Shofar

How does creativity thrive in the face of fascism? How can a highly artistic individual Composers of the Nazi Era: Eight Portraits: Michael H. Kater the Wehrmacht and its involvement in Nazi racist warfare in the East. True, Michael Kater describes his portraits of eight composers from the Nazi era as.

Press (Apr 15, 2004) $29.95 (336pp) 978-0-299-19860-2 "I do not remember much more, except the pushcarts laden with emaciated, naked corpses, their limbs often hanging over the side of the cart. Once in a while some would fall off … being picked up and thrown back on the heap." This horror was recounted by a survivor of Ravensbruck Concentration Camp in Germany, the only Nazi camp specifically established for women. Of the 132,000 prisoners held there from 1939 to 1945, about twenty percent were Jewish. The others were Gypsies, criminals, Jehovah's Witnesses, prostitutes, lesbians, and political prisoners. Drawing on interviews with survivors in the United States and Europe, as well as on previously unpublished testimonies, documents, and photographs from private archives, the author has graphically reconstructed the workings of everyday life in the camp. The descriptions encompass a whole range of issues and activities-illness and death, hunger, torture, fear of rape, political maneuvering, humiliation, and acts of resistance.

Jewish liturgical use of animal horn as a wind instrument is very well known, and the fact that it is still in use today makes it unique when compared to other ancient instruments. There are 72 references in the Bible to the shofar, and whilst it is attested in a few magical contexts, such as the Sinai Theophany, its secular militaristic use is the more prominent.

Some authors are unwilling to dispense with unsubstantiated stories, opting instead to put scholarly standards aside in their attempts to advance anti-Zionist arguments. One case in point is the “married to another man” fable. The potential anti-Zionist uses inherent in the ‘married to another man’ story are irresistible to many authors, despite the lack of a primary source or a historical basis for its retelling, and accounts for much of its popularity.

A Torá menciona dois sons: Teki-á תקיעה (“tocar”) e Teru-á  תרועה(“barulho”) (Números 10:5-7). Toda a gente acha que sabe o que significa “Teki-á“: é um som longo (mas quão longo?), um sinal de alarme, um som muito alto e claro. E como se toca Teru-á (“barulho”)? Existem várias opiniões – como sempre, no Judaísmo.
A tradução aramaica (“Targum”) da Torá traduziu a palavra Teru-a com yebava יבבא, “soluçar” (Números 29:1). Então, o Talmud (RH 33b) fez uma ligação com um outro verso da Bíblia: “A mãe de Sísera estava à janela e olhou para fora, e chorou (teyavev)” (Shoftim/Juízes 5:28). Aqui está a palavra teyavev que lembra a palavra aramaico yevava que foi usada para traduzir teru-a. Neste caso, fica claro: barulho é o som de chorar.
Alguns consideram que deve ser tocado com um som completamente quebrado, uma série dos nove sons muito curtos, tocados de forma muito forte. Outros pensam que não deve ser quebrado, apenas três sons. Mas esse som deve durar o mesmo tempo do Teki-á. Como não sabemos com certeza como tocar o shofar, tocamos todas possibilidades e fazemos várias combinações, esperando que o som certo que a Torá ordenou seja um deles. É como a vida: sempre um compromisso, sempre existem várias opiniões e é importante unir tudo em paz. Então, tocamos quatro sons.
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The one biblical mitzvah on Rosh Hashanah is the hearing of the shofar. The physical source of the shofar is discussed in various talmudic sources that were later codified. In their codifications, Rabbi Yosef Karo and Rabbi Moses Isserles each include a requirement not mentioned in the Mishnah, Talmud, or Yad Chazakah. Rabbi Yosef Karo invalidates shofarot made from antlers and Rabbi Moses Isserles excludes the use of horns of non-kosher animals. These two laws, in particular the latter, which is difficult both from a halakhic and a practical perspective, are discussed and analyzed and halakhic implications are suggested.

In the dedication of her book to her late teacher Baruch M. Bokser, Dvora Weisberg invokes the statement of R. Eleazar ben Shammua in Mishnah Avot 4:12: “Let the honor of your student be as dear to you as your own . . . and your awe of your teacher like your awe of Heaven.” Her use of this quotation points to a link between the world of contemporary Talmud scholarship and that in which the Sages conducted their own Torah study. Weisberg’s book, indeed, strikes a balance between a keen awareness and respect for the ancient text, on the one hand, and an ability to elucidate that text and come to significant conclusions, on the other, while breaking new ground in Englishlanguage scholarship.1 The biblical law of levirate marriage (yibbum) obliges the brother of a man who has died childless to marry his widowed sister-in-law (yevamah), an obligation the brother-in-law (the levir or yavam) can refuse only by undergoing an embarrassing ceremony called ḥalitzah (Deut. 25:5–10). Using an ab...

