Confucius both were born in the sixth century B.C.E., Buddha in India and Confucius in China; Lao Tse was also born in China in this same century, but much less is known about his life. This century apparently was a time of general turmoil throughout the ancient world, including the destruction of the First temple in Jerusalem. A little earlier, in the seventh century B.C.E., Zoroaster, known to Greeks as Zarathustra, was born into the priestly tribe of the Magi in Persia (modern Iran). His followers ultimately migrated to India, where they are known as Parsees (Persians). Mohammed was born over a millennium afterwards in 569 C.E., and a little over a century later his followers controlled an empire. Also, many scholars now believe Jesus' birth occurred a few years earlier than was once supposed, probably in 6 B.C.E. 3. The primary Biblical direction to judges centered on fairness. Leviticus 19:15 enjoins "you shall not render an unfair decision: do not favor the poor nor show deference to the rich; judge your kinsmen fairly."