December 2004

1. The best answer as to why Chanukah is not a major holiday is that it is not mentioned in the Jewish 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 Maccabees, which describe the retaking of the Temple in 165 BCE, are not part of the Jewish Bible. This date was more than 300 years after the last of the Davidic line was king in Jerusalem. Judah Maccabee and his family were not descendants of King David or of his tribe of Judah, but the Hasmonean dynasty that they founded did rule successfully for over a hundred years. The Romans ultimately turned over kingship to the Herodians. Like virtually all aspects of Jewish life, the Talmud has quite a bit to say about Chanukah, including even down to a discussion of the order in which the candles should be lit.. Incidentally, the legend of the long burning is found in the Talmud, while the Books of the Maccabees make no mention of it.

2. There is indeed some basis for the shnorrer's outrage. Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, the renowned author, relates this often told joke in his entertaining "Jewish Humor". According to Telushkin's rabbi friend, as far as Jewish law is concerned, the beggar was justified. "In a very real sense, it was his money, for the rich man and the poor man were both participants in a culture that was based on the premise that all property is ultimately God's, not man's, and that charity is a commandment, not a favor. Only among a people in whose language the same word means justice and charity could such a story be told". Incidentally, under the same Jewish law code, the beggar himself is obligated to give charity, though only within his more modest means. For example, he could have given the rich man's wife a nice pair of mittens.



3. One of the first things you notice about Everett Fox’s Five Books of Moses is that it scans more like a poem. Each line is printed separately, and there are no blocks of prose as in a normal book. He will point out that the Torah was meant to recited aloud, not silently read as we often do. In fact, it was to be recited to a particular melody, called Torah trope. This graceful melody is familiar to us from Bar and Bat Mitzvah celebrations. The notation marks which assist in keeping the proper melody are called trope marks, special symbols which appear above the Hebrew text. The trope marks do not appear in the Torah scrolls themselves, but have been added in liturgical copies. They can be traced to at least the ninth century C.E., though probably they were in use long before that. This musical augmentation no doubt helped previous generations memorize the Bible. For those who wish to learn even more about this topic and hear how beautiful this melody can be, Naomi Mintz of the Beth Elohim Choir is giving a class next March.

November 2004

1. 1. Professor William Schniedewind’s “How the Bible Became a Book” traces how the basis of authority in ancient Israel moved from oral tradition to written texts. The two passages on the giving of the Ten Commandments provide an illustration. He argues that the Exodus account, which never even mentions any writing down of the commandments, demonstrates its antiquity because it “reflects a time before books were central to Jewish culture”. This is very different from the second telling of this story in Deuteronomy (please recall that Deuteronomy literally means “second law”). Here God himself writes the Commandments on two stone tablets, reflecting a later movement toward a literate culture. Remember the Book of Deuteronomy, the last of the Pentateuch and most advanced in style, was “found” in the Temple in late seventh century BCE during the reign of the great King Josiah. By this time, literacy was widespread and the importance of the written word was well established.

2. Their Hebrew names do indeed say much about the purpose of our most important Jewish texts. At the foundation is the “Torah”, which means teaching or instruction in Hebrew. The Zohar, the central work of Jewish mysticism written in the 16th century CE, translates to “radiance”, a reflection on its many brilliant insights. The Jewish Law Code, the Mishnah, means “repetition”; the Mishnah was the written recording of earlier generations repeating the oral law over and over, passing it from teacher to disciple. The last of three great sections of the Bible – after the Torah and Nevi’im (prophets) – is called the Ketuvi’im or “writings” in Hebrew. The writings consisted of an assorted set of 13 books from Psalms on through Ruth and Daniel and concluding with Chronicles. Our familiar prayerbook, the Siddur, defines the sequence or “order” of prayers in the service. Both the Siddur and the Passover Seder are derived from the Hebrew root for “order”. Incidentally, the Hebrew expression for "OK" is "B'Seder" meaning. [everything's] "in order". The Talmud contains interpretations and commentaries on the Mishnah, intricate discussions by sages of many generations and viewpoints. This enormous collection has been the preoccupation of scholars for cednturies, so it is very fitting that the Hebrew root of Talmud is “study”. A related Hebrew word is "talmid" or "student".