The object of this dissertation is to elucidate various aspects related to trumpets from the Second Temple period to the end of the Tannaitic period. The study investigates the roles of these instruments, the identity of their players, the different types of trumpets and the materials from which they were made, their design, their manner of construction, the sounds they produced, and their symbolic meaning. There are numerous texts, as well as archeological findings from the Second Temple and the Tannaitic period, describing trumpets in their various facets. Some of these sources have been discussed extensively by scholars who addressed specific (mostly limited) aspects of these instruments, yet a comprehensive picture of the subject has so far been lacking. This dissertation is in fact the first study to focus exclusively on the trumpet in ancient Jewish history and on the issues related to it, in a research model that integrates several methods (critical textual analysis, an examination of archeological findings, and various research tools from the field of musicology, used to study the textual and archeological data). This combination of research methods contributes to the understanding of the information revealed in the different sources, leading to insights and innovations that could not have been attained otherwise.

Poland has never been as homogenous as its ethnolinguistic composition would lead one to believe. In fact, it is every bit as diverse as countries with sharp linguistic, racial, or religious divides. The only difference is that the conflicts and tensions expressed elsewhere between ascriptive communities are experienced in Poland within a shared label of identity. Just because two Poles speak the same language, get baptized in the same church, and identify as Polish does not mean that they define Poland in the same way. In reality, there are at least two Polands today, and the conflict between them has intensified in recent years. This cultural divide is more complicated and crosscutting than any handy categories of rich and poor, young and old, urban and rural, Catholic and secular. There are tendencies that link these various categories, but there is a deeper clash that cuts right through them. At the root of this division is a chasm of incomprehension involving the fundamental and rival concepts of merit and community.

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Bu çalışmanın konusunu hem liturji hem de seküler hayattaki törenlerde
kullanılan çalgılar şofar ve trompetin kullanıldığı yerlerin dinî tasvir sanatına yansımaları oluşturmuştur. Çalışma, birkaç alt başlık altında ele alınmıştır. Giriş bölümünde şofarın bir çalgı olarak nasıl ortaya çıktığı açıklanmıştır. Bu bağlamda, Kitab-ı Mukaddes’te adı sıkça geçen trompet de çalışma kapsamına alınmıştır. Trompet ve şofarın gerek çok tanrılı dönem ve gerekse Kitab-ı Mukaddes’te kullanıldığı yerler karşılaştırılmıştır. Diğer alt başlıklarda; şofarın etimolojisi ve ikonografik geçmişi irdelenmiştir. Etimolojik kökeni değerlendirilirken, şofar adının kökeninde, ikonografik etkenin de önemli olduğu noktası tespit edilmiştir.
Kitab-ı Mukaddes Yaratılış Kitabı 22. Bab’da İbrahim’in Denenmesi olayında
oğlu İshak’ı kurban etme emri ile sınanan İbrahim’e bir koç gönderilmiş ve bu koçun boynuzu şofarın hem etimolojik hem malzeme ve hem de ikonografik geçmişi konusunda önemli olmuştur. Akedah olarak bilinen bu olayın İbrani geleneklerinde önemli bir yeri vardır. Bu nedenle, Kitab-ı Mukaddes’te şofar ve trompetin kullanım yerleri amaçlarına göre sınıflandırılmıştır. Çalışma konusunun önemli bir diğer alt başlığında, şofar ve trompetin dinî tasvir sanatındaki yeri örnekler ile açıklanmıştır. Sonuç bölümünde ise şofar ve trompetin dinî tasvirlerdeki seçimleri ile ilgili olarak genel bir değerlendirme yapılmıştır.
Anahtar kelimeler: Şofar, Trompet, Bizans, Kitab-ı Mukaddes, Dinî Tasvir

The aim of this paper is to present and comment a work of the American rabbi and philosopher Yitzchoq Hutner (Warsaw, 1906 – Jerusalem, 1980), on the transmission and reception of the revelation at Sinai, together with a reflection on contemporary Jewish and biblical hermeneutics in general . According to Hutner, the Shofar, musical instrument made from a ram’s horn (and which is played and heard on the occasion of the Jewish new Year), not only is the same Shofar that resonates since the revelation at Sinai (Exodus 19:19), and that has its roots in the horn of the ram that was sacrificed in place of Isaac (Genesis 22:13); it is the same instrument that heralds the Messianic times (Isaiah 27:13) . The replacement of the first stone tablets received at Sinai do not erase the desire to hear the great messianic Shofar at the end of the times, even if now only the maculate tablets of the Torah (David Weiss Halivni) may be read.

