The golem and Kabalah

The Sefer Yetzirah is deeply rooted into the theory of the creation of a golem. The
first mention of the creation of a golem, or an artificial being, is found in the
Babylonian First Talmud passages of Sanhedrin 65b, Sanhedrin 66b, treatise Erubin,
p. 63.

"But, alas, your iniquities have separated between you and your Gd." Sandhedrin
65b, in reference to Isaiah 59:2, LIX.2. This section is preceded by a discussion on
ba'al ob and conjuring the dead to foretell the future.

"Raba said: If the righteousness desired it, they could [by living a life of absolute
purity], be creators, for it is written, 'But your iniquities have distinguished between,
etc.' (ed. ibid to above quote. Raba understands mabadilim in the sense of "draw a
distinction." Read more about golem.

The Golem
A Jewish Legend

In the town of Worms [in Germany] there once lived a pious man of the name of Bezalel to
whom a son was born on the first night of Passover. This happened in the year 5273 after the
creation of the world [1579 common era], at a time when the Jews all over Europe were
suffering from cruel persecutions.

The nations in whose midst the children of Israel were dwelling constantly accused them of
ritual murder. The Jews, their enemies pretended, used the blood of Christian children in the
preparation of their Passover bread; but the arrival of the son of Rabbi Bezalel soon proved to
be the occasion of frustrating the evil intentions of two miscreants who sought to show to
Christendom that the Jews were actually guilty of ritual murder.

In the night, when the wife of Rabbi Bezalel was seized with labor pains, the servants who
had rushed out of the house in search of a midwife luckily prevented two men, who were just
going to throw a sack containing the body of a dead child into the Jew-street, with a view to
proving the murderous practice of the Jews, from carrying out their evil intention. Rabbi
Bezalel then prophesied that his newborn son was destined to bring consolation to Israel and
to save his people from the accusation of ritual murder.

"The name of my son in Israel," said Rabbi Bezalel "shall be Judah Arya, even as the
Patriarch Jacob said when he blessed his children: 'Judah is a lion's whelp; from the prey, my
son, thou art gone up.'" (Genesis 49:9)

Rabbi Bezalel's son grew up and increased in strength and knowledge; he became a great
scholar, well versed in the Holy Law, but also a master of all branches of knowledge and
familiar with many foreign languages. In time he was elected Rabbi of Posen [in Poland], but
later received a call to the city of Prague, where he was appointed chief judge of the Jewish
community.

All his thoughts and actions were devoted to the welfare of his suffering people and his great
aim in life was to clear Israel of the monstrous accusation of ritual murder which like a sword
of Damocles was perpetually suspended over the head of the unhappy race. Fervently did the

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rabbi pray to Heaven to teach him in a vision by what means he could best bring to naught
the false accusations of the miscreant priests who were spreading the cruel rumors.

And one night he heard a mysterious voice calling to him, "Make a human image of clay and
thus you will succeed in frustrating the evil intentions of the enemies of Israel."

On the following morning the master called his son-in-law and his favorite pupil and
acquainted them with the instruction he had received from Heaven. He also asked the two to
help him in the work he was about to undertake.

"Four elements," he said, "are required for the creation of the golem or homunculus, namely,
earth, water, fire and air."

"I myself," thought the holy man, "possess the power of the wind; my son-in-law embodies
fire, while my favorite pupil is the symbol of water, and between the three of us we are bound
to succeed in our work." He urged on his companions the necessity of great secrecy and
asked them to spend seven days in preparing for the work.

On the twentieth day of the month of Adar, in the year five thousand three hundred and forty
after the creation of the world, in the fourth hour after midnight, the three men betook
themselves to a river on the outskirts of the city on the banks of which they found a loam pit.
Here they kneaded the soft clay and fashioned the figure of a man three ells high. They
fashioned the features, hands and feet, and then placed the figure of clay on its back upon the
ground.

The three learned men then stood at the feet of the image which they had created and the
rabbi commanded his son-in-law to walk round the figure seven times, while reciting a
cabalistic formula he had himself composed. And as soon as the son-in-law had completed
the seven rounds and recited the formula, the figure of clay grew red like a gleaming coal.
Thereupon the rabbi commanded his pupil to perform the same action, namely, walk round
the lifeless figure seven times while reciting another formula. The effect of the performance
was this time an abatement of the heat. The figure grew moist and vapors emanated from it,
while nails sprouted on the tips of its fingers and its head was suddenly covered with hair.
The face of the figure of clay looked like that of a man of about thirty.

At last the rabbi himself walked seven times round the figure, and the three men recited the
following sentence from the history of creation in Genesis: "And the Lord God formed man
of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a
living soul." (Genesis 2:7)

As soon as the three pious men had spoken these words, the eyes of the Golem opened and he
gazed upon the rabbi and his pupils with eyes full of wonder. Rabbi Loew [also spelled Lw]
thereupon spoke aloud to the man of clay and commanded him to rise from the ground. The
Golem at once obeyed and stood erect on his feet. The three men then arrayed the figure in
the clothes they had brought with them, clothes worn by the beadles of the synagogues, and
put shoes on his feet.

And the rabbi once more addressed the newly fashioned image of clay and thus he spoke,
"Know you, clod of clay, that we have fashioned you from the dust of the earth that you may
protect the people of Israel against its enemies and shelter it from the misery and suffering to
which our nation is subjected. Your name shall be Joseph, and you shall dwell in my
courtroom and perform the work of a servant. You shall obey my commands and do all that I

2
may require of you, go through fire, jump into water or throw yourself down from a high
tower."

The Golem only nodded his head as if to give his consent to the words spoken by the rabbi.
His conduct was in every respect that of a human being; he could hear and understand all that
was said to him, but he lacked the power of speech. And thus it happened on that memorable
night that while only three men had left the house of the rabbi, four returned home in the
sixth hour after midnight.

The rabbi kept the matter secret, informing his household that on his way in the morning to
the ritual bathing establishment he had met a beggar, and, finding him honest and innocent,
had brought him home. He had the intention of engaging him as a servant to attend to the
work in his schoolroom, but he forbade his household to make the man perform any other
domestic work.

And the Golem thenceforth remained in a corner of the schoolroom, his head upon his two
hands, sitting motionless. He gave the impression of a creature bereft of reason, neither
understanding nor taking any notice of what was happening around him. Rabbi Loew said of
him that neither fire nor water had the power of harming him, nor could any sword wound
him. He had called the man of clay Joseph, in memory of Joseph Sheda mentioned in the
Talmud who is said to have been half human and half spirit, and who had served the rabbis
and frequently saved them from great trouble.

Rabbi Loew, the miracle worker, availed himself of the services of the Golem only on
occasions when it was a question of defending his people against the blood accusations from
which the Jews of Prague had to suffer greatly in those days.

Whenever the miracle-working Rabbi Loew sent out the Golem and was anxious that he
should not be seen, he used to suspend on his neck an amulet written on the skin of a hart, a
talisman which rendered the man of clay invisible, while he himself was able to see
everything. During the week preceding the feast of Passover the Golem wandered about in
the streets of the city stopping everybody who happened to be carrying some burden on his
back. It frequently occurred that the bundle contained a dead child which the miscreant
intended to deposit in the Jew-street; the Golem at once tied up the man and the body with a
rope which he carried in his pocket, and, leading the mischief maker to the town hall, handed
him over to the authorities. The Golem's power was quite supernatural and he performed
many good deeds.

A day came when a law was finally promulgated declaring the blood accusation to be
groundless, and the Jews breathed a sigh of relief when all further persecutions on account of
alleged ritual murder were forbidden. Rabbi Loew now decided to take away the breath of
life from the Golem, the figure of clay which his hands had once fashioned. He placed Joseph
upon a bed and commanded his disciples once more to walk round the Golem seven times
and repeat the words they had spoken when the figure was created, but this time in reverse
order. When the seventh round was finished, the Golem was once more a lifeless piece of
clay. They divested him of his clothes, and wrapping him in two old praying shawls, hid the
clod of clay under a heap of old books in the rabbi's garret.

Rabbi Loew afterwards related many incidents connected with the creation of the Golem.
When he was on the point of blowing the breath of life into the nostrils of the figure of clay
he had created, two spirits had appeared to him; that of Joseph the demon and that of
Jonathan the demon. He chose the former, the spirit of Joseph, because he had already
revealed himself as the protector of the rabbis of the Talmud, but he could not endow the

3
figure of clay with the power of speech because the living spirit inhabiting the Golem was
only a sort of animal vitality and not a soul. He possessed only small powers of discernment,
being unable to grasp anything belonging to the domain of real intelligence and higher
wisdom.

And yet, although the Golem was not possessed of a soul, one could not fail to notice that on
the Sabbath there was something peculiar in his bearing, for his face bore a friendlier and
more amiable expression than it did on weekdays. It was afterwards related that every Friday
Rabbi Loew used to remove the tablet on which he had written the Ineffable Name from
under the Golem's tongue, as he was afraid lest the Sabbath should make the Golem immortal
and men might be induced to worship him as an idol. The Golem had no inclinations, either
good or bad. Whatever action he performed he did under compulsion and out of fear lest he
should be turned again into dust and reduced to naught once more. Whatever was situated
within ten ells above the ground or under it he could reach easily and nothing would stop him
in the execution of anything that he had undertaken.

Kay E. Vandergrift
In order to understand Golem by David Wisniewski it is useful to read some of the
research and writings about this very old legend and the issues connected to it. The
story has connections to Jewish mysticism while also possessing a long thread in
fictional literature. The excerpts provided below help to frame your understanding of
this legend and the additional readings serve to fill out any gaps remaining.

ON JEWISH MYSTICISM

Cabala (Hebrew, "received tradition"), generically, Jewish mysticism in all its forms;
specifically, the esoteric theosophy that crystallized in 13th-century Spain and
Provence, France, around Sefer ha-zohar (The Book of Splendor), referred to as the
Zohar, and generated all later mystical movements in Judaism. See Mysticism;
Theosophy. The earliest known form of Jewish mysticism dates from the first centuries
AD and is a variant on the prevailing Hellenistic astral mysticism, in which the adept,
through meditation and the use of magic formulas, journeys ecstatically through and
beyond the seven astral spheres. In the Jewish version, the adept seeks an ecstatic
version of God's throne, the chariot (merkava) beheld by Ezekiel (see Ezekiel 1).

The Medieval Period

Medieval Spanish Cabala, the most important form of Jewish mysticism, is less
concerned with ecstatic experience than with esoteric knowledge about the nature of
the divine world and its hidden connections with the world of creation. Medieval Cabala
is a theosophical system that draws on Neoplatonism and Gnosticism and is
expressed in symbolic language. The system is most fully articulated in the Zohar,
written between 1280 and 1286 by the Spanish Cabalist Moses de Len, but attributed
to the 2nd-century rabbi Simeon bar Yohai. The Zohar depicts the Godhead as a
dynamic flow of force composed of numerous aspects. Above and beyond all human
contemplation is God as he is in himself, the unknowable, immutable En Sof (Infinite).
Other aspects or attributes, knowable through God's relation to the created world,
emanate (see Emanation) from En Sof in a configuration of ten sefirot (realms or
planes), through which the divine power further radiates to create the cosmos. Zoharic
theosophy concentrates on the nature and interaction of the ten sefirot as symbols of
the inner life and processes of the Godhead. Because the sefirot are also archetypes
for everything in the world of creation, an understanding of their workings can
4
illuminate the inner workings of the cosmos and of history. The Zohar thereby provides
a cosmic-symbolic interpretation of Judaism and of the history of Israel in which the
Torah and commandments, as well as Israel's life in exile, become symbols for events
and processes in the inner life of God. Thus interpreted, the proper observance of the
commandments assumes a cosmic significance.

From: Richard S. Sarason. "Cabala," Microsoft Encarta 97 Encyclopedia. Deluxe

Edition. c. 1993-1996 Microsoft Corporation, Disc 1.

ON THE GOLEM AS PROTECTOR

In Jewish legend, an image or form that is given life through a magical formula. A
golem frequently took the form of a robot, or automaton. In the Hebrew Bible (see
Psalms 139:16) and in the Talmud, the term refers to an unformed substance. Its
present meaning developed during the Middle Ages, when legends arose of wise men
who could instill life in effigies by the use of a charm. The creatures were sometimes
believed to offer special protection to Jews. The best-known of the golem stories
concerned a Rabbi Lw of 16th-century Prague, who was said to have created a
golem that he used as his servant.

From: Entry on "Golem" in Microsoft Encarta 97 Encyclopedia Deluxe Edition, c. 1993-

1996 Microsoft Corporation, Disc 1.

ON THE NATURE OF THE GOLEM

In the development of the later legend of the golem there are three outstanding points:
(1) The legend is connected with earlier tales of the resurrection of the dead by putting
the name of God in their mouths or on their arm, and by removing the parchment
containing the name in reverse and thus causing their death. Such legends were
widespread in Italy from the tenth century (in Megillar Ahima'az). (2) It is related to
ideas current in non-Jewish circles concerning the creation of an alchemical man (the
"homunculus" of Paracelsus). (3) The golem, who is the servant of his creator,
developed dangerous natural powers; he grows from day to day, and in order to keep
him from overpowering the members of the household he must be restored to his dust
by removing or erasing the alef from his forehead. Here, the idea of the golem is joined
by the new motive of the unrestrained power of the elements which can bring about
destruction and havoc. Legends of this sort appeared first in connection with Elijah,
rabbi of Chelm (d. 1583).

From: "Golem" entry in the Encyclopedia Judaica. Volume 7. Jerusalem, Israel: Keter
Publishing House, 1971, pp. 754-755.

VARIANT ON THE GOLEM LEGEND

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A variant of the Golem legend gives another explanation for the Maharal's [Rabbi
Loew] decision to return the clay monster to the dust lie came from.[sic] Although the
creature was mighty in strength, supernatural in prescience, and ever alert in following
the orders of his Cabalistic creator, so that he saved the Jews of Prague from many a
calamity, nonetheless, his creator decided to "unmake" him because he had grown
afraid of the creature he had created, for the Golem, waxing drunk with the immense
power he was wielding, menaced the entire Jewish community, even trying to bend the
Maharal to his will, which had now turned evil and destructive. Thereupon, using the
secret gematria of Cabalistic formulas for the second time, the Maharal returned the
clay hulk of his creature to its original inanimate condition by withdrawing from its
mouth the Shem, the life-creating, ineffable Name of God that he had placed there
when first he made him.

From: "The Golem," in The Book of Jewish Knowledge. Nathan Ausubel. On The First
Electronic Jewish Bookshelf, Scanrom Publishers, 1994,Cd-Rom.

LITERARY ASPECTS OF THE LEGEND OF THE GOLEM

The Legends concerning the golem, especially in their later forms, served as a favorite
literary subject, at first in German literature-of both Jews and non-Jews-in the 19th
century, and afterward in modern Hebrew and Yiddish literature. To the domain of
belles lettres also belongs the book Nifla'ot Maharal im ha-Golem ("The Miraculous
Deeds of Rabbi Loew with the Golem"; 1909), which was published by Judith
Rosenberg as an early manuscript but actually was not written until after the blood
libels of the 1890s. The connection between the golem and the struggle against ritual
murder accusations is entirely a modern literary invention. In this literature questions
are discussed which had no place in the popular legends (e.g., the golem's love for a
woman), or symbolic interpretations of the meaning of the golem were raised (the
unredeemed, unformed man; the Jewish people; the working class aspiring for its
liberation).

Interest in the golem legend among writers, artists, and musicians became evident in
the early 20th century. The golem was also invariably the benevolent robot of the later
Prague tradition and captured the imagination of writers active in Austria,
Czechoslovakia, and German. . . . The outstanding work about the golem was the
novel entitled Der Golem (1915; Eng. 1928) by the Bavarian writer Gustav Meyrink
(1868-1932), who spent many years in Prague. Meyrink's book, notable for its detailed
description and nightmare atmosphere, was a terrifying allegory about man's reduction
to an automaton by the pressures of modern society.

From: "Golem" entry in the Encyclopedia Judaica. Volume 7. Jerusalem, Israel: Keter
Publishing House, 1971, pp. 754-755.

This dissertation examines the ways in which contemporary Jewish American authors
rewrite traditional Jewish narratives to both reflect and revise current conceptions of
the self and the Jew. Far from denying a connection to Jewish tradition, these authors
instead shift the focus, articulating a Jewishness that has less to do with their
conception of a specifically revealed will of God than with their desire to integrate
inherited stories with those emerging from contemporary Jewish life. I argue that the
texts being granted authority have changed, expanded to include narratives of
6
collective memory that stand outside of the sacred canon but nevertheless retain both
causal and normative roles in the construction of contemporary Jewish identity.

...

[Grauer] contends that by reworking the Jewish legend of the golem to allow for female
creation, Cynthia Ozick (in "Puttermesser and Xanthippe") and Marge Piercy (in He,
She and It) speak to perceived gender inequities within Judaism while still maintaining
that traditional narratives can fruitfully inform contemporary female identity.

From: Grauer, Tresa Lynn. One and the Same Openness: Narrative and Tradition in
Contemporary Jewish American Literature. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan,
1995, abstract page.

ON MEDIA AND THE GOLEM LEGEND

This is a poster for Paul Wehener's lighthearted 1917 film, "The Golem and the
Dancer"--an authentic myth that worked loose from its religious moorings to serve a
variety of symbolic functions.

In an article by John Gross entitled "The Golem--As Medieval Hero, Frankenstein

Monster and Proto-Computer," he reviews "Golem! Danger, Deliverance and Art," an
exhibition at the Jewish Museum in April 1988 in New York City displaying memorable
images of the German filmmaker Paul Wegener along with many others.

"Between 1914 and 1920 Wegener made three movies on the golem theme: first "The
Golem," set in 29th century, then "The Golem and the Dancer," a lighthearted fantasy,
and finally "The Golem: How He Came into the World," which goes back to the 16th
century and the story of Rabbi Loew. Only the last of the three has survived. It can be
seen on video at the Jewish Museum, and it makes an extremely pwerful impression.
The golem, played by Wegener himself, is a complelling figure, with his stiff
movements and squared-off haricut (remininscent, as Emily Bilski [curator of the
exhibit] says, of figures in Egyptian art, though it also makes him look rather like a
medieval serf.)"

"There are golems and golems. A third version, very different from eithr Wegener's or
Steiner-Prag's can be found in a verse play, "The Golem," published in New York in
1921 by the Yiddish poet H. Leivick. According to Leivick's stage directions, he
visualized the golem as a giant with a black curly beard, a dull stare and a fixed smile
that was somehow on the verge of tears. (One of the artists who translated this
conception into pictorical terms was the celebrated stage designer Boris Aronson; in
the late 1920's he devised some striking sets and costumes for a production of the play
that unfortunately never materialized.) For Levick, the golem was a false savior, who
promised deliverance but deliverd violence: by the sound of it, the play is heavy with
Jewish foreboding. And by the mid-1930's there was a sense of looming calamity in
Czechoslovak portrayals of the golem, too--in the fine painting by the surrealist
Frantisek Hudecek, for instance, which shows men (or androids) being hammered into
life in some kind of infernal smithy."