3. Amos was called on by Yahweh to prophesy. His messages, delivered everywhere from villages to royal sanctuaries, included ideas that differentiated the Hebrew religion he espoused from the other sects of that time. For example, religion and ethics were bound together. He had little tolerance for empty ritual or those who would oppress the poor. Of the choices offered, his strongest themes would likely be - the universality of God, social justice, and the covenant with Yahweh. Many Biblical scholars describe Amos, alongside the legendary Moses, as the first true monotheist and universalist in Hebrew history. This self-described “picker of sycamore figs” had nothing but disdain for those “who trample on the head of the poor…and turn justice away from the lowly”, even though they might be regular Temple goers. While the excesses of Solomon probably would have offended him, he lived after that king’s time. By the way, because of the transgressions of her people, he did predict the demise of the northern kingdom in Amos 5:2 “Fallen, the virgin of Israel cannot again rise”. And, in fact, the northern kingdom of Israel DID fall to the Assyrians in 722 B.C.E. and the people were scattered and assimilated. These are the famous "10 lost tribes". Judea, the land to the south, survived to be later destroyed by the Babylonians in 586.

October 2004

1. 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 the 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.

2. 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 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 new 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 new discoveries about our DNA and our universe do indeed provide positive reasons for faith.

3. Besides the fact we can now eat food again, there are many other reasons that we feel so good and complete at the conclusion of Yom Kippur. There is nothing quite like moral renewal one feels after a solid day in the synagogue, reciting the Al Khet (For Sins) prayer innumerable times. So many sins are listed in this prayer, it must surely cover every possible offense one could have committed. But why does this prayer ritual compel us to confess even for sins we have not committed? The answer lies in the observation that we respond in the plural in confessing each sin (i.e. “we” have done “x”, whether we, as individuals, have done “x” or not). Jewish tradition teaches each Jew bears some responsibility for sins of other Jews; in each case, we are thus confessing for “our” sins.

September 2004

1. 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 Peter Stuyvesant was initially unwelcoming. They fought for rights as Dutch citizens and this “remnant” 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 Sephardic Jews.



2. When they told us that Yom Kippur was a very happy day, the Talmudic rabbis were not kidding. They clearly knew something of our human emotional makeup. As Rabbi Joseph Telushkin points out in his wonderful book ”Jewish Literacy”, the goal of Yom Kippur is not self-mortification but reconciliation – between people and between each of us and God. This is a time to reflect, to repair and renew. If we participate fully, Yom Kippur can be a healthy cathartic experience and we can make “peace with everyone we know and with God”. It is thus no surprise that happiness, a happiness accompanied by a deeper serenity, is but one of Yom Kippur’s benefits.

3. “The pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, an almost fanatical love of justice and the desire for personal independence - these are the features of the Jewish tradition which make me thank my stars that I belong to it”. These were Albert Einstein’s words describing his feelings about Jewish tradition and culture. Like all good Jews, he expressed his beliefs not just in words like these but with deeds. Here are but two examples. In 1933, he renounced his German citizenship for political reasons and emigrated to America. Toward the end of his life, he bequeathed his archives and scientific papers to Hebrew University. Jews everywhere can rejoice in the memory of this remarkable scientist and humanist, one who was selected as Time Magazine’s “Man of the Century".

August 2004

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 2) the mezuzah, 3) the tzitziot or fringes of the talit, and 4) the elimination of leavening during Passover. Affixing a mezuzah on your doorpost (mezuzah literally means “doorpost”) fulfills the mitzvah of Deuteronomy 6:9 – “And you shall write these commandments on the doorposts of your house...”. Each mezuzah case contains a piece of parchment on which the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) is written in Hebrew. The commandment for tzitziot 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 leavened bread shall be found with you, and no leaven shall be found in all your territory”. The Star of David it is actually a relatively new Jewish symbol, and came into wide usage well after the Middle Ages. The wearing of a yarmulke or kippah dates back still earlier, to early Talmudic times, about the second century CE, when it was first mentioned in Tractate Shabbat.

June 2004

1.There is not complete scholarly agreement on the origins of the synagogue, the most central religious institution of Judaism. However, of the answers given, the best approximation is that the first proto-synagogues began develop either during or shortly after the Babylonian Exile in the sixth century BCE. The Jews there clearly maintained their religious practices and scriptures. On his migration to Israel, the great teacher Ezra brought the sacred books and introduced their public reading. Some see a reference to Babylonian synagogues in this passage from Ezekiel 11:16 when God says “…I have become to them a small sanctuary in the countries to which they have gone”. The Talmud also speaks of hundreds of synagogues in Jerusalem BEFORE the destruction of the Second Temple. By then they were commonplace in adjacent locales like Alexandria, Cyprus, and Turkey. And there is solid evidence of a synagogue in Egypt in the third century BCE. Though it has always been the focus of religious activity, during the Middle Ages the synagogue developed its central role in all aspects of Jewish life – as school, study, social center, assembly hall. Clearly by the time of the Roman repression and expulsion from Israel, there was in place an alternative to the Temple in Jerusalem, and thus Judaism was able to survive and even prosper during the enforced exile from its homeland.