As Naomi Seidman states in her introduction, Sarah Schenirer and the Bais Yaakov Movement: A Revolution in the Name of Tradition is not "an exhaustive or a comprehensive history of the establishment of the movement" (4). Nonetheless, the book raises a plethora of intriguing questions and insights. Many of them will alter the way that scholars look at the phenomenon and motivate further research and reflection. The discussion of early influences and models in the fifth chapter highlights Seidman's grounding in the historiography of the period as well as the deep and creative thinking that make the book such a pleasure to read. While others have noted that Bais Yaakov drew from both German Orthodoxy and Polish Hasidism, Seidman articulates how the seemingly incompatible strands came together to form a uniquely productive whole: "But Bais Yaakov did not merely seek to catch up with the most educated of central European women, but also to surpass them, by adding to Frankfurt Orthodoxy an element of its own: the Hasidic enthusiasm that characterized Polish Jews and which could make an educated Jewish girl also a passionate, strictly observant, and fervently devout one" (154). Further, she unpacks some of the elements of both Hasidism and the Yeshiva world that Schenirer appropriated and repurposed. Seidman writes with sensitivity about how a spiritually and intellectually astute woman turned exclusion into inspiration. Her exploration of Schenirer's role as the movement's "rebbe" is particularly interesting. Although acutely aware of the ways that Hasidism bifurcated the Jewish family, Seidman demonstrates how Schenirer's innovations replicated this process: "Bais Yaakov often claimed to be rebuilding the traditional family devastated by modernity, but its more immediate Shofar 38.1 A Revelation 271 Spring 2020

Originally a 1999 "Jewish Observer" essay, reprinted in "A Path Through the Ashes" published by Artscroll. See a different, abridged version by Mrs. Shira Schmidt at:

http://www.cross-currents.com/archives/2007/09/10/sounding-the-shofar-in-auschwitz/

In the Kabbalah, the words Rosh Hashanah have deeper shades of meaning than the customary translation of “beginning of the year,” or “new year.” Rosh means “beginning,” but shanah derives etymologically from shinui, “change” or “transformation.” Rosh Hashanah then becomes “the beginning of transformation.” “Beginning” is in this sense then, an entry point, a portal or pivoting point on our journey toward fulfillment, whose goal is enlightenment—what Tzadok Hakohen and Mordechai Lainer call he’arah. For them, enlightenment is no less than the awakened state where man realizes his ontic identity with the divine. And, according to spiritual master Schneur Zalman of Liadi, this core transformation of man into God is both mystically symbolized and catalyzed by the Shofar ceremony.

This chapter examines four occurrences of the shofar published over a thirty- four-year period. Two come from the Golden and early Silver Ages of comics, when the horn was confined to “young folks” Bible adaptations, such as Picture Stories from the Bible (1942) and Tales from the Great Book (1955).  In the 1960s, as the comic book industry adjusted to the self-imposed Comics Code Authority, writers of superhero books turned to “safer” subject matter, including Bible-inspired whimsy. The shofar in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen no. 79 (1964) captures both the ingenuity and shortcomings of that era. A more serious example from the Bronze Age Teen Titans series (1976) rounds out the chapter. Taken together, these examples chart the creative evolution of the depiction of the shofar in comics, as well as the broader maturation of the art form. It is a journey from stale to silly to sublime.

The shofar is the only of all ancient Jewish musical instruments mentioned in the Torah which has survived to this day. It still fulfils ritual functions in the modern Jewish community. The directions concerning its manufacture have stayed unchanged for thousands of years; to a great degree the same can be said about the perception of both the shofar and its sound by the people of different epochs.

... Biblical Hebrew," in Proceedings of the Sixth International Colloquium, Bible and Computer, Stellenbosch, 17 ... See also the following: JA Naudé, "A Syntactic Analysis of Certain Dislocations in Biblical ... in Bybelse Aramees," JSem 2:1 (1990): 50-65; JA Naudé, "Qumran Hebrew as ...

All three books are works of literary (and political) critique that tell a story chronologically. They differ, however, in scope and purpose. Whereas Lebovic uses his literary biography of Israel Zarchi to delve into Zionism’s political theology and to offer a new concept of negation, Gluzman’s work offers the literary biography of a cohort of poets. Olmert’s book offers a thick description of Israeli culture by plumbing texts beyond fiction, while examining the image and political status of the soldier’s mother. They also share a heavy reliance on psychoanalytical and critical theory. Against a historical background, they analyze literary works. His-torical events and circumstances serve as impetuses, motives, or explana-tions. My critique will center on my personal and professional interest, which is the historical perspectives they offer. Indeed, these books are important not just as literary critiques. Their political perspective allows them to contribute to the understanding of Israeli history and to the wider field of Israel studies. To explain why, I will first address each book in turn.

In an interview published in the New York Times in March 2020, titled "What Judaism Teaches Us about the Fear of Death," philosopher George Yancy describes the ways traditional Judaism generally focuses more on life than on death. Alternatively, he explains, it could sometimes be said to focus more on death than on life, depending on what texts, traditions, and interpretations one examines. Using the Akedah, or the story of the binding of Isaac, as an example, he states, "Different Jewish interpretations of [the story]. .. reflect this range between an emphasis on life, on the one hand, and the spiritual possibilities presented by death on the other hand." 1 When we titled this special issue of Shofar "What's Jewish about Death?," it was with this very ambivalence-what we see as a central and productive tension running through Jewish tradition and culture-in mind. This collection is made up of a series of creative and critical responses to our question, confirmation of how an ironically categorical inquiry can liberate if we remain open to where it may take us. There is, of course, nothing particularly Jewish about death, that ultimate universalizing force. But today, several years following the 2018 Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh, and in the midst of the 2020 swelling of support for Black Lives Matter, a worldwide activist movement driven by grief, alongside the devastating and still in-progress global Coronavirus pandemic, the puzzles of what Jewishness and Judaism, in their many configurations and iterations, can teach us about death, and what attending closely to death, as well as its close companions, mourning and grief, can teach us about Jewishness and Judaism, have particular urgency. As numerous historians and scholars recognize, it was in times of great upheaval, including around the Crusades and the Black Death, and its attendant massacres, that various now widely recognized Jewish customs and rituals surrounding death, mourning, and memorialization were crystallized. 2 This contemporary moment, then, seems like the right time to rethink what death-and its economic, material, social, ideological, and emotional contexts and circumstances-can mean for Jews and the world around us.

