What is it about Rabbi Akiva that caused him to be venerated in a manner that no one else was? His learning certainly played a large role, as he was known for both his methodological[…]
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Month: April 2014
Branding now “is aggressively self-aware, exaggerated and self-referential to the point of collapsing in on itself”
Branding may have finally reached its Mannerist phase. Where the old-fashioned brand earnestly embraced a core message that verged on religious doctrine (Apple’s “Think Different,” Nike’s “Just Do It”), the new brand is aggressively self-aware,[…]
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“The rabbis of the Talmud knew the historical truth: post-biblical Judaism, not scripture, is the source for the general prohibition of intermarriage”
The Talmudim are aware that the prohibition of intermarriage is a product of second temple times. Jubilees 30 and the other works of the Maccabean period mentioned above are the historical background for the Palestinian tradition[…]
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“Rabbinic society was not much affected by intermarriage…”
Rabbinic society was not much affected by intermarriage. The Palestinian Talmud has a rabbi castigate the Jews of Sepphoris (who, like the ancient Alexandrians, had a well deserved reputation for contumacy and insolence) because many[…]
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“One of the central characteristics of post-biblical Judaism is its prohibition of intermarriage…”
One of the central characteristics of post-biblical Judaism is its prohibition of intermarriage. A Jew may not marry a non-Jew. From Greco-Roman antiquity to the present day this prohibition has been the subject of much[…]
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“Hip-hop has not always been a safe place for Yiddishkeit”
Jews have produced and distributed African-American music for more than a century, and have sometimes exploited black musicians in the process. Given this history – and the fact that a disproportionate number of rappers subscribe[…]
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“No other book within the Bible…is as intensely personal as Koheleth”
No other book within the Bible, and few outside of it in world literature, are as intensely personal as Koheleth. To be sure, he can be properly understood only within the framework of the intellectual[…]
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Understanding Certain Stories in Rabbinic Literature as “literary constructs which try to convey certain religious, moral, and ideological messages or transmit legal instructions”
Other types of narratives have also been identified within rabbinic sources. At one end of the spectrum, we find the anecdote about prominent rabbis or known historical figures, such as Alexander the Great or Roman[…]
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“Chareidi Yeshivish Hebrew…evolved after the Holocaust”
Mention must…be made of another new dialect that came about in the twentieth century: Chareidi Yeshivish Hebrew. This dialect, which evolved after the Holocaust, both in Israel and America, is a blend of the Lithuanian[…]
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“To feed the hunger for knowledge that exists among American Jews, we need education that doesn’t talk down to people or make them feel like children”
Today’s Jews, he [Rabbi Arthur Green] said, are better educated in general education, which makes the gap between their Jewish knowledge and their general knowledge more striking. Consider “the percentage of Jews we have with[…]
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