7
From The New York Times, Sunday December 4, 1988, p.41.

ON RITUAL MURDER OR THE BLOOD LIBEL LEGEND

Among the prime candidates for placement under the rubric of the folklore of evil, I
would rank at or very near the top of the list the so-called blood libel legend. Other
phrases designating this vicious legend include blood accusations and ritual murder
(accusation). These terms are used almost interchangeably but there are several
scholars who have sought to distinguish between ritual murder and blood libel, arguing
that ritual murder refers to a sacrificial murder in general whereas the blood libel
entails specific use of the blood of the victim. In the case of alleged Jewish ritual
murder, the blood motivation is nearly always present which presumably accounts for
the equally common occurrence of both ritual murder and blood libel as labels.

...

The blood libel legend is not only the basis of ongoing festivals, but it has also been
memorialized in church decoration. Legends proclaiming the Jewish "ritual murder" of
Christian children or the profanation or desecration of holy wafers are celebrated in
various European towns in such artistic forms as tapestries or stained glass church
windows. For example, there are such windows or pictures or tapestries ornamenting
the choir of the Saint Michael-Saint Gudule Cathedral in Brussels, a ceiling fresco in
the small Tyrol village of Judenstein, paintings in a church sanctuary in the Vienna
suburb of Korneuberg, and a stained glass window in a Paris church chapel.

...

It would be one thing if this classic bit of anti-Semitic folklore existed only in ballad or
legend form, but the sad truth is that what has been so often described in legend and
literature is also alleged to have occurred in life. There have not been tens, but
hundreds of actual cases of blood libel tried in various courts in various countries. The
map of Western and Eastern Europe and the Near East is profusely dotted with sites
where ritual murders were said to have occurred.

...

The sad truth about the blood libel legend is not so much that it was created-the need
for such a psychological projection on the part of Christians is evident enough-but that
it was believed to be true and accepted as such and that the lives of many individual
Jews were adversely affected by some bloodthirsty Christians who believed or
pretended to believe in the historicity of the blood libel legend.

The creation of golems is outlined in the Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Creation. This book is
generally grouped with Kabbalistic texts, and it describes the mystic way to create a golem.
The mystics believed that God's spoken words were the origin of the creation of the world.
These were not words as we know them, but instead were a system of pronunciation based on
the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. The Hebrew letters have substance within the world,
which can be harnassed to generate great power. This power requires deep meditation which
8
is believed by Kabbalists to assist in cleaving to God, thus getting a broader look at His plans
for creation. Stories of success by using specifically the method outlined in the Sefer Yetzirah
don't seem to be as popularized.

However, there have been numerous legends of Rabbis creating golems throughout history.
Often, rather than recitation of the words of creation, the golems are created by hand from
clay, and words of power are inscribed on paper or upon the forehead of the statue. The words
of power are always in Hebrew and are things like the word "truth" or the name of God. They
would also have phrases like "God is truth." However God's exact name is in some dispute,
and could be anywhere from the four letters (with vowels removed) YHVH to a string of 72
letters. Until the words of power are removed or altered, the golem is granted life.

Initially golems were created to prove a Rabbi's mastery of the Sefer Yetzirah. This was a way
to cling or cleave to God and hopefully gain further insight into God's plan. Some Rabbis
even created golems in the shape of goats, and used these golems for sacrifice to God. The
eating of a golem animal, even though it would have split hooves, would not violate the
Torah because the golem is not one of God's creations but that of Man's. However, golems
were soon used for other more secular purposes. As golems are bound to serve their creator,
they were made to perform simple tasks like drawing water from a well or protect villages
from attack.

Golems are often considered to be extremely powerful, and in today's lore control of them
can be easily lost. The uncontrollable and destructive golem is likely a product of anti-
Semitic views combined with the burgeoning of the scientific outlook in the early
Renaissance, when Jewish mystical texts began to be translated into Latin. Prior to this
period, the golem seems to have no existance outside of the mystic texts describing its
creation. The uncontrollable golems are loosely confined to those which were forced to
perform menial tasks. These tasks would show an impurity in the purpose of the creator and
would be against the set tenets for spiritual purity in golem creation. The longer the golem is
used for such impure purposes, the larger it grows and the more unwieldy it becomes.

Recently golems have been used in fantasy stories to protect treasure, in tv shows to exact
revenge upon murderers, and in horror novels as a child's worst nightmare. They have been
attributed as inspiration for Frankenstein and other important works. The golem seems to be
inherently evil by today's writers. It's likely this stems from religious teachings that man can
not emulate God without suffering dire consequences. In addition to this, soulless creatures,
like the golem, are often considered an abomination. The lack of a soul always seems to
suggest a cripplingly low intelligence, with no moral standard to prevent any depraved acts.
Something essential is missing, and such a creature can't "live" long without sinking below
acceptable standards of society.

An anomalous Genesis: metaphor and implication in the

creation of the golem
"I know I am a fool, hoping dirt and glory are both a kind of luminous paint; the humiliations
and exaltations that light us up."
Jeanette Winterson, Gut Symmetries

Can Man really presume to assume the role of God? The textual sources that reference the
process of golem-making seem to indicate that such an assumption of role is not only a
possible but desirable act for the righteous and holy man to perform. Man, attempting to act
in the capacity of God, desires to become a Creator - but can a made being truly entertain an
9
aspiration to flawlessly fill the role of Maker? While folkloric and popular conceptions of
golem-making seem to indicate directly that this aspiration is not lacking, there is a deeper
subtext, a more complete meaning, etched and engraved in metaphor. The traditional and
irreconcilable separation between God and Man is maintained through inchoate and
incomplete mappings from the source domain of the Jewish Creation myth (the Creation of
Man by God) and the target domain of golem-making (the creation of the golem by Man).
Variant implications and independent metaphors within the two domains heighten the tension
between what is stated and what is, in actuality, meant or intended. These metaphorical
structures ultimately indicate an imperfect reflex, a broken mirroring of the act of Creation.
Within the conceptual framework of Judaism, the gulf that exists between God and Man
cannot be breached, there are no countermeasures that can withstand the void between divine
and creatural reality. The metaphors that make themselves known - indeed, will not be
restrained - within the context of golem-making (ontological verifiability of that act not
withstanding) illustrate the inherent impossibility of true apotheosis.

The creature of the created, the golem itself, will here be defined as a kind of artificial
anthropomorph. Much as Man is Created in the image of God, the golem is created in the
image of Man, a replication that loses fidelity - the golem can never be or become Man, much
as a Man can never be or become God. The golem in its original incarnation can be viewed as
a kind of "magical homunculus"1 or an alchemically, supernaturally created and non-manifest
being. The groundwork for its "creation" as such an enigmatic figure originates within the
cryptic text of the Sefer Yetzirah (loosely translated as "Book of Creation"), the "oldest and
most mysterious"2 of all the Kabbalistic works - the origin of this text is no longer accessable
to historians, but passages are quoted from it as early as the sixth century.3 . The Sefer
Yetzirah never describes or delves into literal instructions - the basis for the process derived
from its text is purely oblique and interpretational in nature. The traditionally accepted and
sanctioned interpretation is that of a thought exercise, or an ecstatic experiment - a non-
corporeal, mystical experience4 by which the practicioner, through a vision of the golem,
obtains communion with God.5 The Sefer Yetzirah provides the frame, the representational
basis for golem-making - the secrets by which God brought the universe into being are
carefully encoded6 and couched in arcane and obscure language - but a physically based
interpretation is eschewed. Indeed, those foolhardy enough to seek, literally, to create an
authentic, albeit artificial, "human" were ridiculed as performing an exercise in folly.7 It is in
later incarnations that the mystical and acorporeal practice of golem-making acquired the
tones and flavours of a being based in the physical realm, and the golem became an
actualized, physically manifest figure in Kabbalistic legend.8 The concept of the golem, as
will be dealt with here, is that of the latter disposition - a somatically incarnate, artificial
being, created by Man. It is the fertile and abundant metaphorical constructions that the
tangible golem of legend and folklore is inextricably embedded in that indicate the
impropriety of the assumption of the role of God by Man within the overall context of
Judaism. It is to this golem, that scrupulous attention will be addressed.

The metaphorical constructs that will be dealt with here function cohesively to reject the
explicit meaning within golem-making texts and replace that explicit meaning with an
implicit one - the distinction between literal and metaphorical meaning9 is the point of
departure. While the lexical items investigated here may reflect two or more disparate
meanings at once,10 it is the deeper, imperative and culurally encoded and metaphorical
meaning that is of relevance to this effort. A decidedly non-semanticist approach has been
adopted; to assume that words have permanent meanings that designate some referents and
exclude others,11 that words, the most basic units of language (if not speech) have hard cores
and are not fluid, is to ignore context and reject the notion of a very real phenomenon - the
phenomenon of meaningful metaphor. The analysis of the metaphorical structures inherent
within the texts that deal with golem-making represents a discourse, an extra-linguistic

10
reality12 wherein the literal sense of a lexical item - the sign - plays a secondary role to its
metaphorical reference13 as it functions within the scope of a larger, contextual reality. By
examining the incomplete mappings from the Creation of Man by God to the creation of the
golem by Man and the variant implications and independent metaphors within the opposed
cases, a deeper, mythic description or re-description of reality14 emerges from the chains of
literal language.

In order to effectively and critically examine the assumption of the role of God by Man in the
aspect of Creator, the Creation of Man by God, and its metaphorical constituents, must first
be mapped out and delineated. Entering the dialogue of the Judaic Creation myth on the fifth
day:

...then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image,

according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle,
and over all the wild animals of the earth and over every
creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created
humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
- Genesis 1:26-1:2715

There are several metaphors at work within this small passage which deal, respectively, with
God, Man, language, the image of Man and control. While these metaphors may seem
simplistic, they are not in any way superfluous and should not be taken for granted. The first
metaphorical concept is that God is a Creator - again, the critical examination of this
metaphor should not be considered to be obvious and below the notice of academic interest. It
should be kept in mind that God is not necessarily a Creator - the act of Creation can be a
salient characteristic or activity of any tradition's God, but that same God can be, for
example, a Destroyer. Other entailments do exist, but it is not those entailments that are of
concern within the textual boundaries of this passage. In this passage, God is mapped onto
the role of a Creator; by virtue of His acting in the capacity of Deus Faber, or divine
craftsman16 - the Creator as an artisan. God, as artisan or craftsman, therefore, lays claim to a
kind of authourship, and consequently authourity over mankind as a creation, as any
craftsman has authourity over objects of his creation. The associated mapping of Man is a
Creation should not be easily dismissed as either inherent or obvious, for it is the essential
nature of Man as a creature, as a created thing, that figures prominently, even centrally, within
the context of Judaism. Man is a thing apart from God, made by God, created. God is the
uncreated Creator, the unmade Maker, and Man is a creation. The term "Creation", without
the preceding indefinite article ("a"), is in reference to a specific act - Man as a creation, with
the preceding indefinite article ("a") intact, is the created object. As such, Man has a maker,
as well as the entailments that correspond to such a situation - a creatural nature, dependency
on a Creator, and subservience to the authourity of that Creator over His creation.

The nature of this Creation, the Creation of Man, has metaphorical markings as well. The
Hebrew God, by voicing the making of humanity, creates humanity. By "speaking the word",
a creative connection between cosmic order and the ordering principle of language is made.17
This cosmic order is mapped onto language - to name a thing is to instantiate an act of
creation, a specialized version of creation out of nothing , or creation ex nihilo.18 While this
concept - that to name is to create - has come under philosophical attack as an overestimated
"language game...pushed to the point of superstition,"19 this fascination with words and
assignation of a potent creativity to language is embedded within the matrix of the Jewish
faith and cannot be dismissed, for to ignore the context out of which a thing examined arises -

11
be it a linguistic superstition or a doctrine of the immutable nature of a god - is to fail to
examine it at all.

The image of Man as the image of God is a particularly intriguing and somewhat problematic
metaphor within the cited passage. Man is created in God's image, as a reproduction or
facsimile of God, "according to our likeness." The notion of a plural God - in effect, multiple
gods - within the monotheistic faith of Judaism is contextually and culturally inconsistent; the
plurality in this passage may be due to translational error or shifts in theological doctrine and
terminology. The interdomain mapping of the Creation of Man by God onto the creation of
the golem by Man might, perhaps, be more consistent and less disparate as a result if a plural
nature of God (as gods) were taken into consideration. As it is, the entailments of the
monotheistic doctrine of Judaism add to the inconsistency and incompleteness of the
assumption of the role of God by Man. While, in Judaism, there is but one God, there are
many men - this concept alone complicates a truly complete rendering of metaphorical
mapping.

The notion of power or control also comes into play, although it is a slightly less salient
metaphor than those listed above. Power and control are referenced to an upward direction, a
specialized version of a metaphor in which "goodness" is correlated to an upward direction,
wherein the upward direction is associated with general well-being.20 Thus, we have Man in
the "up" position, having control or power over the "lower" creatures. (God, in this
cosmological scheme, necessarily has control or power over Man, metaphorically represented
by His position in the heavens, with Man below.)

The second passage that deals with the Creation of Man by God is also a selection from
Genesis, and provides another account, one different from that previously discussed, both in
the nature and the timing of the Creation. (The conflict between these two accounts of
Creation, albeit a fascinating topic with many implications within the contexts of religious
literature and modern feminist theory, to name only two of a myriad of disciplines that would
benefit from investigating this quandary, is too large an issue in its entirety to be dealt with in
the specific context of this analysis.) Here, Man is made directly after the Earth and the
Heavens, apparently before plant life (and, presumably, animal life as well) - not as a final
creation, or a crowning glory, as is implied in Genesis, but before the rest of the inhabitants of
the created world have been formed or created. This passage provides a slightly different
version of creation ex nihilo:

...In the day that the Lord God made the Earth and the Heavens,
when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the
field had yet sprung up...then the Lord God formed man from the
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life; and the man became a living being...
- Genesis 2:5-2:721

In this passage, some of the metaphors in the passage from Genesis 1 are reiterated, including
the shift in some to more highly specialized cases, while others are absent. The metaphorical
roles of God as Creator and Man as Creation are again duplicated, with the additional
specialization of God as a potter. In this, the "clay myth"22 formulae, much as a potter works
with clay, mixing it with water in order to create a finished product such as a pot or an urn,
God mixes "the dust of the ground" with air to create Man. It is possible here, that "breath",
in addition to providing another, distinct, metaphor for the life or the soul (to be expounded
upon separately), is functioning as a metaphoric substitute for water. Water, associated with
the feminine principle and with the amniotic fluid of childbirth from the womb23 , may be at
once too corporeal and too charged with feminized signifiers to be associated with the male
12
Hebrew God; "breath" as "air" may be considered to be a more lofty and spiritual substitute.
It has been suggested that "clay myths" in which the clay alone is used as the sole primal
material reflect the "old Mother Power of the ancient goddess cultures,"24 while "later clay
myths in which the male plays a significant role as the one who breathes life into the clay or
fertilizes it in some way" suggest a movement toward a more patriarchal religious vision.25
This may explain the use of air, a traditionally more masculine element, in place of water, a
traditionally more feminine element, but it can be argued that air is simply conceived of as
being a more inherently spiritual element by virtue of its intangibility and seeming acorporeal
nature - a more fitting catalyst for the creative energy of a God who is not of flesh and blood.
(As will be avowed, however, there are no such compunctions or limitations on the creative
catalyst employed by Man, a more haptic and tangible creature, living in a creatural reality -
indeed, water is a necessary element within the formulae for golem-making.) The associated
mapping for God is a potter is Man is clay - again, a variant on the previously elucidated
theme of Man is a creation. The qualities and features of clay as a medium are mapped onto
the embodied Man - clay must be operated upon by an outside agent. Iinterestingly, Adam, as
the first Man, as a being who was "taken from the earth"26 is designated, at one point in his
incompleted creation as a golem, in the sense of being unformed and amorphous (from the
Yiddish goylem; literally "shapeless mass"27 ), before being touched by the "breath of God."28
It is also of interest to note that "Adam" is not considered to be a proper name at this point;
although "Adam" means "man",29 it is more than likely a play on the Hebrew word for earth,
'adamah.30 Without the participation of God as Deus Faber, the clay - the Man - remains
formless and without identity. The finished clay product belongs, in a sense, to the potter,
much as Man, within the cosmology of Judaism, in a sense, belongs to God. The issue of
authourship and authourity is once more addressed.

The notion of power and control as connected to upward orientation is also echoed, in a fairly
unambiguous manner. In this second passage from Genesis, Man is made from the ground,
the earth, matter associated with a downward orientation and existing in opposition to the
Heavens. It is only with the external influence from above, in the form of air, an element
associated with the sky, from God in Heaven that his creation is complete.

Within this second account of Creation, the element of air provides both metaphor and
metonymy. By breathing into Man's nostrils the "breath of life", God bestows life upon Man;
"breath" is standing in, metonymically, for "life" - breath being a very necessary and salient
feature of what is commonly considered to be life. Other salient features would work equally
well for the purposes of simple metonymy, ie, a pulse, if one were to consider the flow of
blood to be a necessary and salient feature of life. It should be noted here that "breath", in a
non-metonymic sense, can be metaphorically understood as the soul, without which, within
the context of Judaic thought, a thing is not truly alive. Even animals have a soul, albeit of a
lesser kind than the human soul.31 There are therefore two processes at work here - one is the
metonymic relationship between breath and life, the other is the metaphor of breath for soul
and life. Without either soul or breath, a thing cannot truly be alive - this is an important
concept to consider when deliberating upon the integrity of the metaphorical mappings from
the Creation of Man by God to the creation of the golem by Man.

The textual accounts of golem-making, denoted as a practice with a palpable, physical result
and commentaries and legends pertaining thereof are widely and wildly varied, but certain
features and characteristics remain. Hylomorphically generated golems have been purported
as created to serve in radically divergent capacities - from defenders of the righteous in times
of danger32 to housekeepers or concubines.33 Historically, Jewish prophets have constantly
warned against and discouraged the belief that Man can compete with God's creative
powers,34 that entertaining such an ambitious endeavor may not be emulation but, in fact, a

13
direct act of antagonism.35 And yet, at least in legend, there have been those who attempt to
solve the riddle of Creation36 and replicate it, through the creation of a golem.