Toledot Yeshu, or "Stories about Jesus," have been transmitted by Jews for centuries but only recently have begun to garner significant scholarly attention as part of a tradition of anti-Christian polemic. This paper contends that the varied depictions of Jesus' conception in the Toledot corpus reflect the intracommunal issues of forced conversion, apostasy, and overfamiliarity with non-Jews. The theme was neither new to the Toledot nor a product of the late-antique and medieval contexts that Jewish stories of Jesus first circulated in. Rather, it echoes biblical representations of, and admonishments against, illicit relationships with non-Jews which ancient authors commonly depicted through a typology of sexual promiscuity. It is only when viewing Toledot presentations of Jesus' conception in light of both contemporary events and the Jewish biblical literary tradition that we are able to grasp their previously unnoted functions as 1) Jewish selfcriticism regarding intercommunal relations; and, 2) a didactic warning to future generations against making similar mistakes. Once there was a Jewish woman, Miriam, who lay with a man other than her husband and conceived a child, Yehoshua, Yeshu for short. A bastard and thus a blemish on his family's reputation from the start, young Yeshu would grow to become the bane of his community as well: not only was he a precocious student who disrespectfully challenged his teachers' authority, he led many Jews to stray from Judaism due to his ability to perform wondrous acts. Indeed, it was only because of his wit and craft that many believed his claims that he was the awaited Messiah and the Son of God. But the wise leaders of the community were able to secure his execution by showing Yeshu was only able to perform wonders through magic rather than miracle. After his death, a Jewish gardener guarded Yeshu's body in order to prove that he had not been resurrected, as his followers believed he would be. Still, they continued to agitate the community with their protests that Yeshu was the Messiah. It was only after a pious and learned Jew, Paul, convinced those who persisted in their unorthodox beliefs to separate themselves from the community that the dissenters established a different religious identity as Christians.

War in Palestine 1948: Strategy and Diplomacy, by David Tal. London: Routledge, 2004. 498 pp. $104.95. David Tal specializes in Israel's early military history, from the 1948 war to the shaping of its security concept afterwards and the road to the Suez war of 1956. With this academic background, his new book promises a marked contribution to the historiography of 1948, which has hitherto been concerned mainly with political and diplomatic aspects and rarely addressed the war's military dimension. The book indeed offers the first comprehensive documented military history of the two phases in the 1948 war, namely, the inter-communal Arab-Jewish war (30 November 1947-14 May 1948) and the international war, which began with the invasion of Palestine by four Arab regular armies immediately after the proclamation of the State of Israel and the end of the British Mandate. Tal presents a detailed record of the events, especially the military course of the war and operations conducted by the main military players. He elaborates on the changes of each actor's order of battle, armament, battle units and their deployment, and explains the immediate causes of military failures and successes, on both tactical and operational levels. Within this context he addresses and adequately tackles some key issues regarding military objectives and decision making, such as: why did the Egyptian army refrain from proceeding to Tel Aviv; the difficulties of the Jewish military command to shift from fighting a guerrilla warfare to a regular one till a relatively late phase of the war; and the impact of the battle for Jerusalem on the Jewish total war effort and decision making. On a broader level, Tal's main conclusions are largely in line with the common wisdom about the war: The failure of the Arab Palestinians reflected their political fragmentation and weak institutions; Israel's military successes and territorial gains were scored in battles against irregular forces, whether local Arab-Palestinians or foreign volunteers; the Arab military and political involvement in the war was marked by interstate competition and reluctance to risk their own forces for rescuing Arab-Palestine. Nonetheless, apart from the last two operations against the Egyptian forces in the south (October and December 1948), the IDF failed in its initiated operations against regular Arab forces; the regular Arab armies rarely attacked areas allotted to the Jewish state, and their main areas of deployment were largely congruent with the territories assigned for the Arab-Palestinian state; and only King Abdallah of Jordan was motivated by appetite for territorial gains. The book offers no convincing causal explanation for the collective decision of the Arab League's member states to invade Palestine other than referring to their competition for power and prestige-the prevailing argument in the literature-thus overlooking the primary role played by domestic social and political forces in driving their governments to send their armies into Palestine. Tal's heroic effort to encompass both military and diplomatic history of the war and all the parties involved can hardly conceal fundamental deficiencies of both substance and methodology. For one, the book represents by and large the Israeli narrative of events, periodization, and perceptions of the Arab adversaries and processes of decision making as well as military failures and successes. Indeed, the book's better parts are those discussing the Israeli military processes of decision making and records of Israeli operations, especially those conducted in the later part of the war against the Egyptian forces. Tal counts heavily on Israeli primary sources (most salient among them are Ben-Gurion's war diary and IDF archives and post-war studies) and British archives to tell the story of both Jewish and Arab players in the war. In the absence of accessible official archives in the Arab states the author's inability to use even the available Arabic literature on the war-other than a handful of sources translated into Hebrew-the book leaves out a wealth of accessible primary Arab sources such as newspapers, archival documents held by Israeli archives, diaries, memoirs, and studies. …