2. Today Ohabei Shalom is at home in a magnificent Byzantine building on Beacon Street in Brookline. This is Boston’s oldest congregation, founded in 1842, in what is today the Theatre District of the South End. They built Boston’s first synagogue in 1852 on Warrenton Street (then called just Warren Street), which runs off Stuart Street between Charles and Tremont. The next home for Ohabei Shalom, from 1863-1886, situated diagonally opposite from the first synagogue, was the building that now houses the Charles Playhouse on Warrenton Street. In 1887 the congregation moved to still larger quarters further into the South End. And in 1928 they moved to their current site in Brookline. The Touro Synagogue was found by descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews, who had arrived in Newport as early as 1658. Boston’s was established by recently arrived German and Polish Ashkenazic Jews.

3. It seems the ancients needed time to warm up to the idea of incorporating any part of God’s name into those of their children. In time, however, it became quite common not only among the Israelites but also among their neighbors. The Canaanites frequently used Baal (“Hannibal”) as part of a name; Egyptians Pharaohs were named after gods. And for Israelites, commoner and king alike, the Jehu (Jehosephat) or Josh (Joshua) root was a reference to Yahweh. Elisha, Elijah, and Elihu relied on the other ancient name for God, El. But the first appearance of a prominent name incorporating a root for God does not occur until the middle of Genesis, at the time of the Patriarchs. The name is Judah or Yehudah, Leah’s fourth son, the progenitor of the tribe of Judah and ancestor of King David and his 20 successors. And Yehudah also gave rise to “Jew” and that’s very good lineage indeed.

May 2004

1. Amos reserved his harshest words for those who exploited the poor. Describing himself as a simple shepherd and tender of fig trees, he is called away and told by the Lord “Go prophesy to My people Israel (Amos 7:15)”. Though he was from the town of Tekoa in the southern kingdom of Judah, most of his prophesies are set in the northern kingdom of Israel, especially in the shrine at Bethel, not too far north of Jerusalem. There he confronted Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, predicting the fall and exile of the sinful kingdom. A few decades later the Assyrians did in fact plunder the northern kingdom and send its population into exile. Speaking through Amos, the Lord found no comfort in the sacrifices and rituals offered in his name. In Amos 5:22-23, He says “I will pay no heed to your gifts of fatlings. Spare Me the sound of your hymns….”. The God of Israel demands justice above all; through Amos, he addresses the House of Israel in 5:10-12 as “You takers of bribes, you who subvert in the gate the cause of the needy”. Amos derides the empty rituals of the Temple and has only scorn for those who oppress the poor. He remains perhaps the earliest, and most forceful, spokesmen for social justice.

2. Pesach is indeed a wonderful holiday. It captures a timeless message of liberty for all of us. Each year we ourselves, not some remote ancestor, are the ones escaping from Egypt and slavery. So when was the first Passover celebrated? After a little reflection, you may remember that day got its name when the avenging hand of the Lord passed over the homes of the Israelites. As instructed, they had smeared their doorposts with lamb’s blood to avoid the consequences of the tenth plague, the death of the first-born. Chapter twelve of Exodus recounts all this and also includes the details of how the Passover lamb is to be selected and prepared. Then in verse 11, the community is commanded to “eat it hurriedly: it is a Passover offering to the Lord”. So the first Passover occurred in Egypt, on the night before the Israelites fled from Egypt. If we accept the historicity of this event and the scholars’ best guesses on dates, this first Pesach occurred sometime before the end of the reign Pharaoh Rameses II in 1225 BCE, over thirty-two centuries ago. Though God commands the Israelites to celebrate this every year, the second Passover was not observed again until 40 years later, until Joshua brings them into the Promised Land.

3. Since their takeover in 1939, the Nazis had been systematically shipping off most of the Warsaw’s half million Jews and starving those who were left. Their numbers had been reduced to about 60,000, or less than an eighth of the pre-war population, when the revolt began in a response to a 3AM invasion on Passover night of 1943. The Germans retreated, but soon their deadly counterattack began. Despite being completely outgunned, facing tanks and machine guns, the Warsaw Jews managed somehow to resist for almost an entire month. Until this time, no civilian urban population had offered any resistance to the mighty Nazi war machine. The tenacity and heroism of these starving people was quickly reported throughout Europe and the world, no doubt inspiring further resistance.