The elements used in the creation of the golem have been deemed unimportant by certain
archaic traditions connected to the notorious Simon Magus37 - it matters not if the golem is
made of dust or air or water. However, the more prevalent materials, the common elements
employed in the genesis of this creature are tangible and organic - the "brute material" of
dust, considerably tellurian in nature, and water. 38 The dust, or earth, purified39 is combined
or kneaded with water; and the pronunciation of combinations of letters over the shaped body
animate it:40

Golems can be created using many different methods, according

to the sources. Some state that it is accomplished through
combinations of letters. These combinations are called "gates",
the number of gates differing according to the various
Kabbalistic schools, and ranging in number from 231 to as many
as 271, depending on how the letters are to be combined. (The
gates were formed by combining every letter of the Hebrew
alphabet to every other letter. The analogy in the Roman
Alphabet would be to begin with AB, AC, AD, AE, and so on,
until reaching ZV, ZW, ZX, ZY. In most systems of gates, letters
are not combined with themselves.) Other schools taught that a
golem was created through the utterance of Divine Names. The
Talmud records that there are 12, 42, and even 72 letter names of
God that might have been used for this purpose. Many schools,
such as the Hasidim, held that the Hebrew word 'emet (truth)
should be inscribed upon the forehead of the golem. Among a
number of methods of deconstructing a golem, a common one
was the erasure of the aleph, the first letter of 'emet. This leaves
the word met (dead) which destroys the golem.41

These core elements - material and ritual, including ritual purity42 - are motifs that repeat over
and over again.43 Although not all schools of Kabbalistic thought adhered to the same
procedure of inscribing the word 'emet upon the forehead of the creature, word-magic is still
employed. One of the Divine Names of God may be inscribed upon the forehead,44 for
example, or either of these things - 'emet or a Divine Name - may be writ upon a piece of
paper and placed either under the Golem's tongue or in its ear. The golem, the man-shaped
figure of clay, neither breathes nor speaks,45 nor has a true soul.46 In order to destroy the
Golem, language, the catalyst of genesis, is used as a vehicle of annihilation; the letter
combinations of the gates may be chanted in reverse,47 or the letters of the Divine Name or
'emet, inscribed or inserted, must somehow be changed or destroyed. This can be
accomplished through total erasure,48 partial erasure (ie, the removal of the initial aleph of
'emet to form met),49 or a recombination of the letters.50

There are many metaphors at work here, some of which are clearly drawn as parallels to the
original Jewish Creation myth, some of which have different implications with regards to the
role of Man as Creator, and some of which are independent of the original myth and are
drawn from a purely human source. The common metaphors, those present both within the
texts of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, must be examined first, for only then will the deviant
metaphors, those which will not be mapped form the source domain of Creation of Man by
God, appear appropriately significant. It is the rogue nature of those metaphors that bring into
sharp relief the separate nature of Man from God, and embody the inability of Man to assume
the role of Creator.
14
The prime metaphor that comes into play within the textual sources of golem-making is Man
as Creator - or Man as God. In the most positive interpretation possible, Man is emulating the
role of God,51 adopting the entailments of his Creator. The reverse of this, the negative
interpretation, is that Man is, in essence, competing with the creative power of his God.52
Much as God made Man, within the framework of the Genesis tales, Man makes the Golem.
Man therefore assumes the same rights of authourship; indeed, even the power of life or
death, inasmuch as the golem can be said to be vulnerable to either. (This statement is reliant
on the notion of whether "life", within this proscribed context, is possible without a soul or a
"true soul".) Consequently, the golem stands in, metaphorically, for Man in its role as a
creation. The golem is dependent upon Man for its existence - both at the instance of
initiation and in the sense of continuity, for Man must ultimately destroy his creation; the
golem is destined to return to dust.53

The specialized cases of Creation present in Genesis 2 are present here as well, the metaphor
for a Creator is a potter is also applied to Man:

...Rabbi Leib found the sacks with the clay and began to sculpt
the figure of a man. Rabbi Leib did not use a chisel but his
fingers to carve the figure of the golem. He was working with
great speed; at the same time, he prayed for success in what he
was doing. All day Rabbi Leib was busy...when it was time for
the evening prayer, a large shape of a man with a huge head,
broad shoulders, and enormous hands and feet was lying on the
floor - a clay giant.54

As a potter works with clay to form a finished product, as God Created Man from Clay, so
Man creates the golem. By extension - God as Creator/potter, Man as Creator/potter - Man is
God. The language employed here must be very cautious - within the context of Judaism,
God is the Creator, with a definite article consistently employed, not a Creator circumscribed
by an indefinite article. Man, here, by assuming the role of potter, is metaphorically assuming
the role of "the one God." Accordingly, the golem, mapped onto clay (indeed, literally formed
from it) is mapped onto the role of Man. However, while it can be argued that "Adam" is not
a proper name,55 it is commonly treated as one. The golem, however, never gains a proper
name - a golem is always "golem", with no pretensions towards a proper name, only
remaining a "shapeless mass,"56 a thing-in-potential. God alone maintains the power to name
or to create through language; were Man truly capable of assuming, completely, the role of
Creator, the golem would achieve shape and form, no longer existing as a thing-in-potential
but as a thing-in-itself.

Language is Creation is a metaphor that occurs and recurs time and time again - as in the
mappings laid out for the passage from Genesis 1; as God says, so God Creates. The creative
connection between Creation and language again comes into play; words, language,
instantiate an act of creation. However, Man cannot simply call the golem into being through
a pure statement of intention. Man must follow specific and exacting instructions when
chanting the letter combinations of the gates or pronouncing the Divine Name, lest "the limb
created by the means of this letter...change its natural place."57 God has no such limitations -
and Man must call upon the power of God, Man must use the formulae circumspectly
described in the Sefer Yetzirah, the formulae for Creation 58 in order to infuse his creation
with life. Man cannot simply "speak the word." Language, however, is employed as the
catalyst for the creation of the golem, be it in the form of the chanting of the gates, the
writing of the Divine Name of God or the engraving of 'emet upon the golem's forehead.

15
The maker of the golem, in most instances, creates the golem in an anthropomorphic shape,
although the golem has been described as "a creature, particularly a human being,"59 which
indicates that non-anthropoid creatures may be made as well; however, the intent for these
non-humanoid - indeed, non-anthropomorphic - golems seems to be of a more bodily and less
divinely inspired sort than attempted apotheosis. There is a tale of a golem calf,60 for
example, which had been created for the express purpose of slaughter - and was created again
and again, to be feasted upon again and again. The golem is normally - almost normatively -
created in the form of a man; there is but one singular and isolated instance of a gynomorphic
golem, a golem created in the image of a woman:

They said about R. S{helemo} ben Gabirol, that he created a woman and she waited on him.
When he was denounced to the authourities, he showed them that she was not a perfect
creature, and (then) he turned her to her original (state), to the pieces and hinges of wood, out
of which she was built up.61

This female golem was rumoured to have been ben Gabriol's concubine or helpmeet;62 it is
interesting to note that the usual basic substance employed in golem-making is not used here
- golems created in the form of man are of clay. Female golems are set apart, marked as Other
even in reference to other golems, their very matter being other than that of Man or man-
shaped golems. The mapping of the physical features of Man, of the primal substance of
Man, onto the golem is not insignificant; it supports the overall claim that Man is attempting
to assume the role of God. For Man to create the golem in his own likeness is to map directly
from his own creation in God's likeness. The golem however, is not perfectly mapped onto
Man - there are cracks and flaws in the metaphorical moorings. Although visual artists
entered onto the scene of the golem legend late in its development,63 the visual metaphors for
the creatures imperfect and anomalous nature are manifold. The golem is commonly depicted
as thick and clumsy, squared off64 and, in one unique instance, with a "dull stare and a fixed
smile...on the verge of tears."65 This tendency toward depicting the golem as an odd Other,
crude and threatening66 is emphasized in the modern world of film- Paul Wegener's golem
(from Der Golem: Wie er in die Welt kam, 1920), as a cinematic character is intended to
"impart a terrifying strangeness, a sense of primitive urges, a certain mechanization in
movement and behaviour, as well as the potential for human emotion."67 The golem in the
world of visual art is a tragic creature of unrealized potential, heavy and bewildered;68
primordial and befuddled. These physical depictions of awkwardness and ungainliness may
be outward manifestations of the golem's imperfect and somehow wrong nature - visual
metaphors for the golem's spiritual imperfection, or outward indicators of the fact that the
golem has no soul. Only rarely is it conferred a nefesh, or the kind of spirit, specifically stated
to be a not-soul, given to higher animals;69 the golem is created with a "different brain than
that of man."70 When, on the uncommon occassion, the golem is conferred a kind of soul, it is
of a non-intellectual, lower sort than Man's, and as such, inferior. The attempt to recreate
Man's Creation falls short:

As long as the power of the intellect does not illuminate the

infant, he is mute, unable to speak. And if a man will create a
creature, a golem, by the (Divine) Names and the holy letters
mentioned in Sefer Yetzirah, and the golem has a figure with the
appearance of a man shaped out of matter, having even a soul
with all the powers and senses, but without (the power of) speech
since he has no reason and his soul lacks the power of
intellection, since man is unable to infuse an intellective soul and
the power of procreation (koah ha-molid) but God alone, as we
have explained in the book Beit ha-Yozer, which I have
composed on the Sefer Yetzirah.71

16
The golem, lacking the ability to speak, can be said to lack what is considered to be a "true
soul", within the context of Judaism. The iniquities of Man which separate him from God
prevent him from creating a speaking man, a complete man; the righteous Man cannot
duplicate his own Creation; Man's power is not so great as to "bring a speaking soul in
man...since he is a man"72 :

Rava said: If the righteous desire to do so, they could create a

world. What prevented (them)? Their iniquities, as it is written.
But your iniquities have been a barrier between you and your
God. Behold, if not for your iniquities, there would be no
separation between you and him. Since Rava created a man and
sent him to R. Zeira he was speaking to him, but he did not
answer. Were it not for your iniquities, he would have answered.
Whence would he answer? Out of his soul...Were it not for our
iniquities, (which caused) that the soul is not pure, which is the
separation between you and Him, as it is written...73

While Divine speech confers a higher soul (nishmat hayyim) to Man, Man can only hope to
confer, at best, the lower soul (nefesh hayyah) to the golem.74 Man cannot grant his creation
knowledge of divine issues or the ability to speak, indeed, to breathe. Such issues of
knowledge and speech are "unattainable for any creature to accomplish, except God, May He
be blessed."75 - the implication here is that Creation is the sole province of God, who alone is
suited to maintain its bailiwick.

The golem's inability to procreate is another indicator of the failed replication of Man by
Man, for "whoever has no sons is like a dead man...he is like a Golem, without form;"76 the
golem is, in a sense, dead before it ever has a chance to live. It can bear no progeny; it is
progeny of none - it is an artificially engendered being. Without the ability to procreate, the
golem is considered a null, a void; a man without sons is somewhat less than human,
compared, in essence, to a dead man. The golem, in this sense, is a functionally dead man,
and can never live at all. It is because of the anomalous genesis of the golem, which is "not
born from man's semen and is not grown in a woman's womb,"77 a doomed aetiology of sorts,
that there is no sin in its destruction. It is precisely because the golem is a flawed
reproduction of Man that destroying it is acceptable, even necessary. The golem is not
permitted humanity - should a golem show sings of adopting human ways or falling "into the
follies of flesh and blood"78 (such as wishing to wed, or desiring to study the Torah), it is the
responsibility of the maker to destroy it.

Another important lacking quality of the golem, an indication of the failure of Man to totally
and completely replicate his own Creation, is its lack of sensible free will - considered to be
the greatest gift bestowed upon Man by God.79 The golem, created by an imperfect being, is
necessarily imperfect; when urges even remotely bearing any kind of resemblance to that of
free will arise within the abridged consciousness of the golem, the result can only be
disastrous. When the golem attempts to function as a creature possessed of free will, its lack
of reason and higher intellect complicate the matter, and difficulty and danger are the result:

...the golem often became independent, rebellious, and a danger

to his maker. The golem of Prague, for instance, turned out to be
an extreme literalist. When he was ordered to bring water from
the well into Rabbi Loew's house, he kept on carrying pails of
water in until the house was flooded. It grew more and more
difficult to "program" him. He became so unruly that Rabbi
Loew had to erase the sacred name on his clay forehead and thus
17
 put an end to his existence.80

This imperfect execution of free will is viewed as destructive, spiteful, treacherous and mad -
perhaps an unfair assessment in light of the golem's limited capabilities. Man, having free
will, is ultimately responsible for his choice to do or to do not evil - the freedom of that
choice is where the significance lies - Man's acts of virtue and choice to not do evil, enhance
God's Creation, give meaning to God's "divine experiments." The golem, by contrast, cannot
even begin to hope to do so - deprived of the capability for higher thought - for the creative
capability of even the righteous Man, for he remains a Man, is limited.81 The golem exists as
a device, as a tool; it is possessed of an amoral, though not immoral, nature; its sins are the
responsibility of its creator. Although the golem is explicitly intended to metaphorically stand
in for Man in the scenario wherein Man plays at being God, it is never given the capability to
do so, and can maintain only the most perfunctory vision of freedom, which inevitably results
in its death. Although Man and the golem may be made of the same matter, they are not of the
same mettle.

Thus the golem is subservient to Man, as is, in fact, entirely consistent and properly coherent
with the mapping laid out in Genesis 2. As with the role of Man respective to God in Genesis
2, the golem is created from the earth, the ground, the dust at Man's feet. This dust, associated
with a downward orientation, grants to Man an upward orientation erstwhile reserved only for
God; a metaphor, as stated previously, for power and control. Man has power and control
over the golem, to the point of taking the golem's life, granted by Man himself, away.

There are, however, other mappings not present in the original Creation myth which seem to
be connected with the fact that golem-making is a peculiarly human activity. They do not
appear within the tales of Man's Creation by God because they are unnecessary within that
sphere - it is the golem's creation by Man, an imperfect mimesis, that provides
anthropocentric metaphorical structures which are not present for the Divine Creator. These
metaphors are absent or meaningless, with no reference, in the domain of the Creator God.

The human maker of the golem must concern himself with the concept of holy, ritual purity, a
state in which he would be able to set foot within the Holy of Holies, the Temple82 - implying,
certainly, that as a Man, he has the capacity for impurity. This is a notion that does not
concern the Hebrew Creator God, who emanates holiness83 by virtue of His very nature. This
God is not capable of sin, of having His holiness compromised; the holiness of God is a
supposed static state; the holiness of Man is decidedly non-static. Man possesses free will
and, having the capacity to do evil, may well choose to do so, rendering himself as stained or
impure. The fact that physical rituals that the golem-maker must undertake in order to achieve
a state of purity (ie, the mikvah, or ritual cleansing bath) exist points, inversely, to the
veracity that Man can become tainted and unholy. In order to rid himself of the spiritual taint
of sin, Man physically purifies himself; to be physically clean is a visual and tangible
metaphor for spiritual holiness.84 The robes that the righteous wear, in every recorded
instance, are white - metonymically mirroring and reinforcing the conceptualized and
supposed state of purity The colour white can be read easily as an instantiation of the
metaphor of lightness of tone for goodness.85 . Thus, physical cleanliness is a metaphor for
moral purity and holiness,86 a factor that the hidden, non-physical God has no parlance with.
The Hebrew God is not conceived of as having a physical body, or as being capable of a state
of uncleanliness or unholiness. This metaphor, that physical cleanliness is tantamount to
spiritual holiness, while in no manner pertinent to God, is extremely and pointedly relevant to
the human condition - the condition of the golem-maker.

A variation on the white garments of the golem-maker - on colour as indicative of the golem's
metatextual, or perceived, moral status - is the darkness of the golem itself. While the golem
18
has no free will or morality, and can therefore not be truly immoral, its very existence is
characterized as such through a reading of the golem's colouration. This metaphor is quasi-
present in the name given to the first Man in the Judaic Creation myth; "Adam" may literally
translate to "red earth."87 While this is not "black earth", it is also not "white earth;" darkness
is metaphorically associated with badness88 - darkness engenders fear. This may be indicative
of Man's status as, while not entirely evil, for Adam is not equated with blackness or total
darkness, rather a "redness" (perhaps a state positioned precariously between black and white,
with the potential to become either) clearly inferior to God's. The golem, on the other hand, is
always depicted as immutably dark, made of dark earth, or, in the instance of the female
golem, dark wood. There have been no cases of golden golems, coruscating golems, or
golems made of crystal or glass - light-coloured substances, metaphorically representing
goodness. If the concepts of good and evil hold no sway over the golem itself, as a being
incapable of making moral decisions and acting on them, the existence of the golem, as a
kind of hubris on the part of Man, may be the responsible, active agent for the attribution of
the signifiers of badness or wrongness to the golem's physical form. At the very least, these
signifiers impart coherent inferiority to the golem - as Man is, in this schemata, inferior to his
Creator, so is the golem inferior to its creator..

The golem's limited existence as an inferior being is further illustrated by the common
descriptors in its death scenes, which reflect the partial existence the creature is imbued with.
While Man is clearly mortal, he has an immortal component, the soul. The golem is lacking
in such a divine commodity, and the method of its demise is reflective of this deficiency or
defect. The golem's mortal state is much more poignant than that of Man, much more clearly
delineated. While Man comes from the earth, lives on earth, and will return to the earth, as
dust or in a grave,89 upon death, his soul, the divine component, will be elevated to the
heavens. The golem has no such compensation; its mortal nature is unquestionable and
inevitable. When the golem "dies", or ceases to exist, it simply returns to clay, earth. Nothing
more. The death scenes of the golem are informative as well - the golem tumbles, falls, or
crumbles down to the earth, in a heap of dust. It does not dissolve ethereally; it does not
explode volcanically. It simply crumbles downward to the matter of its making. The
downward motion and the earth itself, both associated with downwardness and, hence,
earthliness or mortality, highlight the golem's state as the most mortal of mortal creatures.
While Man has a Divine maker, the golem's maker is all-too-human; though Man has a
Divine component, he cannot confer such a thing to his creation. The golem's origin, while
reliant upon the Divine names of God, is soleley human in function and privilege (or lack
thereof).

The golem's return to a shapeless, non-animate heap of clay, is its only fitting end. If having a
form is a metaphor for existence itself,90 the literal definition of "golem", as a "shapeless
mass" can either solve or complicate the issue of whether the golem can be truly said to exist
without a soul, the animating principle. Form, within this limited and specialized context, is
not enough to confer existence onto any creature or being; the legendary, literary golem is
frequently created without a soul at all. Without a soul, can the golem truly be said to exist
within the confines of Judaic thought? If having a form is metaphoric for having existence,
the somatic golem does exist, in that sense, but it cannot exist within the context demarcated
by Genesis. The golem, textually, at least, exists in a literal-metaphorical sense, but not in a
animus-metaphorical sense. The golem, as pure form, a form based on that of Man, exists as
such; it does not, however, exist in a spiritual sense, even with the infusion of the nefesh,
which deals with sensory reality alone; only Man possesses the nishmat, the higher soul. The
question of whether or not the golem can be said to truly exist, as it is defined in the sources,
is an interesting ontological problem in and of itself; it cannot be solved here. It can only be
concluded that the golem's existence qua existence is somehow illicit and erroneous. The
genesis of the golem is an anomalous thing, indeed.