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave, 2001. 246 pp. $69.95. There is increasing scholarly and popular interest in the phenomenon of Crypto-Judaism among the descendants of Spanish Jews. Not the least of the reasons for this has been the surge of intense personal and communal interest in the phenomenon among Jews and non-Jews, scholars and popularizers. For U.S. Hispanos, Crypto-Judaism and the Inquisition came to the fore in a generation that remembered its grandparents' villages as they themselves came to live in larger cities. Assimilation, multiculturalism, and various other trends forced rethinking of personal identities. In Spain and Portugal, a cultural and religious openness, based in part on the demise of dictators, allowed for a rethinking of the role of the Jewish and Islamic heritage in the national narrative and in some cases of personal narratives. Especially vibrant have been these questions in which scholarship deals with key components of "Jewish Continuity" -- combating anti-semitism, preventing disappearance through assimilation, and responding to the Holocaust. Until fairly recently, there were relatively few discussions about the practice of Crypto-Judaism after the early 17(th) century. Few imagined that any meaningful observance of Judaism had survived beyond the deaths of, say, the fourth or fifth generation after 1492 -- after there were no longer any Crypto-Jews who had been born before the Expulsion or even any who had been trained by that first generation. For the past twenty years, however, there has been increasing evidence that Jewish practices and identity survived intact in meaningful ways even into the 20(th) century, when some individuals or communities "returned" to open practice of Judaism. The persistence of Crypto-Judaism among the descendants of the original conversos has meanwhile been demonstrated for much later periods than before, particularly because of increased accessibility of Inquisition archives and the growth in the number of scholars willing to undertake the painstaking research. But often discourses of almost ideological nature drive the research agendas. Some researchers seem out to prove that the Conversos by and large left Judaism and became meshumadim, "apostates," or, indeed that the converso should be (and was) considered goy gamur, "non-Jewish" in every respect. Benzion Netanyahu is perhaps most closely associated with this school of thought, and with the perception of the role of the Inquisition and Spanish attitudes towards limpieza de sangre, "purity of blood," as precursors of the racial policies of the Nazis. In contrast, others may want to stress the degree to which both Jews and Old Christians considered conversos and Jews to be one nation. Another approach stresses "modernity": Yirmiyahu Yovel's biography of Benedict Spinoza, one volume of which is subtitled The Marrano of Reason (Princeton University Press, 1989), depicts Spinoza as heir to a Marrano Judaism which lacked access to Rabbinic tradition. Such scholarship cites Marrano loyalty to a Judaism without the yoke of tradition as a powerful force for reform, change, and secularization in the early modern world, among Jews and even among Western civilization in general; Karen Armstrong cites Yovel's idea in The Battle for God. Still another strand stresses the role of women, whose loyalty to Judaism and ritual knowledge was paramount or in any case equal to that of the men. Alpert's work is pathbreaking in terms of illuminating the ongoing Jewish identity and practice of crypto-Jews in the 17(th) and 18(th) centuries, eight generations and more after the establishment of the Inquisition, with an important chapter on the Marranos in France. …

The present study establishes meaning and linkage among a cluster of specific structural features —the snap, twang, and blue note— and between this cluster and the temporal deviations they can be found accompanying. These features are explored through their perceived sonic, textual, and motional properties, as they have emerged across cultures and historical periods, with distinct ethos. Consideration is taken for the ethnic, social, and spiritual meanings invoked by each feature, their interrelationships as a cluster, and with temporal deviation. Interrelationships include: snap and temporal deviations both emerging from polytempic interactions, yet contrasting in their respective grounded and floating qualities; snap and twang each articulating (i.e.: ‘worrying’) flexible blue note pitch regions; and twang and blue note’s respective articulations of vocal harmonics. I propose an isomorphic continuum may explain the ratios of temporal deviations identified in a number of African-American musics, suggesting deep interrelationships among snap, twang, blue note, and temporal deviations. If the blue note and certain temporal deviations are isomorphic, we can also learn about temporal deviation by studying the ethos of the blue note: I compare the ‘blue third’ with the diatonic minor third. The relationships between these features and temporal deviations suggest they function as co-expressions of, or redundant cues for, the performer’s awareness and commitment. I interpret the consistency of heightened arousal invoked by these features, as embodied understanding across cultural contexts. When embodied, the cue is perceived directly: for example, commitment and intensity is experienced, not merely represented, in the snap. Such cross-cultural consistency of meaning does not preclude the possibility that the features function as code-switching cues to mark transformative moments in music, since consistency of meaning doesn’t indicate consistency of ideology. Connecting the features to their subdivided variations opens the door to understanding the relevance and applicability of this study’s findings across an even wider breadth of musical practices. The spontaneous participant —artist, witness, researcher— kinesthetically channelling the creative spirit, stands to gain appreciation for the compatibility and complexity of different gestures, their consonances and dissonances, across disciplines and traditions.