April 2004

1. Louis Brandeis, for whom the outstanding university is named, was the first American Supreme Court Justice. He was nominated by Woodrow Wilson and served with distinction from 1916 to 1939. He was just plain brilliant, right from his early years on through to his retirement at age 83. He graduated from Harvard Law School at 20, having compiled the highest scholastic average in the school’s history. President Herbert Hoover added a second Jewish Justice, Benjamin Cardozo, towards the close of his term in 1932. Cardozo was likewise a first rate justice, having served on the State of New York’s Supreme Court for 18 years before his elevation to the nation’s highest court. Unfortunately he died in 1938, and was succeeded by the renowned Felix Frankfurter, whom President Franklin Roosevelt appointed in 1939. Frankfurter had been a Harvard Law professor for 25 years, and went to serve almost as long on the Court, retiring in 1962. President John Kennedy appointed the noted Chicago labor lawyer Arthur Goldberg. Once the President called his home and his elderly mother answered and asked “Who’s this?”. “It’s the President”, the Chief Executive replied. “The president of which shul?”, Mrs. Goldberg wanted to know before Arthur finally got to the phone. Goldberg’s tenure was brief for in 1965 he was chosen to be US Ambassador to the UN. He was succeeded that year by Abe Fortas, nominated by President Lyndon Johnson. He resigned in 1969, the last occupant of the “Jewish seat” on the Court. There were no Jews on the bench until 1993 when President Clinton nominated Ruth Ginzburg, followed by Stephen Breyer in 1994. Both of them still serve today.

2. The Neir Tamid is first mentioned in Exodus 27:20. In this Torah portion, Moses provides detailed instructions to the Israelites on the building and decoration of the Tabernacle or Tent of Meeting. Another key theme is how Aaron and the priests are to be selected and to dress. Several of our congregants know this Torah portion since it was the assigned reading for the nine members of the recent Adult B’nai Mitzvah class. A member of our class, Bill Cady, pointed out that this parsha contained the first reference to the Neir Tamid.

3. The Pesach observance goes back to just before the Exodus from Egypt. Moses commanded all generations to remember the hasty flight from slavery. All this is familiar to us because of the seder traditions. The word “seder” comes from a Hebrew root meaning "order," because there is a specific set of information that must be discussed in a specific order. It is the same root from the word "siddur" is derived, since the siddur (prayer book) likewise specifies the order for services. In modern Hebrew, the equivalent of "OK" is "b'seder", which literally means "in order".

March 2004

1. The Hebrew word megilla means “scroll”. There are five books in the Bible that receive this designation, and each one is read on a different holiday. The one originally known as the megilla, the scroll of Esther, is read on Purim. This connection is quite obvious; Purim is the holiday celebrating the central event recounted in the Book of Esther, the deliverance of the Jewish people in Persia from the wicked schemes of Haman. The connections for the other four are not always so obvious. The Song of Solomon is read on the Shabbat during Passover, although there appears to be no intrinsic reason for this custom. The reading of Lamentations on Tisha B’Av is more readily understandable, for this is the sorrowful day when tradition holds that both the First and Second Temples were destroyed in Jerusalem. One link between the Book of Ruth and Shavuot comes through the Law. Shavuot traditionally marks the receiving of the Law on Sinai, while Ruth, as the first Jewish convert, took upon herself the observance of this Law. The scroll of Ecclesiastes is read on the Sabbath during Sukkot. Again, the connection between this book and the fall harvest festival is unclear. Solomon is said to have authored this philosophical work, with its memorable passage, “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven”.


2. Ruth and Boaz were the great-grandparents of King David. Given that Ruth is Judaism’s first convert, this is an honor indeed. The Book of Ruth closes with this genealogy, “Boaz begot Obed,
Obed begot Jesse, and Jesse begot David (Ruth 4:21-22)”. The nine members of our Adult B’nai Mizvot class very much appreciate Ruth’s story, since all are either women and/or converts.



3. The great American musical play evolved in New York City during the early decades of the twentieth century from the imaginations of a truly extraordinary cluster of talents. Jerome Kern wrote almost 1000 songs, including such memorable ones as “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and, with Oscar Hammerstein’s lyrics, the classic “Ol’ Man River”. Like many other New York Jews of that time, Oscar Hammerstein’s father worked in a cigar factory. He did not quite live to see his son’s crowning achievements in “Oklahoma” and “The Sound of Music”. In the 1920s, it was said of Irving Berlin that he ”has no place in American music. He is American music”. He was the son of a Russian cantor but had no musical training. This did not keep him from creating “There's No Business like Show Business” and “White Christmas”. His “Alexander’s Rag Time Band” opened up jazz to a much wider audience back in 1911. George Gershwin helped bring jazz even more into the mainstream with his “Rhapsody in Blue”. Earlier Gershwin also drew strongly on Negro folk traditions for “Swanee”, and again towards the end of life in the great American opera “Porgy and Bess”. This question was inspired by another cluster of extraordinary musical talent, that of our own congregation.