19
The salient texts devoted to golem-making, and commentary pertaining thereof, are betrayed
by a metaphorical interpretation - this reading betrays the literal, dis-orders it.91 And yet, time
and time again, Man is warned against entering into an antagonistic relationship with his
God, against attempting to recreate Creation. This warning is reiterated, metaphorically,
within the very texts that condone the practice of golem-making. If golem-making were truly
a sanctioned practice, those metaphors would not be present to displace the internal logical
order presented in the texts, where golem-making is proscribed and described as a desirable
act. The texts betray themselves; they judge themselves92 in the court of metaphor and
language. Although this is never stated in the instructional texts and only ambiguously hinted
at in the commentaries (which still treat the act itself as manageable), they find themselves
lacking. The metaphorical structures that are inherent to the concept of golem-making, and
the entailments derived thereof, operate on a semiotic level, for the most part - the sentences
of the texts do not contain the meaning in entirety; the sentences are not reducible to the sum
of their parts.93 Indeed, as imperatives and instructions, the semantic meaning refuses the
semiotic meaning entirely. The words employed remain the focus of the effective
metaphorical94 and mythic, extra-textual meaning - the words are not simply signs with solid
referents and restricted, literal meanings.95 This distinction is an important one to make,
especially as the function of these lexical entities, as the carriers of meaning,96 is entirely
counter to the semantics of the sentence. Yet it is the semiotic approach which yields an
interpretation that is coherent within the overall framework of Judaism - that Man cannot
really presume to assume the role of God.

Kabbalah and Jewish Mysticism

Level: Advanced

Mysticism in Judaism

When non-Jews ask about Judaism, they commonly ask questions like: Do you believe in
heaven and hell? In angels or the devil? What happens to the soul after death? What is the
nature of God and the universe? The answers to questions like these define most religions; in
fact, some people say that the purpose of religion is to answer these kinds of questions. Yet
from a Torah viewpoint, most of these cosmological issues are wide open to personal
opinion. The areas of Jewish thought that most extensively discuss these issues, Kabbalah
and Jewish mysticism, were traditionally not even taught to people until the age of 40, when
they had completed their education in Written Torah and Oral Torah (in other words, in Bible
and practical Law).

Mysticism and mystical experiences have been a part of Judaism since the earliest days. The
Bible contains many stories of mystical experiences, from visitations by angels to prophetic
dreams and visions. The Talmud considers the existence of the soul and when it becomes
attached to the body. Jewish tradition tells that the souls of all Jews were in existence at the
time of the Giving of the Torah and were present at the time and agreed to the Covenant.
There are many stories of places similar to the Gentiles' heaven and hell. The Talmud
contains vague hints of a mystical school of thought that was taught only to the most
advanced students and was not committed to writing. There are several references in ancient
20
sources to ma'aseh bereishit (the work of creation) and ma'aseh merkavah (the work of the
chariot [of Ezekiel's vision]), the two primary subjects of mystical thought at the time.

In the middle ages, many of these mystical teachings were committed to writing in books like
the Zohar. Many of these writings were asserted to be secret ancient writings or compilations
of secret ancient writings, and some probably are. It is important to remember, however, that
such secret writings that are not the results of public debate in authorative rabbinical courts
must never be understood (actually misunderstood) as contradicting the laws that were
openly discussed and properly enacted. All too many Jews as a practial matter have rejected
the law and have prefered to practice their misunderstandings of Kabbalistic books or their
rabbis' misunderstandings of them. This is simply inexcusable: The proper subject for such
writings is why we do what we do when we observe the Torah, not what we need to do to
observe the Torah.

Like most subjects of Jewish belief, the area of mysticism is wide open to personal
interpretation. Some traditional Jews take mysticism very seriously. Mysticism is an integral
part of Chasidic Judaism, for example, and passages from kabbalistic sources are routinely
included in traditional prayer books. Other traditional Jews take mysticism with a grain of
salt. One prominent Orthodox Jew, when introducing a speaker on the subject of Jewish
mysticism, said basically, "it's nonsense, but it's Jewish nonsense, and the study of anything
Jewish, even nonsense, is worthwhile". While we do not say that Kabbalah is nonsense,
many things said in its name are clearly nonsense.

The mystical school of thought came to be known as Kabbalah, from the Hebrew root Qof-
Bet-Lamed, meaning to receive, to accept. The word is usually translated as "tradition". In
Hebrew, the word does not have any of the dark, sinister, evil connotations that it has
developed in English. For example, the English word "cabal" (a secret group of conspirators)
is derived from the Hebrew word Kabbalah, but neither the Hebrew word nor the mystical
doctrines have any evil implications to Jews.

Kabbalah: The Misunderstood Doctrine

Kabbalah is one of the most grossly misunderstood parts of Judaism. Some non-Jews (and
even some Jews) describe Kabbalah as "the dark side of Judaism". Many of these
misunderstandings arose largely from distortions of the teachings of Kabbalah by non-Jewish
mystics and occultists. Kabbalah was popular among Christian intellectuals during the
Renaissance and Enlightenment periods, who reinterpreted its doctrines to fit into their
Christian dogma. For example, one such source (the Kabbalah Denudata, commonly
available in new age bookstores) states that the Ten Sefirot have something to do with the
Christian Trinity because they are sometimes divided up into groups of three, despite that the
Sefirot are divided up into many groups of varying numbers, that these groupings overlap,
that the grouping he refers to is not comprised of a father, son, and spirit, but of a male, a
female, and neutral, and so forth. Others have wrenched kabbalistic symbolism out of
context for use in tarot card readings and other forms of divination and magic that were never
a part of the original Jewish teachings.

We do not mean to suggest that magic is not a part of Kabbalah. The most hidden, secretive
part of Kabbalah, commonly known as "practical Kabbalah", involves use of hidden
knowledge to affect the world in ways that could be described as magic. The Talmud and
other sources ascribe supernatural activities to many great rabbis. Some rabbis pronounced a
name of God and ascended into heaven to consult with the God and the angels on issues of
great public concern. One scholar is said to have created an artificial man by reciting various
names of God. Much later stories tell of a rabbi who created a man out of clay and brought it
21
to life by putting in its mouth a piece of paper with a name of God on it. Some of these
stories are no doubt untrue, at least as understood literally; but some are true. However, this
area of Kabbalah is known by very few, and practiced by even fewer. One great rabbi has
said that these practices should be totally avoided, except when the Temple stands; that seems
very sound advice to us.

Ein Sof and the Ten Sefirot

To give you an idea of the nature of Kabbalah, we will briefly tell about one of the better
known, fundamental concepts of kabbalistic thought: the concept of God as Ein Sof and the
Ten Sefirot. This explanation is, at best, a gross oversimplification.

The true essence of God is so transcendent that it cannot be described, except with reference
to what it is not. This true essence of God is known in Kabbalah as "Ein Sof", which literally
means without end, which encompasses the idea of His lack of boundaries in both time and
space. In this truest form, the Ein Sof is so transcendent that it cannot have any direct
interaction with the universe. The Ein Sof is said to interact with the created universe
through ten emanations from this essence, known as the Ten Sefirot.

The Sefirot are not deities, as some think by taking this too literally. They are God's separate
created mechanisms for dealing with the world, and they are in contact with the universe in a
way that the Ein Sof is not. The Sefirot connect with everything in the universe, including
humanity. We would say that the point of the Sefirot is to give an explanation of how God
really is ultimately in control of the world, sees all, and rewards and punishes as He sees fit;
but he does this by way of these mechanisms, not directly. And do not make the mistake of
worshiping them or praying to them or by way of them, as all too many have, as that is
idolatry punishable by death, exclusion from the Jewish people, and exclusion from the
World to Come.

Suggested Reading

Readings in this area should be undertaken with extreme caution. There is entirely too much
literature out there under the name "Kabbalah" that has little or nothing to do with the true
Jewish teachings on this subject. Any book on the subject of practical Kabbalah should be
disregarded immediately; no legitimate source would ever make such teachings available to a
faceless mass audience.

Unless you are an expert in both the whole of the Hebrew Bible and the whole of the Law as
summarized in the Rambam's Mishneh Torah (both in the original Hebrew, not in English
translation), you should not even bother about learning Kabbalah.

If you are really serious about Kabbalah, once you have properly qualified yourself by
learning Bible and the Law, you must get yourself a teacher that you can work with one-on-
one, in person. But be very careful about choosing a teacher, as some will teach you to
worship idols in the name of our Holy Torah, as we have witnessed with our own eyes and
heard with our own ears! It is distasteful for us to mention this, but we would be
irresponsible if we did not warn you.

22
 Who is a Jew?

Level: Basic

A Jew is any person whose mother was a Jew or any person who has gone through the
formal process of conversion in full compliance with Jewish law.

It is important to note that being a Jew has nothing to do with what you believe or what you
do. A person born to non-Jewish parents who believes everything that Orthodox Jews believe
and observes every law and custom of the Jews is still a non-Jew, even in the eyes of the most
liberal movements of Judaism, and a person born to a Jewish mother who is an atheist and
never practices the Jewish religion is still a Jew, even in the eyes of the ultra-Orthodox. In
this sense, being a Jew is more like a nationality than like other religions; it is like a
citizenship.

Although all Jewish movements agree on these general principles, there are occasional
disputes as to whether a particular individual is a Jew. Most of these disputes fall into one of
two categories.

First, traditional Judaism maintains that a person is a Jew if his mother is a Jew, regardless of
who his father is. The liberal movements, on the other hand, consider a person to be Jewish
if either of his parents was Jewish. Thus, the child of a Jewish father and a Christian mother
is a Jew according to the Reform movement, but not according to the Orthodox movement.
The matter becomes even more complicated, because the status of that child's children also
comes into question.

Second, the more traditional movements do not always acknowledge the validity of
conversions by the more liberal movements. The more modern movements do not always
follow the procedures required by the more traditional movements, thereby invalidating the
conversion. In addition, Orthodoxy does not accept the authority of Conservative, Reform,
and Reconstructionist rabbis to perform conversions, and the Conservative movement has
debated whether to accept the authority of Reform rabbis.

About the Agudath Ha-Rabonim Statement

In March, 1997, the Agudath Ha-Rabonim issued a statement declaring that the Conservative
and Reform movements are "outside of Torah and outside of Judaism". This statement has
been widely publicized and widely misunderstood, and requires some response. Three points
are particularly worth discussing: 1) the statement does not challenge the Jewish status of
Reform and Conservative Jews; 2) the statement is not an official statement of a unified
Orthodox opinion; 3) the statement was made with the intention of bringing people into
Jewish belief, not with the intention of excluding them from it.

First of all, the Agudath Ha-Rabonim statement does not say that Reform and Conservative
Jews are not Jews. Their statement does not say anything about Jewish status. As the
discussion above explains, status as a Jew has nothing to do with what you believe; it is
simply a matter of who your parents are. Reform and Conservative Jews are Jews, as they
have always been, and even the Agudath Ha-Rabonim would agree on that point. The debate
over who is a Jew is the same as it has always been, the same as was discussed above: the
Reform recognition of patrilineal decent, and the validity of conversions performed by non-
Orthodox rabbis.

23
Second, the Agudath Ha-Rabonim is not the official voice of mainstream Orthodoxy. Their
statement does not represent the unified position of Orthodox Judaism in the US. In fact, the
Rabbinical Council of America (the rabbinic arm of the Union of Orthodox Jewish
Congregations of America) immediately issued a strong statement disassociating themselves
from this "hurtful public pronouncement [which] flies in the face of Jewish peoplehood".

Finally, before one can denounce a statement like this, one should make an attempt to
understand the position of those making the statement. According to Orthodoxy, the Torah is
the heart of Judaism. All of what our people are revolves around the unchanging, eternal,
mutually binding covenant between God and our people. That is the definition of Jewish
belief, according to Orthodoxy, and all Jewish belief is measured against that yardstick. You
may dispute the validity of the yardstick, but you cannot deny that Conservative and Reform
Judaism do not measure up on that yardstick. Reform Judaism does not believe in the
binding nature of Torah, and Conservative Judaism believes that the law can be changed quite
flexibly.

The Agudath Ha-Rabonim did not intend to cut Reform and Conservative Jews off from their
heritage. On the contrary, their intention was to bring Reform and Conservative Jews back to
what they consider to be the only true Judaism. The statement encouraged Reform and
Conservative Jews to leave their synagogues and "join an Orthodox synagogue, where they
will be warmly welcomed". Some Orthodox and Chasidic Jews believe that if there were no
Reform or Conservative synagogues, everyone would be Orthodox. It seems more likely,
however, that if there were no such movements, most of these people would be lost to
Judaism entirely.

Movements of Judaism

Level: Basic

The different sects or denominations of Judaism are generally referred to as movements. The
differences between Jewish movements are not nearly as great as the differences between
Christian denominations. The differences between Orthodoxy and Reform Judaism are not
much greater than the differences between the liberal and fundamentalist wings of the Baptist
denomination of Christianity.

In general, when speaking of "movements" in this site, we are mostly referring to movements
in the United States in the 20th century.

Movements Before the 20th Century

All Jewish movements that exist today are derived from one movement, identified in the
Christian scriptures as the Pharisees. At the dawn of Christianity, there were several different
competing schools of thought: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Zealots.
The Pharisaic school of thought is the only one that survived the destruction of the Temple.
The Pharisees believed that God gave the Jews both a written Torah and an oral Torah, both
of which were equally binding and both of which were open to reinterpretation by the rabbis,
people with sufficient education to make such decisions. The Pharisees were devoted to

24
study of the Torah and education for all. Today, this school of thought is known as
Rabbinical Judaism.

From the time of the destruction of the Temple until the middle of the 1700s, there was no
large-scale organized difference of opinion within Judaism. Judaism was Judaism, and it was
basically Orthodox Judaism. There were some differences in practices and customs between
the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe and the Sephardic Jews of Spain and the Middle East,
but these differences were not significant. See Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews.

In the 1700s, the first of the modern movements developed in Eastern Europe. This
movement, known as Chasidism, was founded by Israel ben Eliezer, more commonly known
as the Baal Shem Tov or the Besht. Before Chasidism, Judaism emphasized education as the
way to get closer to God. Chasidism emphasized other, more personal experiences and
mysticism as alternative routes to God. Chasidism was considered a radical movement at the
time it was founded. There was strong opposition from those who held to the pre-existing
view of Judaism. Those who opposed Chasidism became known as mitnagdim (opponents).
Today, the Chasidim and the mitnagdim are relatively unified in their opposition to the liberal
modern movements.

Movements in 20th Century United States

Approximately 5 million of the world's 13 million Jews live in the United States. There are
three major movements in the U.S. today: Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox. Some
people also include a fourth movement, the Reconstructionist movement, although that
movement is substantially smaller than the other three. Orthodox and sometimes
Conservative are described as "traditional" movements. Reform, Reconstructionist, and
sometimes Conservative are described as "liberal" or "modern" movements.

Orthodoxy is actually made up of several different groups. It includes the modern Orthodox,
who have largely integrated into modern society while maintaining observance of halakhah
(Jewish Law), the Chasidim, who live separately and dress distinctively (commonly referred
to in the media as the "ultra-Orthodox"), and the Yeshivish Orthodox, who are neither
Chasidic nor modern. The Orthodox movements are all very similar in belief, and the
differences are difficult for anyone who is not Orthodox to understand. They all believe that
God gave Moses the whole Torah at Mount Sinai. The "whole Torah" includes both the
Written Torah (the first five books of the Bible) and the Oral Torah, an oral tradition
interpreting and explaining the Written Torah. They believe that the Torah is true, that it has
come down to us intact and unchanged. They believe that the Torah contains 613 mitzvot
binding upon Jews but not upon non-Jews. The Judaism 101 web site (the starting point of
this "site within a site") was written primarily from the Orthodox point of view. It has been
estimated that there are 1200 Orthodox synagogues in the US today with a total of
approximately 1 million members.

Reform Judaism does not believe that the Torah was written by God. The movement accepts
the critical theory of Biblical authorship: that the Bible was written by separate sources and
redacted together. Reform Jews do not believe in observance of commandments as such, but
they retain much of the values and ethics of Judaism, along with some of the practices and the
culture. The original, basic tenets of Reform Judaism in the USA were set down in the
Pittsburgh Platform. Many non-observant, nominal, and/or agnostic Jews identify themselves
as Reform simply because Reform is the most liberal movement, but that is not really a fair
reflection on the movement as a whole. There are about 800 Reform synagogues in the US
with approximately 2 million members. For more information about Reform Judaism, see
The Union for Reform Judaism.
25
Conservative Judaism grew out of the tension between Orthodoxy and Reform. It was
formally organized as the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism by Dr. Solomon
Schechter in 1913, although its roots in the Jewish Theological Seminary of America stretch
back into the 1880s. Conservative Judaism generally accepts the binding nature of halakhah,
but believes that the Law should change and adapt, absorbing aspects of the predominant
culture while remaining true to Judaism's values. In our experience, there is a great deal of
variation among Conservative synagogues. Some are indistinguishable from Reform, except
that they use more Hebrew; others are practically Orthodox, except that men and women sit
together. Most are very traditional in substance, if not always in form. There are an
estimated 800 Conservative synagogues in the US today with approximately 1.3 million
members.

Reconstructionist Judaism is theoretically an outgrowth of Conservative, but it does not fit

neatly into the traditional/liberal, observant/non-observant continuum that most people use to
classify movements of Judaism. Reconstructionists believe that Judaism is an "evolving
religious civilization". They do not believe in a personified deity that is active in history, and
they do not believe that God chose the Jewish people. From this, you might assume that
Reconstructionism is to the left of Reform; yet Reconstructionism lays a much greater stress
on Jewish observance than Reform Judaism. Reconstructionists observe the halakhah if they
choose to, not because it is a binding Law from God, but because it is a valuable cultural
remnant. Reconstructionism is a very small movement but seems to get a disproportionate
amount of attention, probably because there are a disproportionate number of
Reconstructionists serving as rabbis to Jewish college student organizations and Jewish
Community Centers. Many seem to have had a Reconstructionist rabbi at college or in a
community center, yet there are only about 60,000 Reconstructionists in the US.

Though most Jews do not have any theological objections to praying in the synagogues of
other movements, liberal services are not "religious" enough or "Jewish" enough for
traditional Jews, and traditional services are largely incomprehensible to liberal Jews
(because traditional services are primarily, if not exclusively, in Hebrew), too long, and too
conservative. Some Orthodox will not attend liberal services because of the mixed seating
arrangements and because the liberal prayer book cuts many required prayers.

We have been to services in Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox synagogues, and have
found that while there are substantial differences in length, language, and choice of reading
materials, the overall structure is surprisingly similar. See Jewish Liturgy for more
information about prayer services.