In a traditional Ashkenazic community, all types of sound-related creative activities are somehow connected with sacral sphere. However, some types of music are considered “magic”, while the other, also performing ritual functions, are perceived as profane, and their magical essence moves to the sphere of subconsciousness.
The article deals with mythological concepts of shofar and klezmer music, synagogue chants and niguns, as well as faulty judgements, which emerged due to new mythologizations and are often met in modern research works.

Fr. Lawrence Boadt, a biblical scholar with long involvement in Jewish-Christian relations, used to say, "Christians too often think that they know Judaism by reading the Old Testament. And too many Jews think that they know Christianity without reading the New Testament." Zev Garber seems to be responding to this challenge, especially by opening the New Testament, first in new ways for Christians, and, in some cases, for the first time to Jews. In his helpful volume, Teaching the Historical Jesus: Issues and Exegesis, Garber has gathered essays that address, many in very practical ways, how the initial historical issues of the Church's emergence and separation from Judaism (e.g., Jesus' teaching, destruction of the Temple, the Pharisees, the crucifixion of Jesus) might be approached both for Jewish and Christian students. Garber's book title is accurate, for the essays range from the very practical (e.g., how to put together a curriculum for undergraduates) to how one situates Jesus within his social and anthropological matrix. Assembling twenty other scholars in addition to himself, Garber, emeritus professor and Chair of Jewish Studies and Philosophy at Los Angeles Valley College, has gathered articles that speak to the experiences of teaching the historical Jesus in many venues: from small liberal arts colleges in the American South to rabbinical schools in Israel. Most of the authors are Jewish, with a smaller number of Christians, and they have diverse backgrounds and interests. (However, he only includes three women among the twenty-one contributors.) With so many authors, the essays are consequently short, some only a few pages. What is gained by breadth sometimes entails sacrificing depth. For those looking for more, Garber has provided a very helpful, if limited, bibliography. In his introduction, after a short description of the various "quests for the historical Jesus," Garber gives a short précis of each essay, situating them within the tripartite book. These sections are: I. Jesus in Undergraduate Education; II. Some Issues in Teaching Jesus; and III. Teaching Views on Jesus. Section I is by far the most practical, personal, and anecdotal, including, in a few contributions, excerpts from essays written by Garber's students. Garber

This essay looks at three novels by contemporary Israeli female novelists from different religious backgrounds who describe the process of women’s repentance and return to religion [teshuvah]. The novels I will discuss by Noa Yaron-Dayan, Mekimi [Raise Me Up] (2007), Michal Govrin, Hashem (1995; The Name, 1998), and Emunah Elon’s Simkhah gedolah bashamayim [If You Awaken Love] (2004) track a journey from the secular world to rediscovery of Jewish traditional lifestyles and renewed faith in the covenantal narrative between God and the people of Israel. Along the way, these novels expose the modern or progressive also engage in frank discussions about sex and sexuality. A persistent motif is modest clothing, and the kerchief in particular functions as an outer sign of the inner struggle in a return to Judaism in search of inner spirituality and femininity from an empowered position of personal choice. I conclude with a novel by Natanella Schlesinger, Akharei hama’asim [When the Deed Was Done] (2017), about two sisters who face the choices between secular and religious worlds. In contrast to the confessional mode of teshuvah, Schlesinger’s novel shows that the journey does not always end, and that the destination is not always known. These novels express women’s voices demanding to be heard in Israel’s ongoing culture wars.

