▪ A Reform rabbi discusses: Is It Offensive to Say ‘Old Testament’?
▪ The growing pains of Beit Shemesh
▪ “The Spirit of Jewish Conservatism”—A Five-Part Symposium
▪ Jewish Culture Club Thrives at an Atlanta Public School
▪ Who are Turkey’s Jews?
▪ A statement of his religious philosophy as he currently sees it: Torat Chaim Ve’Ahavat Chesed –Rabbi Ysoscher Katz
▪ Augmented Reality 4D Mishkan
▪ Shabbos without God, as the article implies not necessarily the people involved, is kind of missing the point but it’s better than nothing: Take A Day Off: How Shabbos Forced Me To Turn Off, Have Family Time And Get A Fresh Start Each Week
▪ Israel’s Water Revolution
I don’t think the author of the first piece intended these lines to stand out, but boy they did to me:
“Furthermore, the word “Jewish” does not exist in the Old Testament. “Jewish” as an adjective attached to texts and people does not emerge until thousands of years later.”
Well, yes, it doesn’t appear because it’s an English word. “Yehudi” certainly appears, as do all sorts of earlier adjectives (Ivri, Yisrael).
“but most Jews and Christians do not read or study it in Hebrew. Most experience it in their native language. ”
Considering that for about half the world’s Jews, Hebrew is their native language, and that Orthodox Jews worldwide study the Bible in Hebrew, and that sadly very few others Jews study it at all…yes, most Jews study it in Hebrew.
“Yet, the Old Testament began as an oral tradition. Its words were chanted in the synagogue. They were memorized by students. It was only written down after about 1,000 years of oral transmission.”
OK, we get it, you don’t believe it’s divine. But even the most hard-core documentary hypothesist would not claim this. At the very least, it was written in some form very, very early on. Certainly by the time “synagogues” existed as an institution and the Bible was being “chanted” it was written pretty much in the form we have it. In fact, memorization of the Bible is forbidden by Jewish law.
“I did not know the word Tanach until I entered rabbinical school.”
Whoa. Whooooaaaaa. (By the way, it’s on the cover of the JPS translation.)