Movements in 20th Century Israel

Approximately 5 million Jews live in Israel. Orthodoxy is the only movement that is
formally and legally recognized in Israel. Until very recently, only Orthodox Jews could
serve on religious councils. The Orthodox rabbinate in Israel controls matters of personal
status, such as marriage, conversion, and divorce.

The other US movements have some degree of presence in Israel, but for the most part,
Israelis do not formally identify themselves with a movement. Most Israelis describe
themselves more generally in terms of their degree of observance, rather than in terms of
membership in an organized movement.

More than half of all Israelis describe themselves as hiloni (secular). About 15-20 percent
describe themselves as haredi (ultra-Orthodox) or dati (Orthodox). The rest describe
themselves as masorti (traditionally observant, but not as dogmatic as the Orthodox). It is
26
important to remember, however, that the masorti and hiloni of Israel tend to be more
observant than their counterparts in the US. For example, the hiloni of Israel often observe
some traditional practices in a limited way, such as lighting Sabbath candles, limiting their
activities on the Sabbath, or keeping kosher to some extent, all of which are rare among US
Reform Jews, and unheard of among US Jews who describe themselves as secular.

Movements in 20th Century United Kingdom

There are an estimated 350,000 Jews in the UK. Of those, approximately 20% are Reform or
Liberal, which are two separate movements. There is also a small but active Conservative
movement called the Masoreti. The Lubavitcher Chasidim are also active and growing in the
UK.

The liberal movements in the UK are generally more traditional than the Reform movement
in the United States. For example, the British Reform movement does not accept patrilineal
descent (although the Liberal movement does). See Who Is a Jew.

Ashkenazic and Sephardic Jews

Level: Basic

The pages in this site were originally written from an Ashkenazic Jewish perspective, but
they are currently being rewritten from a more universal Torah viewpoint. Ashkenazic
Jews are the Jews of France, Germany, and Eastern Europe. Sephardic Jews are the Jews
of Spain, Portugal, North Africa, and the Middle East. The word "Ashkenazic" is derived
from the Hebrew word for Germany. The word "Sephardic" is derived from the Hebrew
word for Spain.

Most Jews in the US today are Ashkenazic, descended from Jews who emigrated from
Germany and Eastern Europe in the mid-1800s, although most of the early Jewish settlers of
this country were Sephardic. The first Jewish congregation in the city of Philadelphia,
Congregation Mikveh Israel, was a Sephardic one (it is still active).

The beliefs of Sephardic Judaism are basically in accord with those of Orthodox Judaism,
though Sephardic interpretations of halakhah (Jewish Law) are somewhat different from
Ashkenazic ones. Although some individual Sephardic Jews are less observant than others,
and some individuals do not agree with all of the beliefs of traditional Judaism, there is no
formal, organized differentiation into movements as there is in Ashkenazic Judaism.

Historically, Sephardic Jews have been more integrated into the local non-Jewish culture than
Ashkenazic Jews. In the Christian lands where Ashkenazic Judaism flourished, the tension
between Christians and Jews was great, and Jews tended to be isolated from their non-Jewish
neighbors, either voluntarily or involuntarily. In the Islamic lands where Sephardic Judaism
developed, no such segregation existed. Sephardic Jewish thought and culture was strongly
influenced by Arabic and Greek philosophy and science.

Sephardic Jews have a different pronunciation of a few Hebrew vowels and one Hebrew
consonant, though most Ashkenazim are adopting Sephardic pronunciation now because it is
the pronunciation used in Israel. See Hebrew Alphabet. Their prayer services are somewhat
different from Ashkenazic ones, and they use different melodies in their services. Sephardic
Jews also have different holiday customs and different traditional foods.

27
The Yiddish language, which many people think of as the international language of Judaism,
is really the language of Ashkenazic Jews. Sephardic Jews have their own international
language: Ladino, which was based on Spanish and Hebrew in the same way that Yiddish
was based on German and Hebrew.

There are some Jews who do not fit into this Ashkenazic/Sephardic distinction. Yemenite
Jews (including people on Mechon Mamre's staff), Ethiopian Jews (also known as Beta Israel
and sometimes called Falashas), and Oriental Jews also have some distinct customs and
traditions. These groups, however, are relatively small and almost unknown in the West.

Gentiles

Level: Basic

The Torah maintains that the righteous Gentiles of all nations (those observing the Seven
Laws of Noah, listed below) have a place in the World to Come. But not all religious
Gentiles earn eternal life by virtue of observing their religion:

While it is recognized that Moslems worship the same God that we do (though calling him
Allah, He is the same God of Israel), even those who follow the tenets of their religion cannot
be considered righteous in the eyes of God, because they do not accept that the Written
Torah in the hands of the Jews today is the original Torah handed down by God and they do
not accept the Seven Laws of Noah as binding on them.
While the Christians do generally accept the Hebrew Bible as truly from God, many of them
(those who accept the so-called divinity of Jesus) are idolaters according to the Torah,
punishable by death, and certainly will not enjoy the World to Come. But it is not just being
a member of a denomination in which the majority are believers in the Trinity that is idolatry,
but personal idolatrous practice, whatever the individual's affiliation.

Contrary to popular belief, the Torah does not maintain that Jews are necessarily better than
other people simply because they are Jews. Although we are God's chosen people, we do not
believe that God chose the Jews because of any inherent superiority. According to a story in
the Talmud, God offered the Torah to all the nations of the earth, and the Jews were the only
ones who accepted it. According to another story, the Jews were offered the Torah last, and
accepted it only because God held a mountain over their heads! Another traditional story
suggests that God chose the Jews because they were the lowliest of nations, and their success
would be attributed to God's might rather than their own ability. Clearly, these are not the
ideas of a people who think they are inherently better than other nations.

Because of our acceptance of Torah, Jews have a special status in the eyes of God, but we
lose that special status when we abandon Torah. Furthermore, the blessings that we received
from God by accepting the Torah come with a high price: Jews have a greater responsibility
than non-Jews. While non-Jews are only obligated to obey the seven commandments given
to Noah, Jews are responsible for fulfilling the 613 mitzvot in the Torah, thus God will punish
Jews for doing many things that would not be a sin for non-Jews.

The Seven Laws of Noah

According to Torah tradition, God gave Noah and his family seven commandments to
observe when he saved them from the flood. These commandments, referred to as the Noahic
or Noahide commandments, are learned by tradition but also suggested in Genesis Chapter 9,
and are as follows:

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 1. not to commit idolatry
2. not to commit blasphemy

3. not to commit murder

4. not to have forbidden sexual relations

5. not to commit theft

6. not to eat flesh cut from a living animal

7. to establish courts of justice to punish violators of the other six laws.

These commandments may seem fairly simple and straightforward, and most of them are
recognized by most of the world as sound moral principles. But according to the Torah only
those Gentiles who observe these laws because God commanded them in His Torah will
enjoy life in the World to Come: If they observe them just because they seem reasonable or
because they think that God commanded them in some way other than in the Torah, they
might as well not obey them so far as a part in the World to Come is concerned.

The Noahic commandments are binding on all people, because all people are descended from
Noah and his family. The 613 mitzvot of the Torah, on the other hand, are only binding on
the descendants of those who accepted the commandments at Sinai and upon those who take
on the yoke of the commandments voluntarily (by conversion). Some say that the Noahic
commandments are applied more leniently to non-Jews than the corresponding
commandments are to Jews, because non-Jews do not have the benefit of Oral Torah to guide
them in interpreting the laws. Some European rabbis (presumably because of fear of reprisal
from their Christian neighbors, famous for their violence to Jews) have gone so far as to say
that worshipping God in the form of a man constitutes idolatry for a Jew punishable by death,
but the Trinitarian Christian worship of Jesus does not constitute idolatry. In truth, any
idolatry for which a Jew is punishable by death is also punishable by death for non-Jews,
including the worship of a man as a god.

We plan to provide on this site a full exposition of Seven Laws, including many details that
could not be guessed from the listing above.

Terms Used for Gentiles

It appears that some Gentiles prefer the more neutral term non-Jew, but few today are insulted
by Gentile, the classical term for them appearing often in Bible translations. When we use it
here, we certainly intend no offence and hope that none is taken; we would not be writing
much of this, if we were lacking in respect and affection for Gentiles.

The most commonly used Hebrew or Yiddish word for a non-Jew is goy. The word "goy"
means nation, and refers to the fact that goyim are members of other nations, that is, nations
other than the Children of Israel. There is nothing inherently insulting about the word "goy".
In fact, the Bible occasionally refers to the Jewish people using the term "goy". Most
notably, in Exodus 19,6, God says that the Children of Israel will be "a kingdom of priests
and a holy nation", that is, a goy kadosh. Because Jews have had so many bad experiences
with anti-Semitic non-Jews over the centuries, the term "goy" has taken on some negative
connotations, but in general the term is no more insulting than the word "Gentile".

The more insulting terms for non-Jews are shiksa (feminine) and shkutz or sheketz
(masculine). It may be gathered that these words are derived from the Hebrew root Shin-
Qof-Tzade, meaning loathsome or abomination. The word shiksa is most commonly used to
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refer to a non-Jewish woman who is dating or married to a Jewish man, which should give
some indication of how strongly Jews are opposed to the idea of intermarriage. The term
shkutz or sheketz is most commonly used to refer to an anti-Semitic man. Both terms can be
used in a less serious, more joking way, but in general they should be used with caution, if at
all; in fact, we personally only use these terms to refer to apostate Jews whose behavior is
disgusting.

Interfaith Marriages

The Torah does not permit or even recognize marriages between Jews and Gentiles, if
performed despite the prohibition. The punishment for Jews for such marriages is being cut
off from the Jewish people and any part in the World to Come, whether the couple formally
marries according to secular law or they just live together.

The Written Torah states that the children of such marriages would be lost to the Jewish
people (Deuteronomy 7,3-4), and experience has shown the truth of this passage all too well:
Children of intermarriage are rarely raised Jewish; they are normally raised in the faith of the
non-Jewish partner or non-religious. This may reflect that Jews who intermarry are not
deeply committed to their religion in the first place (if they were, why would they marry
someone who did not share it?), but the statistics are sufficiently alarming to be a matter of
great concern to the Jewish community.

Some Orthodox Jews go so far as to state that intermarriage is accomplishing what Hitler
could not: the destruction of the Jewish people. That may seem an extreme view, but it
vividly illustrates how seriously many Jews take the issue of intermarriage. Nonetheless,
currently most Jews outside the Land of Israel are taking non-Jewish marital partners.

If the non-Jewish spouse truly shares the same values as the Jewish spouse, then the non-Jew
is welcome to convert, and if the non-Jew does not share the same values, then the couple
should not be marrying in the first place. While conversion just to allow a Gentile to marry a
Jew is not legitimate, many a Gentile initially considered conversion after finding a Jewish
potential marital partner, and then in the end became a sincere convert before the marriage.

Conversion

In general, Jews do not try to convert non-Jews to Judaism. In fact, according to halakhah
(Jewish Law), rabbis are supposed to make three vigorous attempts to dissuade a person who
wants to convert to Judaism.

As the discussion above explained, Jews have a lot of responsibilities that non-Jews do not
have. To be considered a good and righteous person in the eyes of God, a non-Jew need only
follow the seven Noahic commandments, whereas a Jew has to follow all 613
commandments given in the Torah. If the potential convert is not going to follow those extra
rules, it is better for him or her to stay a Gentile, and since we as Jews are all responsible for
each other, it is better for us too if that person stayed a Gentile. The rabbinically mandated
attempt to dissuade a convert is intended to make sure that the prospective convert is serious
and willing to take on all this extra responsibility.

Once a person has decided to convert, the proselyte must begin to learn Jewish law and
customs, and begin to observe them. This teaching process generally takes at least one year,
because the prospective convert is encouraged to experience each of the Jewish holidays;
however, the actual amount of study required will vary from person to person (a convert who

30
was raised as a Jew might not need any further education, for example, while another person
might need several years).

After the teaching is complete, the proselyte is brought before a Beit Din (rabbinical court)
which examines the proselyte and determines whether he or she is ready to become a Jew. If
the proselyte passes this oral examination, the rituals of conversion are performed. If the
convert is male, he is circumcised (or, if he was already circumcised, a pinprick of blood is
drawn for a symbolic circumcision). Both male and female converts are immersed in the
mikveh (a ritual bath used for spiritual purification). The convert is given a Jewish name and
is then introduced into the Jewish community.

In theory, once the conversion procedure is complete, the convert is as much a Jew as anyone
who is born to the religion. In practice, the convert is often treated with caution, because we
have had a lot of bad experiences with converts who later return to their former faith in whole
or in part.

For more information about conversion, see The Conversion to Judaism Home Page. The
information provided by Professor Epstein at that site is written from a Conservative
perspective, but is valuable to anyone considering conversion.

The Role of Women

Level: Intermediate

The role of women in traditional Judaism has been grossly misrepresented and
misunderstood. The position of women is not nearly as lowly as many modern people think;
in fact, the position of women in halakhah (Jewish Law) that dates back to the biblical period
is in many ways better than the position of women under US civil law as recently as a century
ago. Many of the important feminist leaders of the 20th century (Gloria Steinem, for
example) are Jewish women, and some commentators have suggested that this is no
coincidence: the respect accorded to women in Jewish tradition was a part of their ethnic
culture.

In traditional Judaism, women's obligations and responsibilities are different from men's, but
no less important (in fact, in some ways, women's responsibilities are considered more
important, as we shall see).

The equality of men and women begins at the highest possible level: God. In Judaism,
unlike Christianity, God has never been viewed as exclusively male or masculine. Judaism
has always maintained that God has both masculine and feminine qualities. God has, of
course, no body; therefore, the very idea that God is male or female is patently absurd. We
refer to God using masculine terms simply for convenience's sake, because Hebrew has no
neutral gender; God is no more male than a table or chair (both "masculine" nouns in
Hebrew).

Both man and woman were created in the image of God. According to many Jewish scholars,
"man" was created "male and female" (Genesis 1,27) with dual gender, and was later
separated into male and female.

According to traditional Judaism, women are endowed with a greater degree of "binah"
(intuition, understanding, intelligence) than men. The rabbis inferred this from the idea that
woman was "built" (Genesis 2,22) rather than "formed" (Genesis 2,7), and the Hebrew root of
31
"build" has the same consonants as the word "binah". It has been said that the matriarchs
(Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah) were superior to the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob) in prophecy. It has also been said that women did not participate in the idolatry
regarding the golden calf. Some traditional sources suggest that women are closer to God's
ideal than men.

Women have held positions of respect in Judaism since biblical times. Miriam is considered
one of the liberators of the people of Israel, along with her brothers Moses and Aaron. One of
the Judges (Deborah) was a woman. Seven of the 55 prophets of the Bible were women.

The Ten Commandments require respect for both mother and father. Note that the father
comes first in Exodus 20,11, but the mother comes first in Leviticus 19,3.

There were many learned women of note. The Talmud and later rabbinical writings speak of
the wisdom of Berurya, the wife of Rabbi Meir. In several instances, her opinions on
halakhah (Jewish Law) were accepted over those of her male contemporaries. In the ketubah
(marriage contract) of Rabbi Akiba's son, the wife is obligated to teach the husband Torah!
Many rabbis over the centuries have been known to consult their wives on matters of Jewish
law relating to the woman's role, such as laws of kashrut and women's periods. The wife of a
rabbi is referred to as a rebbetzin, practically a title of her own, which should give some idea
of her significance in Jewish life.

There can be no doubt, however, that the Talmud also has many negative things to say about
women. Various rabbis at various times describe women as lazy, jealous, vain and
gluttonous, prone to gossip and particularly prone to the occult and witchcraft. Men are
repeatedly advised against associating with women, although that is as much because of
man's lust as it is because of any shortcoming in women. Women are discouraged from
pursuing higher education or religious pursuits, but this seems to be primarily because
women who engage in such pursuits might neglect their primary duties as wives and
mothers. The rabbis are not concerned that women are not spiritual enough, but rather are
concerned that women might become too spiritually devoted.

The rights of women in traditional Judaism are much greater than they were in the rest of
Western civilization until this century. Women had the right to buy, sell, and own property,
and make their own contracts, rights which women in Christian countries (including the
USA) did not have until about 100 years ago. In fact, Proverbs 31,10-31, which is read at
Jewish weddings, speaks repeatedly of business acumen as a trait to be prized in women (v.
11, 13, 16, and 18 especially).

Women have the right to be consulted with regard to their marriage. Marital sex is regarded
as the woman's right, and not the man's. Men do not have the right to beat or mistreat their
wives, a right that was recognized by law in many Christian countries until a few hundred
years ago. In cases of rape, a woman is generally presumed not to have consented to the
intercourse, even if she enjoyed it, even if she consented after the sexual act began and
declined a rescue! This is in sharp contrast to Western society, where even today rape victims
often have to overcome public suspicion that they "asked for it" or "wanted it". Traditional
Judaism recognizes that forced sexual relations within the context of marriage are rape and
are not permitted; in many states in the West, rape within marriage is still not a criminal act.

There is no question that in traditional Judaism, the primary role of a woman is as wife and
mother, keeper of the household. However, Judaism has great respect for the importance of
that role. The Talmud says that when a pious man marries a wicked woman, the man
becomes wicked, but when a wicked man marries a pious woman, the man becomes pious.

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Women are exempted from all positive commandments ("thou shalts" as opposed to "thou
shalt nots") that are time-related (that is, commandments that must be performed at a specific
time of the day or year), because the woman's duties as wife and mother are so important that
they cannot be postponed to fulfill a commandment. After all, a woman cannot be expected
to just drop a crying baby when the time comes to perform a commandment.

It is this exemption from certain commandments that has led to the greatest misunderstanding
of the role of women in Judaism. First, many people make the mistake of thinking that this
exemption is a prohibition. On the contrary, although women are not obligated to perform
time-based positive commandments, they are generally permitted to observe such
commandments if they choose. Second, because this exemption diminishes the role of
women in the synagogue, many people perceive that women have no role in Jewish religious
life. This misconception derives from the mistaken assumption that Jewish religious life
revolves around the synagogue. It does not; it revolves around the home, where the woman's
role is every bit as important as the man's.

The Role of Women in the Synagogue

To understand the limited role of women in synagogue life, it is important to understand the
nature of commandments in Judaism and the separation of men and women.

Judaism recognizes that it is mankind's nature to rebel against authority; thus, one who does
something because he is commanded to is regarded with greater merit than one who does
something because he chooses to. The person who refrains from pork because it is a
commandment has more merit than the person who refrains from pork because he does not
like the taste. In addition, the commandments, burdens, and obligations that were given to
the Jewish people are regarded as a privilege, and the more commandments one is obliged to
observe, the more privileged one is.