Problems and Parables of Law: Maimonides and Nahmanides on Reasons for the Commandments (Ta'amei Ha-Mitzvot)One wonders if it is possible to contribute anything novel and enlightening to the virtually inundated field of Maimonidean studies. Though the field is undoubtedly worthy of all the attention, the caliber of scholarship does not always rise to the exacting standards of circumspection which Maimonides himself demanded of his readers. Josef Stern's book qualifies him to be counted among the best of Maimonides' modern interpreters by remaining faithfully mindful of the Guide of the Perplexed's prefatory admonitions that its diction has been chosen "with great exactness and exceeding precision." By way of a series of studies, all revised versions of previously published essays, Stern addresses serious theoretical and existential quandaries raised by Maimonides' revolutionary and controversial account of the rationale for the commandments (ta'amei ha-mitzvot).As the title suggests, Stern's focus is aimed at resolving the problems engendered by historically conditioned commandments as well as casting the commandments themselves in the hermeneutical mold of the parable. According to Maimonides, no law is without its rationale, and what distinguishes huqqim, traditionally understood to be divine yet arbitrary decrees, from others is merely the level of difficulty in determining their specific reasons. The commandments were a direct response to the idolatrous Sabian cult to which the ancient Israelites had become acculturated. The strategy of the Law was to adopt those very same practices and subvert them from within. The commandments are concessions to human nature, which must be progressively weaned off corrupt habits to the point of their total eradication. Paradigmatic of the Law's telos are the sacrificial rites which adopt pagan practice only to restrict, confine, and regulate it so that it is ultimately emptied of its idolatrous tenets. Historicization of the Law, though, renders it vulnerable to the danger of antinomianism, which would militate against its continued performance in the face of new historical conditions and context. Chapters 2 and 6 set out to resolve this practical theological dilemma of the Law's obsolescence by demonstrating that the Guide itself offers a response to an obvious threat which could not have escaped it. In the former chapter a profound analogy is drawn between nature and the Law both epistemologically and ontologically. Various implications are drawn from this parallel which argue forcefully for the immutability of the Law, as change would undermine its divine foundations. To choose but one analogy, just as nature can only aim at a "general utility" which may cause damage in individual cases, so does the Law operate on the same basis. Both, though, having emerged from one deity, are as perfect as possibility allows.What is particularly intriguing is Stern's discovery of another account in chapter III: 51-52 which addresses the concerns of philosophically mature worshippers who would find performance of archaic commands a futile exercise. It is precisely their utilitarian irrelevance, Stern argues, which makes them attractive vehicles for diverting one's focus from worldly matters to divine ones. Drained as they are of their practical effects, they can be used exclusively as training apparatus to focus the mind on God, the sole endeavor in which man truly exploits his humanity. The only criticism I have of this astute solution is whether ultimately the needs of the religious and intellectual elite are truly satisfied by it. The very knowledge of a commandment's practical obsolescence is bound to cloud performance of it and distract from its "other worldly training. …

Zevi Yehuda Kook presided over the religious right from the 1970's onward. He stayed at R. Kook's Jerusalem yeshiva, Ha-Yeshivah ha-Merkazit ha-Olamit ("The Central Global Yeshiva"), now known as Merkaz ha-Rav, for over a decade after his father's death, poring over his father's writings and revising them for publication. Thereafter, R. Zevi Yehuda was

Abstract:The article aims at introducing into the recent discussion on the formation of the Pentateuch or Hexateuch, which has taken place since the seventies of the last century mainly in Europe and especially in Germany. Observed from other parts of the world, it seems to be rather unclear and difficult to see through. Therefore, an attempt will be made, to investigate this history of research critically from methodological and factual points of view in order to get some indications for its meaningful development. Especially the concepts of Peter Weimar, Erich Zenger, Reinhard G. Kratz, Erhard Blum, and Eckart Otto will be discussed, and my own proposal will be drafted.

Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. A riveting account of the military engagements, it also focuses on the war's political dimensions. Benny Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation. The Arab side-where the archives are still closed-is illuminated with the help of intelligence and diplomatic materials. Morris stresses the jihadi character of the two-stage Arab assault on the Jewish community in Palestine. Throughout, he examines the dialectic between the war's military and political developments and highlights the military impetus in the creation of the refugee problem, which was a by-product of the disintegration of Palestinian Arab society. The book thoroughly investigates the role of the Great Powers-Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union-in shaping the conflict and its tentative termination in 1949. Morris looks both at high politics and general staff decision-making processes and at the nitty-gritty of combat in the successive battles that resulted in the emergence of the State of Israel and the humiliation of the Arab world, a humiliation that underlies the continued Arab antagonism toward Israel.