February 2004

1. In the great tradition of the prophets, Dr. Martin Luther King had a way of engaging in the everyday battles while at the same time connecting people’s efforts to much larger, universal moral themes. Dr. King was in Memphis that April of 1968 to lead a march in support of the striking the sanitation workers of the City of Memphis. Over 1,300 garbagemen walked off their jobs in support of better working conditions and union recognition. They were paid abysmal wages, had intolerable working conditions and no benefits of any kind, and could be fired for any injury incurred on the job. The strike assumed national significance, galvanizing support on both sides. A few weeks after Dr. King’s death, the city did grant union recognition, and this led to further gains for public workers all over the South and in other parts of our country. The film on the last weeks of Dr. King’s life also featured interviews with close colleagues who spoke of a change in Dr. King’s demeanor with the premonition of his own death. Some mentioned that he thought he might die in a few weeks during the planned Poor People’s March to Washington. In his last major speech given the night before his death, he shared that he “had been to the mountaintop”. He had seen the promised land and knew that we as a people will get there. Besides this inspiring documentary, the second annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day Breakfast also featured a thoroughly engaging talk by a Boxborough mother, Tina Kahn. She spoke with candor, humor, and wisdom about her experiences as a Muslim woman in the local interfaith community.

2. Rabbi Shai Held has been a student of the relationship of Judaism and the quest for social justice, so it is not surprising that he is very well versed in the life and work of Abraham Joshua Heschel, a great Jewish philosopher and theologian of the twentieth century. He lived from 1907 to 1972. Born in Warsaw, he came to the US in 1940 and taught at two premier Jewish educational institutions, Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. Rabbi Heschel wrote several major works, including the influential God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism. He was no armchair commentator in the cause of social justice. He was actively involved in the civil rights and ecumenical activities of his day. There is a well-known photo of Rabbi Heschel marching arm-in-arm with Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama.


3. Real history is indeed complex, fluid, and interwoven, but there are signposts that often help define a particular era. Waky’s course covers the highlights, some of which are listed below, as well as the continual evolution of Jewish religion and culture that has been occurring continually. The six key milestones given in the question can be arranged chronologically as follows:

C. The building of the First Temple at Jerusalem in Solomon’s reign - about 920 BCE
E. The dispersal of the northern kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians – 722 BCE
B. The destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians - 586 BCE
D. The origin of the practice of public Torah reading by Ezra – about 430 BCE
F. The destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans – 70CE
A. The codification of the Mishnah - the Oral Law – about 200 CE

January 2004

1. The Books of the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible, are divided into three sections – the Torah, the Nevi’im (“prophets” in Hebrew), and the Kethuvim (writings in Hebrew). 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. Some scholars will even cite a third Isaiah as the author of the closing chapters of 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. Jews had lived for centuries in eastern and central Europe, frequently in the service of Polish nobility who controlled vast estates that stretched across the central plains through to the Ukraine. In the late 1700’s, they may have been as much as ten percent of the population in this region. Then, with Austrian and Prussian connivance, Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia, planned and executed the three successive partitions of Poland. From 1772 to 1795, they carved up the center of Europe and Poland disappeared off the map of Europe until after the First World War. Each of the annexing nations thus became a host country to large number of Jews. And Russia, the most anti-Semitic of the group, became master of the largest segment of former Polish territory – and a huge number of Jews became unwitting Russian subjects. They were progressively circumscribed in where they could live (in “The Pale”) and what they could do. Some scholars have noted that this deliberate institutional discrimination ultimately corrupted the Tsarist bureaucracy. There is a parallel in our own country; the systematic discrimination against blacks ultimately corrupted the legal and civil authorities trying to suppress them.


3.Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty welcomed millions of Jews fleeing Russian persecution to these shores in the decades around the turn of the last century. The American Jewish poetess Emma Lazarus was acutely aware of this persecution and, during the early 1880s, wrote extensively about the Jewish people's suffering in Eastern Europe. She died too young in 1887, years before her words were inscribed in bronze at the base of the great statue in 1903. For so many Jews at that time, the path to freedom she described led through Ellis Island to the Lower East Side. In 1910, 540,000 Jews were crammed into its one and half square miles. This estimate comes from Paul Johnson’s highly readable “History of the Jews”. He further notes that in the tenements of the Tenth Ward the density reached just over 700 people per acre, more than 100 times that of a normal suburban setting.