Because women are not obligated to perform certain commandments, their observance of
those commandments does not "count" for group purposes. While a woman must pray the
silent standing prayer just as a man does, she need not pray the full prayer service of the
synagoue that a man prays. Thus, a woman's voluntary attendance at daily worship services
does not count toward a minyan (the 10 people necessary to recite certain prayers), a
woman's voluntary recitation of certain prayers does not count on behalf of the group (thus
women cannot lead services), and a woman's voluntary reading from the Torah does not
count towards the community's obligation to read from the Torah.

In addition, because women are not obligated to perform as many commandments as men are,
women are regarded as less privileged. It is in this light that one must understand the man's
blessing thanking God for "not making me a woman". The prayer does not indicate that it is
bad to be a woman, but only that men feel fortunate to be privileged to have more
obligations.

Another thing that must be understood is the separation of

men and women during prayer. According to Jewish Law,
men and women must be separated during prayer, usually by a
wall or curtain called a mechitzah or by placing women in a
second floor balcony. There are two reasons for this: first,
your mind is supposed to be on prayer, not on the pretty girl
praying near you. Second, many pagan religious ceremonies
at the time the Torah was given on Sinai involved sexual
activity and orgies, and the separation prevents or at least
33
discourages even thinking about such things. A separation like that in today's synagogue was
also made long ago in the Temple.

The combination of the exemption from certain commandments and this separation results in
some women feeling that they have an inferior place in the synagogue. Because of these
problems, many Orthodox women rarely attend services.

But as said before, this restriction on participation in synagogue life does not mean that
women are excluded from Jewish religious life, because the Jewish religion is not something
that happens in synagogue. Judaism is something that permeates every aspect of your life,
everything that you do, from the time you wake up in the morning to the time you go to bed,
from what you eat and how you dress to how you conduct business. Prayer services are only
a small, though important, part of the Jewish religion.

Rabbis, Priests, and Other Functionaries

Level: Intermediate

Rabbi

A rabbi is not a priest, neither in the Jewish sense of the term nor in the Christian sense of the
term. In the Christian sense of the term, a priest is a person with special authority to perform
certain sacred rituals. A rabbi, on the other hand, has no more authority to perform rituals
than any other adult male member of the Jewish community. In the Jewish sense of the term,
a priest (kohein) is a descendant of Aaron, charged with performing various rites in the
Temple in connection with religious rituals and sacrifices. Although a kohein can be a rabbi,
a rabbi is not required to be a kohein.

A rabbi is simply a teacher, a person sufficiently educated in halakhah (Jewish law) and
tradition to instruct the community and to answer questions and resolve disputes regarding
halakhah. When a person has completed the necessary course of study, he is given a written
document known as a semikhah, which confirms his authority to make such decisions.

When we speak generally of things that were said or decided by "the rabbis" or "the sages",
we are speaking of matters that have been generally agreed upon by authoritative Jewish
scholars over the centuries. When we speak of rabbinical literature, we speak of the writings
of the great rabbis on a wide variety of subjects.

Since the destruction of the Temple, the role of the kohanim has diminished, and rabbis have
taken over the spiritual leadership of the Jewish community. In this sense, the rabbi has much
the same role as a Protestant minister, ministering to the community, leading community
religious services, and dealing with many of the administrative matters related to the
synagogue.

However, it is important to note that the rabbi's status as rabbi does not give him any special
authority to conduct religious services. Any Jew sufficiently educated to know what he is
doing can lead a religious service, and a service led by such a Jew is every bit as valid as a
service led by a rabbi. It is not unusual for a community to be without a rabbi, or for Jewish
services to be conducted without a rabbi.

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Chazzan

A chazzan (cantor) is the person who leads the congregation in prayer. A professional
chazzan is generally a person with a well-trained and pleasing voice, because much of the
Jewish religious service is sung, but the primary qualifications for the job are good moral
character and thorough knowledge of the prayers and melodies. Larger congregations may
hire a professional chazzan. In smaller congregations, the rabbi frequently acts as chazzan,
but any person can fill the role.

Kohein

The kohanim are the descendants of Aaron, chosen by God at the time of the incident with the
Golden Calf to perform certain sacred work, particularly in connection with the animal
sacrifices and the rituals related to the Temple. After the destruction of the Temple, the role
of the kohanim diminished significantly in favor of the rabbis; however, we continue to keep
track of kohein lineage.

Kohanim are customarily given the first aliyah (i.e., opportunity to recite a blessing over the
Torah reading and read from it) on the Sabbath and other days when the Torah is read in
public, which is considered an honor. They are also required to recite a special blessing
(Numbers 6,24-26) over the congregation in every morning prayer and in additional prayers.

The term "Kohein" is the source of the common Jewish surname "Cohen", but not every
Cohen is a Kohein and not every Kohein is named Cohen.

Levi

The entire tribe of Levi was set aside to perform certain duties in connection with the
Temple. As with the Kohanim, their importance was drastically diminished with the
destruction of the Temple, but we continue to keep track of their lineage. Levites are given
the second aliyah on the Sabbath (i.e., the second opportunity to recite a blessing over the
Torah reading), which is considered an honor.

Tzaddik

Chasidic communities are led by a leader with special, mystical power called a "tzaddik"
(literally, righteous one). A tzaddik is also called a rebbi, which is sometimes translated
"grand rabbi". The position is usually hereditary. A tzaddik has the final word over every
decision in a chasid's life.

Prophets and Prophecy

Level: Intermediate

What is a Prophet?

Many people today think of a prophet as any person who sees the future. While the gift of
prophecy certainly includes the ability to see the future, a prophet is far more than just a
person with that ability.

35
A prophet is basically a spokesman for God, a person chosen by God to speak to people on
God's behalf and convey a message or teaching. Prophets were role models of holiness,
scholarship, and closeness to God. They set the standards for the entire community.

The Hebrew word for a prophet, navi (Nun-Bet-Yod-Alef) comes from the term "niv
sefatayim" meaning fruit of the lips, which emphasizes the prophet's role as a speaker.

The Talmud teaches that there were hundreds of thousands of prophets: twice as many as the
number of people who left Egypt, which was 600,000. But most of the prophets conveyed
messages that were intended solely for their own generation and were not reported in
scripture. Scripture identifies only 55 prophets of Israel.

A prophet is not necessarily a man. Scripture records the stories of seven female prophets,
listed below, and the Talmud reports that Sarah's prophetic ability was superior to Abraham's.

A prophet is not necessarily a Jew. The Talmud reports that there were prophets among the
Gentiles (most notably Balaam, whose story is told in Numbers 22-24), although they were
not as elevated as the prophets of Israel (as the story of Balaam demonstrates). And some of
the prophets, such as Jonah, were sent on missions to speak to the Gentiles.

According to some views, prophecy is not a gift that is arbitrarily conferred upon people;
rather, it is the culmination of a person's spiritual and ethical development. When a person
reaches a sufficient level of spiritual and ethical achievement, the Shechinah (Divine Spirit)
comes to rest upon him or her. Likewise, the gift of prophecy leaves the person if that person
lapses from his or her spiritual and ethical perfection.

The greatest of the prophets was Moses. It is said that Moses saw all that all of the other
prophets combined saw, and more. Moses saw the whole of the Torah, including the
Prophets, and the Writings that were written hundreds of years later. All subsequent
prophecy was merely an expression of what Moses had already seen. Thus, it is taught that
nothing in the Prophets or the Writings can be in conflict with Moses' writings, because
Moses saw it all in advance.

The Talmud states that the writings of the prophets will not be necessary in the World to
Come, because in that day, all people will be mentally, spiritually, and ethically perfect, and
all will have the gift of prophecy.

Who are the Prophets of the Jewish Scriptures?

The following list of prophets is based on the Talmud and Rashi.

Abraham Genesis 11,26 - 25,10

Isaac Genesis 21,1 - 35,29

Jacob Genesis 25,21 - 49,33

Moses Exodus 2,1 - Deuteronomy 34,5

Aaron Exodus 4,14 - Numbers 33,39

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 Exodus 17,9 - 14, 24,13, 32,17 - 18, 33,11; Numbers 11,28 - 29, 13,4 - 14,38; 27,18
Joshua
- 27,23, Deuteronomy 1,38, 3,28, 31,3, 31,7-Joshua 24,29

Exodus 6,25; Numbers 25,7-25,11; Numbers 31,6; Joshua 22,13 - Joshua 24,33;
Pinchas
Judges 20,28

Elkanah I Samuel 1,1 - 2,20

Eli I Samuel 1,9 - 4,18

Samuel I Samuel 1,1 - I Samuel 25,1

Gad I Samuel 22,5; II Samuel 24,11-19; I Chronicles 21,9-21,19, 29,29

Nathan II Samuel 7,2 - 17; 12,1 - 25.

David I Samuel 16,1 - I Kings 2,11

Solomon II Samuel 12,24; 1 Kings 1,10 - 11,43

Iddo II Chronicles 9,29, 12,15, 13,22

Michaiah son of
I Kings 22,8-28; II Chronicles 18,7-27
Imlah

Obadiah I Kings 18; Obadiah

Ahiyah the
I Kings 11,29-30; 12,15; 14,2-18; 15,29
Shilonite

Jehu son of
I Kings 16,1 - 7; II Chronicles 19,2; 20,34
Hanani

Azariah son of
II Chronicles 15
Oded

Jahaziel the Levite II Chronicles 20,14

Eliezer son of
II Chronicles 20,37
Dodavahu

Hosea Hosea

Amos Amos

37
Micah the
Micah
Morashtite

Amoz (the father of Isaiah)

Elijah I Kings 17,1 - 21,29; II Kings 1,10-2,15, 9,36-37, 10,10, 10,17

Elisha I Kings 19,16-19; II Kings 2,1-13,21

Jonah ben Amittai Jonah

Isaiah Isaiah

Joel Joel

Nahum Nahum

Habakkuk Habakkuk

Zephaniah Zephaniah

Uriah Jeremiah 26,20-23

Jeremiah Jeremiah

Ezekiel Ezekiel

Shemaiah I Kings 12,22-24; II Chronicles 11,2-4, 12,5-15

Barukh Jeremiah 32, 36, 43, 45

Neriah (father of Barukh)

Seraiah Jeremiah 51,61-64

Mehseiah (father of Neriah)

Haggai Haggai

Zechariah Zechariah

Malachi Malachi

Mordecai Bilshan

Oded (father of Azariah)

38
Hanani (father of Jehu)

Sarah Genesis 11,29 - 23,20

Miriam Exodus 15,20-21; Num. 12,1-12,15, 20,1

Deborah Judges 4,1 - 5,31

Hannah I Samuel 1,1 - 2,21

Abigail I Samuel 25,1 - 25,42

Huldah II Kings 22,14-20

Esther Esther

Why is Daniel Not a Prophet?

It is often asked why the Book of Daniel is included in the Writings section of the Tanakh
instead of the Prophets section. Wasn't Daniel a prophet? Weren't his visions of the future
true?

According to Judaism, Daniel is not one of the 55 prophets. His writings include visions of
the future, which we believe to be true; however, his mission was not that of a prophet. His
visions of the future were never intended to be proclaimed to the people; they were designed
to be written down for future generations. Thus, they are Writings, not Prophecies, and are
classified accordingly.

Synagogues, Shuls, and Temples

Level: Intermediate

Throughout this site, we have used the word "synagogue" to refer to the Jewish equivalent of
a church. There are actually several different terms for a Jewish house of worship, and you
can tell a lot about people by the terms they use.

The Orthodox and Chasidim typically use the word "shul", which is Yiddish. The Hebrew
term for it is "beit kenesset" which means house of assembly.

Conservative Jews usually use the word "synagogue".

Reform Jews use the word "temple", because they consider every one of their meeting places
to be equivalent to the Temple.

For reasons that will become clear below, the use of the word "temple" to describe modern
houses of prayer offends some traditional Jews. The word "shul", on the other hand, is
unfamiliar to many modern Jews. When in doubt, the word "synagogue" is the best bet,

39
because everyone knows what it means, and we have never known anyone to be offended by
it.

The synagogue is the center of Jewish religious life. At a minimum, it is the place where
Jews come together for community prayer. In addition, it is usually the place where children
receive their religious education. Most synagogues have a social hall for religious and non-
religious functions. Many synagogues also have a Beit Midrash (house of study), a library of
sacred Jewish texts for members of the community to study.

The Temple

When we speak of The Temple, we speak of the place in Jerusalem that was the center of
Jewish religion from the time of Solomon to its destruction by the Romans in 70 C.E. This
was the one and only place where sacrifices and certain other religious rituals were
performed. It was partially destroyed at the time of the Babylonian Exile and rebuilt. The
rebuilt temple was known as the Second Temple. The famous Wailing Wall is the western
retaining wall of the Temple Mount, and is as close to the site of the original Sanctuary as
Jews can go today. The site of The Temple is currently occupied by a Moslem Mosque.

Traditional Jews believe that The Temple will be rebuilt when the Mashiach comes. They
eagerly await that day and pray for it continually.

"Modern" Jews, on the other hand, reject the idea of rebuilding the Temple and resuming
sacrifices. They call their houses of prayer "temples", believing that such houses of worship
are the only temples we need, the only temples we will ever have, and are equivalent to the
Temple in Jerusalem. This idea is very offensive to some traditional Jews, which is why you
should be very careful when using the word Temple to describe a Jewish place of worship.

Signs and Symbols

Level: Basic

Mezuzah

On the doorposts of traditional Jewish homes (and many not-so-traditional

homes!), you will find a small case like the one pictured at right. This case is
known as a mezuzah ("doorpost"), because it is placed upon the doorposts of the
house. The mezuzah is not, as some suppose, a good-luck charm, nor does it
have any connection with the lamb's blood placed on the doorposts in Egypt.
Rather, it is a constant reminder of God's presence and God's commandments.

The commandment to place mezuzot on the doorposts of our houses is derived

from Deuteronomy 6,9, at the end of the paragraph of the passage commonly
known as the Shema ("Hear", from the first word of the passage). In that
passage, God commands us to keep His words constantly in our minds and in our
hearts, by (among other things) writing them on the doorposts of our house. The
words of the Shema are written on a tiny scroll of parchment, along with the
words of a companion passage, Deuteronomy 11,13. On the back of the scroll, a name of
God "Shaddai" is customarily written. The scroll is then rolled up placed in the case.

The scroll must be handwritten and must be placed in the case to fulfill the commandment. It
is commonplace for gift shops to sell cases without scrolls, or with mechanically printed
40
scrolls, because a proper scroll generally costs more than even an elaborately decorated case.
Mechanically printed scrolls do not fulfill the mitzvah of the mezuzah, nor does an empty
case.

The case and scroll are then nailed or affixed to the right side doorpost on an angle, with a
small ceremony called Chanukkat Ha-Bayit (dedication of the house - yes, this is the same
word as Chanukkah, the holiday celebrating the rededication of the Temple after the
Maccabean revolt against Greece). A brief blessing is recited.

Why do some affix mezuzah at an angle as shown above and some straight up and down?
The question was not decided in the Talmud whether it should be placed horizontally,
vertically, or somewhere in between; so customs differ (and it appears that either way is just
fine).

Every time you pass through a door with a mezuzah on it, you are reminded of the
commandments contained within the mezuzah and of God who commanded you to observe
them.

It is proper to remove a mezuzah when you move, if the next residents are not to be observant
Jews; and in fact, it is recommended. If you leave it in place, the subsequent owner may treat
it with disrespect or even distroy it.

Tefillin

The Shema also commands us to bind the words to our hands and
between our eyes. We do this by laying tefillin, that is, by
binding to our arms and foreheads a leather pouch containing
scrolls of Torah passages.

The word "tefillin" is usually translated "phylacteries", although

we do not much care for that term, partly because it is not very
enlightening if you do not already know what tefillin are, and
partly because it means amulet, and suggests that tefillin are some kind of protective charm,
which they clearly are not. On the contrary, the word "tefillin" is etymologically related to
the word "tefillah" (prayer) and the root Pe-Lamed-Lamed (judgment).

Like the mezuzah, tefillin are meant to remind us of God's commandments. At weekday
morning services, one case is tied to the arm, with the scrolls at the biceps and leather straps
extending down the arm to the hand, then another case is tied to the head, with the case on the
forehead and the straps hanging down over the shoulders. Appropriate blessings are recited
during this process. The tefillin are customarily removed at the conclusion of the morning
services, though they should be worn all day long.

Tzitzit and Tallit

The Torah also commands us to wear tzitzit (fringes)

at the corners of our garments as a reminder of the
commandments (Numbers 15,37-41). This
commandment only applies to four-cornered
garments, which were common in biblical times but
are not common anymore. Observant Jewish men
commonly wear a special four-cornered garment,
similar to a poncho, called a tallit katan, so that they
41
will have the opportunity to fulfill this important commandment. The tallit katan is typically
worn under the shirt, with the tzitzit hanging out so they can be seen. A larger four-cornered
shawl called a tallit (pictured above) is worn by men during morning services, along with the
tefillin, though they should be worn in all prayer services at the very least. There are several
complex customs for tying the knots of the tzitzit, each filled with religious and
numerological significance.

Menorah

One of the oldest symbols of the Jewish faith is the menorah, a seven-
branched candelabrum used in the Temple. The kohanim lit the menorah
in the Sanctuary every evening and cleaned it out every morning, replacing
the wicks and putting fresh olive oil into the cups. The illustration at right
is based on instructions for construction of the menorah found in Exodus
25,31-40.

It has been said that the menorah is a symbol of the nation of Israel and our mission to be "a
light unto the nations" (Isaiah 42,6). The sages emphasize that light is not a violent force;
Israel is to accomplish its mission by setting an example, not by using force. This idea is
highlighted in the vision in Zechariah 4,1-6. Zechariah sees a menorah, and God explains:
"Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit".

The lamp-stand in today's synagogues, called the "ner tamid" (literally, the continual lamp;
usually translated as the eternal flame), symbolizes the menorah.

The nine-branched menorah used on Chanukkah is commonly patterned after this menorah,
because Chanukkah commemorates the miracle that a day's worth of oil for this menorah
lasted eight days.

Yarmulke

The most commonly known and recognized piece of Jewish garb is actually the one with the
least religious significance. The word yarmulke (usually, but not really correctly, pronounced
yammica) is Yiddish. According to Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish, it comes from a Tartar
word meaning skullcap. According to some Orthodox and Chasidic rabbis, it comes from the
Aramaic words "yerai malka" (fear of or respect for The King). The Hebrew word for this
head covering is kippah (pronounced key-pah).

It is an ancient practice for Jews to cover their heads during prayer. This probably derives
from the fact that in Eastern cultures, it is a sign of respect to cover the head (the custom in
Western cultures is the opposite: it is a sign of respect to remove one's hat). Thus, by
covering the head during prayer, one showed respect for God. In addition, in ancient Rome,
servants were required to cover their heads while free men did not; thus, Jews covered their
heads to show that they were servants of God. In medieval times, Jews covered their heads
as a reminder that God is always above them. Whatever the reason given, covering the head
has always been regarded more as a custom rather than a commandment.