UNDER POSTCOLONIAL EYES: FIGURING THE "JEW" IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH WRITING By Efraim Sicher and Linda Weinhouse. Studies in Antisemitism. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013. 316 pp.Coauthors Efraim Sicher and Linda Weinhouse undertook a daunting task in Under Postcolonial Eyes: Figuring the "jew" in Contemporary British Writing. Their preface and introduction outline a plethora of ideas to reconsider literary representations of the "jew," even if that character may not be Jew- ish, in recent British literature. The authors differentiate the term "jew" as the "cultural construction of a figure" from "real Jews" (xi). While a difficult point of discernment, it is also an important moment of definition for a text that goes on to repeatedly differentiate between the terms using boundar- ies that are often unclear both within the texts under analysis as well as in this text. The problems of definition make it tricky for readers to navigate. For example, the introduction overviews the complications and complexi- ties of Jewish conversion from the Renaissance to the contemporary Jew, yet the definition of Marranos as converts "who secretly practice Judaism" (2) is too hasty since the label was applied liberally and derogatorily to Conver- sos (Jews who had converted to Christianity) regardless of their practice. Hence, in chapter 3, ideology and representation are confused historical practices: "the Marranos who came to England from the late fourteenth to seventeenth centuries were apt representations in drama of the period of the idea that identity was unstable and could be determined by individu- als" (105). The nuanced literary life and afterlife of Renaissance figures is also undercut with the glib statement in regard to Carly Phillips's The Nature of Blood that "yet the role of Othello in this novel is not so simple to understand" as Shakespeare's (128). These are just a few brief examples in which Under Postcolonial raises vital ideas of hybrid bodies and fluid identi- ties but does not sufficiently engage with them. The whirlwind of ideas and the critical voices they bring to bear are stunning and thought provoking, covering more breadth than depth, with the main difficulties arising from an overall (perhaps postcolonial) fragmentation of argument and insuffi- cient definition of nuanced terms.Chapter 1, "Under Colonial Eyes: Doris Lessing and the Jews," exam- ines the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient Doris Lessing, mingling discussions of her literary "representation of the 'jew'" and of "her [auto- biographical] relation of Jews" to show Lessing's unquestioned descriptions of Jews. This chapter demonstrates how Jewish characters can be used as "surrogate[s] for other subaltern groups about whom it was not so easy to speak" (48). This chapter's historical review of South African policies aims to uncover Jewish stereotypes used by non-Jews and Jews alike in a dem- onstration of the spread of the British literary pattern of negative Jewish images to its colonies. Some contradictions are left unresolved, as when we are told that Lessing abandons "autobiographical writing altogether" in her novel Landlocked then on the next page that "Lessing makes it likely that the real meaning of his battle against the British Empire-his 'Zionism'- is to be read as Lessing's own intended message" (64). The interpretation of Lessing's conclusion, that "once the 'jew' has been removed, the dispa- rate European elements can easily be reabsorbed into the community" in conjunction with Amaar Mufti's conclusion that "the Jewish Question can be evicted from the European home to be solved elsewhere" draws atten- tion to literary displacement of the "jew"; but readers are left wanting some more authorial direction about these interwoven texts and pieces of context. …

In the present study, a competent and reproducible practice for the in vitro shoot regeneration of Cucurbita maxima, C. pepo and Cucumis sativus was developed from various explants through direct and indirect organogenesis. In C. maxima, between cotyledon and leaf segment, cotyledon was found to be most responsive for callus induction in MS medium augmented with 0.5 mg L-1 2,4 dichlorophenoxy acetic acid (2,4-D) plus 100 mg L-1 casein hydrolysate and 0.5 mg L-1 2,4-D plus 15% coconut water and for leaf segment it was on MS medium containing 2.5 mg L-1 2,4-D. Comparing the 2 explants it was found that leaf segment was most suitable for callus induction in C. maxima. For massive multiplication of C. pepo mericlones shoot tip and nodal cutting were used. MS medium containing 3.0 mg L-1 6-benzyl aminopurine plus 0.5 mg L-1 gibberellic acid (GA 3) was found most effective for shoot regeneration and 1.0 mg L-1 IBA was found most effective for rooting. In this trait cv. Bulum was more responsive than cv. Rumbo. On the other hand, to generate virus free plantlets of C. sativus, different concentrations of kinetin were used, and 1.5 mg L-1 KIN shown the best performance for primary culture establishment. For shoot multiplication, 1.0 mg L-1 BAP and 2.0 mg L-1 BAP plus 0.5 mg L-1 KIN containing medium shown best result. Subsequently, 2.0 mg L-1 BAP plus 0.5 mg L-1 KIN was best composition for root induction. Our report demonstrated comprehensive protocols and variability in explants, growth regulator response in shoot regeneration potential of in different cucurbit plants.

The aim of the article, which contains numerous references to the biblical logosphere, is to put the story of the Israelite conquest of Jericho (Joshua 6:1-27) in a research perspective taking into account the theological, literary, historical and musicological contexts. In the biblical account of the fall of Jericho (13th century BC) three musical terms are mentioned: šôp̄ār (Joshua 6:4.5.8.9.13.16.20), šôp̄ěrôṯ hayyôḇělîm/šôp̄ěrôṯ yôḇělîm (Joshua 6:4.6.8.13) and qeren hayyôḇēl (Joshua 6:5). Šôp̄ār, qeren and yôḇēl have the same linguistic equivalent - ram’s horn. The absence of šôp̄ěrôṯ hayyôḇělîm (Joshua 6:4.8.13) and šôp̄ěrôṯ yôḇělîm (Joshua 6:6) in the climax of the account (Joshua 6:20; they are also missing from Joshua 6:16) provides us with a credible basis to assume that the words hayyôḇělîm and yôḇělîm are linguistic additions most likely to evoke the jubilee year (Leviticus 25:8-17.38). The incorporation into Joshua 6:1-21 of the šôp̄ār horns instead of the hǎṣōṣěrâ trumpets - proper priestly wind instruments (Numbers 10:8) - seems to have been influenced by the description of the theophany on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:16-25). In the Book of Joshua (interpreted as historical-theological and even literary fiction), edited in the 6th century BC, the shofars, apotropaic aerophones can be perceived, in the light of Numbers 10:10, as links between the earth and heavens.