There is no special significance to the yarmulke as a specific type of head covering. Its light
weight, compactness, and discreteness make it a convenient choice of head gear. We are
unaware of any connection between the yarmulke and the similar skullcap worn by the Pope,
but it might be due to the influence of Jews on the Church, which is not unknown.

42
Star of David

The Magen David (shield of David, or as it is more commonly known,

the Star of David) is the symbol most commonly associated with
Judaism today, but it is actually a relatively new Jewish symbol. It is
supposed to represent the shape of King David's shield (or perhaps the
emblem on it), but there is really no support for that claim in any early
rabbinic literature. In fact, the symbol is so rare in early Jewish
literature and artwork that art dealers suspect forgery if they find the
symbol in early works.

Scholars such as Franz Rosenzweig have attributed deep theological significance to the
symbol. For example, some note that the top triangle strives upward, toward God, while the
lower triangle strives downward, toward the real world. Some note that the intertwining
makes the triangles inseparable, like the Jewish people. Some say that the three sides
represent the three types of Jews: Kohanim, Levites and Israel. While these theories are
theologically interesting, they have little basis in historical fact.

The symbol of intertwined equilateral triangles is a common one in the Middle East and
North Africa, and is thought to bring good luck. It appears occasionally in early Jewish
artwork, but never as an exclusively Jewish symbol. The nearest thing to an "official" Jewish
symbol at the time was the menorah.

In the middle ages, Jews often were required to wear badges to identify themselves as Jews,
much as they were in Nazi Germany, but these Jewish badges were not always the familiar
Magen David. For example, a fifteenth century painting by Nuno Goncalves features a rabbi
wearing a six-pointed badge that looks more or less like an asterisk.

In the 17th century, it became a popular practice to put Magen Davids on the outside of
synagogues, to identify them as Jewish houses of worship in much the same way that a cross
identified a Christian house of worship; however, we have never seen any explanation of why
this symbol was chosen, rather than some other symbol.

The Magen David gained popularity as a symbol of Judaism when it was adopted as the
emblem of the Zionist movement in 1897, but the symbol continued to be controversial for
many years afterward. When the modern state of Israel was founded, there was much debate
over whether this symbol should be used on the flag.

Today, the Magen David is a universally recognized symbol of Jewry. It appears on the flag
of the state of Israel, and the Israeli equivalent of the Red Cross is known as the Red Magen
David.

Chai

This symbol, commonly seen on necklaces and other jewelry and ornaments, is
simply the Hebrew word Chai (living), with the two Hebrew letters Chet and Yod
attached to each other. Some say it refers to the Living God. Judaism as a religion
is very focused on life, and the word chai has great significance. The typical
Jewish toast is l'chayim (to life). Gifts to charity are routinely given in multiples of 18 (the
numeric value of the word Chai).

43
 Jewish Cooking

Level: Basic

Jewish cooking is a unique synthesis of cooking styles from the many places that Jews have
lived throughout the centuries. Jewish cooking shows the influence of Middle Eastern,
Mediterranean, Spanish, German, and Eastern European styles of cooking, all influenced by
the unique dietary constraints of kashrut and other Jewish laws.

Many of the foods that we think of as Jewish are not unique to Jewish culture. Stuffed
cabbage, a traditional Jewish dish, is common in Eastern Europe. Blintzes and knishes are
familiar to all Germans, not just Jewish ones. Falafel and hummus, increasingly thought of as
Israeli-Jewish foods, can be found in any Greek restaurant. But the combination of these
varied foods into one style of cooking, along with our own innovations, is uniquely Jewish.

On this page, we identify and describe several of the better-known, popular Jewish dishes.
Most of these dishes are Ashkenazic, because that is what we know best. Sephardic Jews
have their own distinct cooking traditions. We will provide recipes for those foods that we
know how to cook, and will provide links to other recipes scattered throughout this web site.

One ingredient you will see in many of these recipes is matzah meal. Matzah meal is crumbs
of matzah (unleavened bread). You can find this in the kosher or ethnic section of your
grocery store, if your grocery store has one (it can be found in such remote, "Gentile" places
as Athens, Georgia), but if it is not available, you can usually use bread crumbs instead.

Challah

Any traditional Jewish meal begins with the breaking of bread. Challah is
a special kind of bread used for Sabbaths and holidays. It is a very sweet,
golden, eggy bread. The taste and texture is somewhat similar to egg
twist rolls (those little yellow rolls that look like knots). The loaf is
usually braided, but on certain holidays it may be made in other shapes.
For example, on Rosh Hashanah, it is traditional to serve round challah
(the circle symbolizing the cycle of life, the cycle of the years).

A local deli makes French toast with challah. It is highly recommended. Challah is also
wonderful in sandwiches with roast beef or corned beef. Traditionally, however, it is simply
used as you might use rolls with a holiday dinner.

The word "challah" refers to the portion of dough set aside for the kohein (See the List of
Mitzvot, #394); that is, a portion that is taken out of the dough before it is baked. It is not
certain how the term for the removed portion came to be used for the portion that is left over
after it is removed.

Bagels and Lox

Is there anybody who does not know what a bagel is? A bagel is a donut-shaped piece of
bread that is boiled before it is baked. They are often topped with poppy seeds or sesame
seeds, or flavored with other ingredients. The bagel has been a part of Jewish cuisine for at
least 400 years. According to Leo Rosten's The Joys of Yiddish, there are references to it as
far back as Poland in 1610. In the USA, bagels are traditionally served with cream cheese
and lox (smoked salmon) or other fish spreads (herring, whitefish, etc.). They are also quite
good with cream cheese and a thick slice of tomato.
44
Those hockey pucks that you find in your grocer's freezer bear little resemblance to a real
bagel. A real bagel is soft, warm, and spongy inside, lightly crispy outside. A fresh bagel
does not need to be toasted, and should not be. Toasting is a sorry attempt to compensate for
a sub-standard bagel.

Gefilte Fish

Gefilte fish is a cake or ball of chopped up fish. It is usually made with white-fleshed
freshwater fish, such as carp or pike. The fish is chopped into small pieces (a food processor
is good for this), mixed with onions and some other vegetables (carrot, celery, parsley). The
mixture is held together with eggs and matzah meal. It is then boiled in broth for a while. It
can be served warm or cold, though it is usually served cold with red horseradish and
garnished with carrot shavings.

The word "gefilte" fish comes from German and means stuffed. Some variations on gefilte
fish involve stuffing the fish skin with chopped up fish.

Matzah Ball Soup

This is also known as Jewish penicillin. Matzah balls are more traditionally known as
knaydelach (Yiddish for dumplings). Matzah ball soup is generally a very thin chicken broth
with two or three ping-pong-ball sized matzah balls (or sometimes one very large matzah
ball) in it. Sometimes, a few large pieces of carrot or celery are added. Matzah balls can be
very soft and light or firm and heavy. The two types may be described "floaters and sinkers".
Matzah ball soup is commonly served at the Passover seder, but is also eaten all year round.

Below is a recipe for matzah ball soup. The parsley in the matzah balls is not traditional, but
it is good that way all the same.

1/2 cup matzah meal

2 eggs

2 tbsp. oil or schmaltz (melted chicken fat)

2 tbsp. water or chicken broth

2 tbsp. fresh chopped parsley

a little black pepper

2 quarts thin chicken broth or consomm

Beat the eggs, oil, and water together thoroughly. Add the matzah meal, parsley, and black
pepper, and mix until you achieve an even consistency. Let this sit for a few minutes, so the
matzah meal absorbs the other ingredients, and stir again.

Bring the broth to a vigorous boil, then reduce the heat until the broth is just barely boiling.
Wet your hands and make balls of about 1-2 tbsp. of the batter. Drop the balls gently into the
boiling water. They will be cooked enough to eat in about 15 minutes; however, you may
want to leave it simmering longer to absorb more of the chicken broth flavor. They are done
when they float on top of the broth and look bloated.

For lighter matzah balls, use a little less oil, a little more water, and cook at a lower
temperature for a longer time. For heavier matzah balls, do the reverse. If you are using this
to treat a cold, put extra black pepper into the broth (pepper clears the sinuses).
45
Knishes

A knish (the k and the n are both pronounced) is a sort of potato and flour dumpling stuffed
with various things. It is baked until browned and a little crisp on the outside. They are
commonly filled with mashed potato and onion, chopped liver, or cheese. They are good for
a snack, an appetizer, or a side dish. You should be able to find them in any deli. The word
"knish" is Ukrainian for "dumpling".

Blintzes

Blintzes are basically Jewish crepes. A blintz is a thin, flat pancake rolled around a filling. It
looks a little like an egg roll. As a main dish or side dish, blintzes can be filled with
sweetened cottage cheese or mashed potatoes and onion; as a dessert, they can be filled with
fruit, such as apple, cherry, or blueberry. They are usually fried in oil. They are generally
served with sour cream and/or applesauce.

Cheese blintzes are the traditional meal for the festival of Shavu'ot, when dairy meals are
traditionally eaten. They are also commonly eaten during Chanukkah, because they are
cooked in oil.

The word "blintz" comes from a Ukrainian word meaning pancake.

Cholent

Cholent (the "ch" is pronounced as in "chair" -- an exception to the usual rules of

pronunciation) is a very slowly cooked stew of beans, beef, barley, and sometimes potatoes.
It is the traditional meal for the Sabbath lunch or dinner, because it can be started before the
Sabbath begins and left cooking throughout the Sabbath. A recipe for cholent is on the
Sabbath page.

Holishkes

Holishkes are cabbage leaves stuffed with meatballs in a tomato-based sweet-and-sour sauce.
They are known by many different names (galuptzi, praakes, stuffed cabbage), and are made
in many different ways, depending on where your grandmother came from. It is traditionally
served during the holiday of Sukkot, although it is not clear why. Below is the recipe.

8-10 leaves of cabbage

Filling:

o 1 lb. ground beef

o 1/2 cup matzah meal

o 1 large grated onion

o 2 grated carrots

o 1/2 tsp. garlic powder

o a handful of minced parsley

o 2 eggs

Sauce:

46
 o 16 oz. can of tomato sauce

o 1/4 cup of lemon juice

o 1/2 cup of brown sugar

Gently remove the cabbage leaves from the head. You want them to be intact. It may help to
steam the head briefly before attempting this. Boil the leaves for a minute or two to make
them soft enough to roll.

Combine the sauce ingredients in a saucepan and simmer, stirring, until the sugar dissolves (it
will dissolve faster if you pour the lemon juice over it). Pour about 1/4 of the sauce into the
bottom of a casserole dish or lasagna pan.

Combine all of the filling ingredients in a bowl. Make a ball out of a handful of the filling
and roll it up in a cabbage leaf, rolling from the soft end to the spiny end. Put the resulting
roll into the casserole dish with the sauce. Do this until you use up all of the filling, making
8-10 cabbage rolls. Then pour the remaining sauce over the top.

Bake approximately 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

If you do not like so much refined sugar in your diet, you can substitute about a cup of raisins
or prunes for the brown sugar.

Tzimmes

Tzimmes is any kind of sweet stew. It usually is orange in color, and includes carrots, sweet
potatoes and/or prunes. A wide variety of dishes fall under the heading "tzimmes". On
Passover, for example, some make a tzimmes of carrots and pineapple chunks boiled in
pineapple juice.

Tzimmes is commonly eaten on Rosh Hashanah, because it is sweet and symbolizes our
hopes for a sweet new year.

The word "tzimmes" is often used in Yiddish to mean making a big fuss about something.

This is a meat-based tzimmes recipe suitable for holiday use:

1 lb. stewing beef, cut into small chunks

1/2 cup of sugar

1 cup of water

3 sweet potatoes

3 white potatoes

5 carrots

Brown the stewing beef lightly in a little oil in a 2 quart saucepan. Add the water and sugar
and bring to a boil, then reduce to a very low simmer. Peel and dice the potatoes and carrots
and add to the pot. Let it stew covered at very low heat for at least an hour, adding water
periodically if necessary. There should be water, but it should not be soggy. Once the
potatoes are soft, take the cover off and let most of the water boil off. Mash the whole

47
mixture until the potato part is the consistency of mashed potatoes. Put the mash into a
casserole dish and bake for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

If you do not like so much refined sugar in your diet, you can substitute about a cup of raisins
or prunes for the sugar.

Kugel

Kugel is another dish that encompasses several different things, and the relationship between
them is hard to define. The word "kugel" is generally translated as "pudding", although it
does not mean pudding in the Jell-O brand dairy dessert sense. It is pronounced "koo-gel" or
"ki-gel", depending on where your grandmother comes from.

Kugel can be either a side dish or a dessert. As a side dish, it is a casserole of potatoes, eggs,
and onions. As a dessert, it is usually made with noodles and various fruits and nuts in an
egg-based pudding. Kugel made with noodles is called lokshen kugel. Below is a recipe for
a noodle kugel.

3 eggs
1/4 cup melted margarine or butter

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 lb. wide noodles

1/4 cup raisins

1/4 cup almonds

1/2 cup chopped apples

Beat the eggs thoroughly in a large mixing bowl. Add the butter, sugar, and cinnamon; beat
until thoroughly blended. Cook the noodles and rinse them in cold water. Do not drain them
too thoroughly. Put the noodles into the egg mixture and stir until the noodles are coated with
the mixture. Let them sit in the refrigerator for about 15-30 minutes, so the noodles absorb
some of the egg mixture. Stir again.

Put about half of the egg-noodle mixture into a casserole dish. Put the raisins, almonds and
apples on top. Put the remaining egg-noodle mixture on top of that. Bake for about 30-45
minutes at 350 degrees, until the egg part is firm and the noodles on top are crispy. Can be
served warm or cold.

Jewish Apple Cake

Jewish desserts generally do not have any dairy products in them, because of the constraints
of kashrut. Under the kosher laws, dairy products cannot be eaten at the same meal as meat,
thus Jewish desserts are usually pareve (neither meat nor dairy). An example of this kind of
cooking is the Jewish apple cake, which may be seen in many grocery stores. It is not clear if
this kind of cake is actually a traditional Jewish dish; we cannot find any recipes for it in any
of our Jewish cookbooks. However, the style of it is very much in accord with Jewish
cooking styles. Jewish apple cake is a light, almost spongy cake with chunks of apples in it.
It has no dairy products; the liquid portion that would usually be milk is replaced with apple
juice, making a very sweet cake.
48
Links to Other Recipes

Elsewhere in this site, you may find recipes for:

Latkes, potato pancakes traditionally served during Chanukkah.

Hamentaschen, filled cookies traditionally served during Purim.

Charoset, a mixture of fruit, nuts, and wine traditionally served during Passover.

Hebrew Alphabet

Level: Basic

The Hebrew and Yiddish languages use a different alphabet from English. The picture below
illustrates the Hebrew alphabet, in Hebrew alphabetical order. Note that Hebrew is written
from right to left, rather than left to right as in English, so Alef is the first letter of the Hebrew
alphabet and Tav is the last. The Hebrew alphabet is often called the "alefbet", because of its
first two letters.

Letters of the Alefbet

If you are familiar with Greek, you will no doubt notice substantial similarities in letter
names and in the order of the alphabet.

The "Kh" and the "Ch" are pronounced as in German or Scottish, a throat clearing noise, not
as the "ch" in "chair".

Note that there are two versions of some letters. Kaf, Mem, Nun, Pe, and Tzade all are
written differently when they appear at the end of a word from when they appear in the
beginning or middle of the word. The version used at the end of a word is referred to as Final
Kaf, Final Mem, etc. The version of the letter on the left is the final version. In all cases
except Final Mem, the final version has a long tail.

49
Vowels and Points

Like most early Semitic alphabetic writing systems, the alefbet has no vowels. People who
are fluent in the language do not need vowels to read Hebrew, and most things written in
Hebrew in Israel are written without vowels. However, the rabbis realized the need for aids
to pronunciation, so they developed a system of dots and dashes known as points. These dots
and dashes are written above, inside, or below the letter, in ways that do not alter the spacing
of the line. Text containing these markings is referred to as "pointed" text. Below is an
example of pointed text. For emphasis, the points in the illustration are written in blue, and
are somewhat larger than they would ordinarily be written.

The line of text at the right would be pronounced (in Sephardic

pronunciation, which is what most people today use): "V'ahavta
l'rayahkhah kamokha" (And you shall love your neighbor as yourself, Leviticus 19,18).

Note that some Hebrew letters have two pronunciations. Bet, Kaf, and Pe have a "hard"
sound (the first sound) and a "soft" sound (the second sound). In pointed texts, these letters
have dots in the center when they are to be pronounced with the hard sound. See the example
of pointed text above. In Ashkenazic pronunciation (the pronunciation used by many
Orthodox Jews and by older Jews), Tav also has a soft sound, and is pronounced as an "s"
when it does not have a dot. Vav, usually a consonant pronounced as a "v", is sometimes a
vowel pronounced "oo" or "oh". When it is pronounced "oo", pointed texts have a dot in the
middle. When it is pronounced "oh", pointed texts have a dot on top. See the example of
pointed text above. Shin is pronounced "sh" when it has a dot over the right branch and "s"
when it has a dot over the left branch. Other letters do not change pronunciation.

Styles of Writing

The style of writing illustrated above is the one most commonly seen in Hebrew books. It is
referred to as block print or sometimes Assyrian text.

For sacred documents, such as torah scrolls or the scrolls inside tefillin and mezuzot, there is
a special writing style with "crowns" (crows-foot-like marks coming up from the upper
points) on many of the letters. This style of writing is known as STA"M (an abbreviation for
"Sifrei Torah, Tefillin, and Mezuzot," which is where you will see that style of writing. For
more information about the STA"M alphabet, including illustrations and relevant rules, see
Hebrew Alphabet used in writing STA"M.

There is another style used for handwriting, in

much the same way that cursive is used for the
Latin (English) alphabet. This modern script
style is illustrated at the right. This script style
is the most popular today, but some Jews in the
Orient use a script that is rather similar to the Rashi script illustrated in the next paragraph.

Another style is used in certain texts to distinguish

the body of the text from commentary upon the
text. This style is known as Rashi Script, in honor
of Rashi, the most popular commentator on the
Torah and the Talmud. The alefbet at the right is
an example of Rashi Script.

50
Transliteration

The process of writing Hebrew words in the Latin (English) alphabet is known as
transliteration. Transliteration is more an art than a science, and opinions on the correct way
to transliterate words vary widely. This is why the Jewish festival of lights (in Hebrew, Chet-
Nun-Kaf-He) is spelled Chanukah, Chanukkah, Hanuka, and many other interesting ways.
Each spelling has a legitimate phonetic and orthographic basis; none is right or wrong from a
linguist's viewpoint, though some are more remote from Hebrew's early pronunciation.

Numerical Values

Each letter in the alefbet has a numerical value. These values can be used to write numbers,
as the Romans used some of their letters (I, V, X, L, C, M) to represent numbers. Alef
through Yod have the values 1 through 10. Yod through Qof have the values 10 through 100,
counting by 10s. Qof through Tav have the values 100 through 400, counting by 100s. Final
letters have the same value as their non-final counterparts. The number 11 would be rendered
Yod-Alef, the number 12 would be Yod-Bet, the number 21 would be Kaf-Alef, the word
Torah (Tav-Vav-Resh-He) has the numerical value 611, etc. The only significant oddity in
this pattern is the number 15, which if rendered as 10+5 would be a name of God, so it is
normally written Tet-Vav (9+6).

Because of this system of assigning numerical values to letters, every word has a numerical
value. There is an entire discipline of Jewish mysticism known as Gematria that is entirely
devoted to finding hidden meanings in the numerical values of words. For example, the
number 18 is very significant, because it is the numerical value of the word Chai, meaning
life. Donations to Jewish charities are routinely made in multiples of 18 for that reason. It
may be pointed out that the numerical value of Vav (often transliterated as W) is 6, and
therefore WWW has the numerical value of 6+6+6, which is equivalent to life!

Hebrew Language: Root Words

Level: Intermediate

The vast majority of words in the Hebrew language can be boiled down to a
three-consonant root word that contains the essence of the word's
meaning. For example, the first word of the Torah is "bereishit", meaning
in the beginning. The root is Resh-Alef-Shin, which means head or first. (See Hebrew
Alphabet to learn the letters). It is the same root as the "Rosh" in "Rosh Hashanah" (first
of the year, i.e., Jewish New Year).

There are surprisingly few root words in biblical Hebrew, but we get a lot of
mileage out of the ones we have. For example, from the root word Qof-
Dalet-Shin, meaning holy, sacred, or sanctified, we get kedushah (holiness),
kiddush (a prayer over wine sanctifying the Sabbath or a holiday), Kaddish (an important
prayer commonly thought of as a mourning prayer), aron kodesh (holy cabinet - the place in
synagogue where the Torah scrolls are kept), and kiddushin (betrothal).

Less obviously, from the root Samech-Dalet-Resh, meaning order, we get

siddur (the daily prayer book, which sets for the order of prayers), seder
(the Passover family ritual, which must be performed in a specified
order) and sidrah (the weekly Torah reading, also called a parashah).

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A substantial amount of rabbinical interpretation of the Bible is derived from
the relation between root words. For example, the rabbis concluded that God
created women with greater intuition and understanding than men, because
man was "formed" (yeetzer, Genesis 2,7) while woman was "built" (yeeben, Genesis 2,22;
our JPS Bible translates "made He a woman" here). The root of "built", Bet-Nun-Heh, is
very similar to the word "binah" (Bet-Yod-Nun-Heh), meaning understanding, insight, or
intuition.

If you are interested in Hebrew root words, a good book to look at is Edith Samuel's Your
Jewish Lexicon, which looks at a lot of important Jewish concepts and idioms through their
root words.

The Name of God

Level: Basic

The Significance of Names

In Jewish thought, a name is not merely an arbitrary designation, a random combination of

sounds. The name conveys the nature and essence of the thing named. It represents the
history and reputation of the being named.

This is not as strange or unfamiliar a concept as it may seem at first glance. In English, we
often refer to a person's reputation as his "good name". When a company is sold, one thing
that may be sold is the company's "good will", that is, the right to use the company's name.
The Hebrew concept of a name is very similar to these ideas.

An example of this usage occurs in Exodux 3,13-22: Moses asks God what His "name" is.
Moses is not asking "what should I call you"; rather, he is asking "who are you; what are you
like; what have you done". That is clear from God's response. God replies that He is eternal,
that He is the God of our ancestors, that He has seen our affliction and will redeem us from
bondage.

Another example of this usage is the concepts of chillul Ha-Shem and kiddush Ha-Shem. An
act that causes God or Judaism to come into disrespect or a commandment to be disobeyed is
often referred to as "chillul Ha-Shem", profanation of The Name. Clearly, we are not talking
about a harm done to a word; we are talking about harm to a reputation. Likewise, any deed
that increases the respect accorded to God or Judaism is referred to as "kiddush Ha-Shem",
sanctification of The Name.

Because a name represents the reputation of the thing named, a name should be treated with
the same respect as the thing's reputation. For this reason, God's Names, in all of their forms,
are treated with enormous respect and reverence in Judaism.

The Names of God

The most important of God's Names is the four-letter Name represented by the Hebrew letters
Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh (YHVH). It is often referred to as the Ineffable Name, the Unutterable
Name or the Distinctive Name. Linguistically, it is related to the Hebrew root Heh-Yod-Heh
(to be), and reflects the idea that God's existence is eternal. In scripture, this Name is used
when discussing God's relation with human beings, and when emphasizing his qualities of
lovingkindness and mercy. It is frequently shortened to Yah (Yod-Heh), Yahu or Yeho (Yod-
52
Heh-Vav), especially when used in combination with names or phrases, as in Yehoshua
(Joshua, meaning the LORD is Salvation), Eliyahu (Elijah, meaning my God is the LORD),
and Halleluyah (praise the LORD).

The first Name used for God in scripture is Elohim. In form, the word is a masculine plural.
The same word (or, according to Maimonides, a homonym of it) is used to refer to princes,
judges, other gods, and other powerful beings. This Name is used in scripture when
emphasizing God's might, His creative power, and his attributes of justice and rulership.
Variations on this name include El, Eloah, Elohai (my God), and Eloheynu (our God).

God is also known as El Shaddai. This Name is usually translated as "God Almighty",
however, the derivation of the word "Shaddai" is not known. According to some views, it is
derived from the root meaning to heap benefits. According to a Midrash, it means, "The One
who said 'dai'" ("dai" meaning enough or sufficient) and comes from the idea that when God
created the universe, it expanded until He said "DAI!" (perhaps the first recorded theory of an
expanding universe?). The name Shaddai is the one written on the mezuzah scroll. Some
note that Shaddai is an acronym of Shomer Daltot Yisrael, Guardian of the Doors of Israel.

Another significant Name of God is YHVH Tzva'ot. This Name is normally translated as
LORD of Hosts. The word "tzva'ot" means hosts in the sense of a military grouping or an
organized array. The Name refers to God's leadership and sovereignty. Interestingly, this
Name is rarely used in scripture. It never appears in the Torah (i.e., the first five books). It
appears primarily in the prophetic books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Haggai, Zechariah, and
Malachi, as well as many times in the Psalms.

Writing the Name of God

Jews do not casually write any Name of God. This practice does not come from the
commandment not to take the LORD's Name in vain, as many suppose. In Torah thought,
that commandment refers solely to oath-taking and vain blessings, and is a prohibition against
using God's Name falsely or frivolously (the word normally translated as "in vain" literally
means for falsehood).

The Torah does not prohibit writing the Name of God per se; it only prohibits erasing or
defacing a Name of God. However, observant Jews avoid writing any Name of God casually
because of the risk that the written Name might later be defaced, obliterated, or destroyed
accidentally or by one who does not know better.

The commandment not to erase or deface the name of God comes from Deuteronomy 12,3.
In that passage, the people are commanded that when they take over the promised land, they
should destroy all things related to the idolatrous religions of that region, and should utterly
destroy the names of the local deities. Immediately afterwards, we are commanded not to do
the same to our God. From this, the rabbis inferred that we are commanded not to destroy
any holy thing, and not to erase or deface a Name of God.

It is worth noting that this prohibition against erasing or defacing Names of God applies only
to Names that are written in some kind of permanent form, and recent rabbinical decisions
have held that writing on a computer is not a permanent form, thus it is not a violation to type
God's Name into a computer and then backspace over it or cut and paste it, or copy and delete
files with God's Name in them. However, once you print the document out, it becomes a
permanent form. That is why many observant Jews avoid writing a Name of God on web
sites like this one or in newsgroup messages: because there is a risk that someone else will
print it out and deface it.
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Normally, Orthodox Jews avoid writing the Name by substituting letters or syllables, for
example, writing "G-d" instead of "God". In addition, the number 15, which would
ordinarily be written in Hebrew as Yod-Heh (10-5), is normally written as Tet-Vav (9-6),
because Yod-Heh is a Name. See Hebrew Alphabet for more information about using letters
as numerals. In English letters, there is no need for these stringencies. On the other hand,
especially for those who think that tricky spelling solves their problems, we remind you here
of what we say on our introduction page:

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you print from these pages for reading away from your computer,
please remember that even where no names of God appear, whatever discusses matters of
Torah is forbidden for a Jew to treat with disrespect or to throw away. So either save what
you print, or turn it over for burial as required for all holy writings that are no longer needed
(or even better, pass it on to a friend to read).

Pronouncing the Name of God

Nothing in the Torah prohibits a person from pronouncing the Name of God. Indeed, it is
evident from scripture that God's Name was pronounced routinely. Many common Hebrew
names contain "Yah" or "Yahu", part of God's four-letter Name. The Name was pronounced
as part of daily services in the Temple.

The Mishnah confirms that there was no prohibition against pronouncing The Name in
ancient times. In fact, the Mishnah recommends using God's Name as a routine greeting to a
fellow Jew. Berakhot 9,5. However, by the time of the Talmud, it was the custom to use
substitute Names for God. Some rabbis asserted that a person who pronounces YHVH
according to its letters (instead of using a substitute) has no place in the World to Come, and
should be put to death. Instead of pronouncing the four-letter Name, we usually substitute
the Name "Adonai"; but sometimes we substitute "Elohim" when YHVH comes either
immediately before or after the name "Adonai" itself.

Although the prohibition on pronunciation applies only to the four-letter Name, Jews
customarily do not pronounce any of God's many Names except in prayer or study. The usual
Orthodox practice is to substitute letters or syllables, so that Adonai becomes Ha-Shem or
Adoshem and Eloheynu and Elohim become Elokeynu and Elokim, etc. This practice is quite
unnecessary in the context of learning Torah, and it is especially offensive when whole verses
are read from the Bible with these ugly substititutes for God's names.

With the Temple destroyed, the prohibition on pronouncing The Name outside of it caused
pronunciation of the Name to fall into disuse. Scholars passed down knowledge of the
correct pronunciation of YHVH for many generations, but eventually the correct
pronunciation was lost, and we no longer know it with any certainty. We do not know what
vowels were used, or even whether the Vav in the Name was a vowel or a consonant. See
Hebrew Alphabet for more information about the difficulties in pronouncing Hebrew. Some
religious scholars suggest that the Name was pronounced "Yahweh", but others do not find
this pronunciation particularly persuasive; our opinion is that this pronunciation is quite
insulting to God and expresses more the man-centered ignorance of the scholars than the true
name of God (in other words, never say "Yahweh", unless you intend to insult Him, God
forbid!).

Some Christian scholars render the four-letter Name as "Jehovah", but this pronunciation is
particularly unlikely. The word "Jehovah" comes from practice of writing YHVH in the
Hebrew Bible with the vowels of the Name "Adonai" (the usual substitute for YHVH) on the
consonants of YHVH to remind people not to pronounce YHVH as written. A sixteenth
54
century German Christian scribe, while transliterating the Bible into Latin for the Pope, wrote
the Name out as it appeared in his texts, with the consonants of YHVH and the vowels of
Adonai, and came up with the word JeHoVaH, and the name stuck.

Torah

Level: Basic

The word "Torah" is a tricky one, because it can mean different things in different
contexts. In its most limited sense, "Torah" refers to the Five Books of Moses:
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. But the word "torah" can
also be used to refer to the entire Hebrew Bible (the body of scripture known to non-
Jews as the Old Testament and to Jews as the Tanakh or Written Torah), or in its
broadest sense, to the whole body of Jewish law and teachings.

Written Torah

To Jews, there is no "Old Testament" (an offensive term suggesting that God's Word has been
replaced by a newer and better "testament"). The books that Christians call the New
Testament are not part of our Hebrew scriptures (they were written in Greek in a spirit quite
alien to Hebrew thought). Our Bible is also known to us as the Written Torah.

This is a list of the books of Written Torah, in the order in which they appear in the best old
Hebrew manuscripts, with the Hebrew name of the book, a translation of the Hebrew name
(where it is not the same as the English name), and English names of the books (where it is
not the same as the Hebrew name). The Hebrew names of the first five books are derived
from the first few words of the book. The text of each book is more or less the same in
Jewish translations as what appears in Christian bibles, although there are many slight
differences in the numbering of verses and chapters and many highly significant differences
in the translations; this is meaningful enough that we recommend studying only in the more
reliable Jewish translations.

TORAH (The Law):

Bereishith (In the beginning) (Genesis)

Shemoth (The names) (Exodus)

Vayiqra (And He called) (Leviticus)

Bamidbar (In the wilderness) (Numbers)

Devarim (The words) (Deuteronomy)

NEVI'IM (The Prophets):

Yehoshua (Joshua)
Shoftim (Judges)

Shmuel (I &II Samuel)

Melakhim (I & II Kings)

Yeshayah (Isaiah)

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 Yirmyah (Jeremiah)

Yechezqel (Ezekiel)

The Twelve (treated as one book)

o Hoshea (Hosea)

o Yoel (Joel)

o Amos

o Ovadyah (Obadiah)

o Yonah (Jonah)

o Mikhah (Micah)

o Nachum

o Chavaqquq (Habbakkuk)

o Tzefanyah (Zephaniah)

o Chaggai

o Zekharyah (Zechariah)

o Malakhi

KETHUVIM (The Writings):

Divrei Ha-Yamim (The words of the days) (Chronicles)

Tehillim (Psalms)

Iyov (Job)

Mishlei (Proverbs)

Ruth

Shir Ha-Shirim (Song of Songs)

Qoheleth (the author's name) (Ecclesiastes)

Eikhah (Lamentations)

Esther

Daniel

Ezra and Nechemyah (Nehemiah) (treated as one book)

Written Torah is often referred to as the Tanakh, which is an acrostic of Torah, Nevi'im, and
Ketuvim.

Torah Scrolls

The scriptures that we use in services are to be written in scrolls

on specially prepared skins of kosher animals. They are always
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hand-written, in attractive Hebrew calligraphy with "crowns" (crows-foot-like marks coming
up from the upper points) on many of the letters. You are not supposed to touch the
parchment on these scrolls: some say because they are too holy; some say because the
parchment, made from animal skins, is a source of ritual defilement; others say because your
fingers' sweat has acids that will damage the parchment over time.

Instead, you follow the text with a pointer, called a Yad. "Yad" means
hand in Hebrew, and the pointer usually is in the shape of a hand with a
pointing index finger. When not being read, the scrolls are protected by a
fabric covering or a decorated cylindrical box, often ornamented with silver crowns on the
handles of the scrolls and other decorations.

The scrolls are kept in a cabinet in the synagogue

called an "ark", as in Ark of the Covenant, not as in
Noah's Ark. The words are different and unrelated
in Hebrew. The former is an acrostic of "aron
kodesh", meaning holy cabinet, while the latter is an
English translation of the Hebrew word "teyvat"
meaning container.

The Torah scrolls that we read from in synagogue

are unpointed text, with no vowels or musical notes,
so the ability to read a passage from a scroll is a
valuable skill, and usually requires substantial
advance preparation (reviewing the passage in a text
with points). See Hebrew Alphabet for more on pointed and unpointed texts.

Chumash

The Five Books of Moses are often printed in a form that corresponds to the division into
weekly readings (called parashiyot in Hebrew). Scriptures bound in this way are generally
referred to as a chumash. The word "chumash" comes from the Hebrew root meaning five.
Sometimes, a chumash is simply a collection of the five books of the Torah alone bound in a
single volume; but often, a chumash includes the haftarah portions inserted after each week's
parashah and popular commentaries, and is bound in five small volumes.

Talmud

In addition to the written scriptures we have an "Oral Torah", a tradition explaining what the
Five Books of Moses mean and how to interpret them and apply the Laws. Orthodox Jews
believe God taught the Oral Torah to Moses, and he taught it to others, and others taught it to
others down to the present day. This tradition was maintained in oral form only until about
the 2d century C.E., when much of the oral law was compiled and written down in a
document called the Mishnah.

Over the next few centuries, authoritative commentaries elaborating on the Mishnah and
recording the rest of the oral law were written down in Israel and Babylon. These additional
commentaries are known as the Tosefta, Mekhileta, Sifra, Sifre, Jerusalem Talmud, and
Babylonian Talmud. The last was completed at about 500 C.E.

The two largest works are the Jerusalem Talmud and the Babylonian Talmud. The
Babylonian one is more comprehensive, and is the one most people mean when they refer to
The Talmud.
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The Mishnah is divided into six sections called sedarim (in English, orders). Each seder
contains one or more divisions called masekhtot (in English, tractates). There are 63
masekhtot in the Mishnah. Most, though not all, of these masekhtot have been addressed in
the Talmud. Although these divisions seem to indicate subject matter, it is important to note
that the Mishnah and the Talmud tend to engage in quite a bit of free-association, thus widely
diverse subjects may be discussed in a seder or masekhtah. Below is the division of the
Mishnah into sedarim and masekhtot:

Zera`im (Seeds), dealing with agricultural laws

o Berakhot

o Pe'ah

o Demai

o Kil'ayim

o Shevi`it

o Terumot

o Ma`aserot

o Ma`aser Sheni

o Challah

o `Orlah

o Biqqurim

Mo`ed (Festival), dealing with shabbat and festivals

o Shabbat

o `Eruvin

o Pesachim

o Sheqalim

o Yoma

o Sukkah

o Betsah

o Rosh Hashanah

o Ta`anit

o Megillah

o Mo`ed Qatan

o Chagigah

Nashim (Women), dealing with marriage, divorce, and contracts

o Yevamot

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 o Ketubot

o Nedarim

o Nazir

o Sotah

o Gittin

o Qiddushin

Neziqqin (Damages), dealing with financial laws and courts

o Bava Qamma

o Bava Metsi`a

o Bava Batra

o Sanhedrin

o Makkot

o Shavu`ot

o `Eduyyot

o `Avodah Zarah

o 'Avot (also known as Pirkei Avot, Ethics of the Fathers)

o Horayot

Kodashim (Holy Things), dealing with sacrifices and the Temple

o Zevachim

o Menachot

o Chullin

o Bekhorot

o `Arakhin

o Temurah

o Keretot

o Me`ilah

o Tamid

o Middot

o Qinnim

Taharot (Purities), dealing with laws of ritual purity and impurity

o Kelim

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 o 'Ohalot

o Nega`im

o Parah

o Taharot

o Miqva'ot

o Niddah

o Makhshirin

o Zavim

o Tevul-Yom

o Yadayim

o `Oqatsin

Other Writings

In addition to these works, we have midrashim, which are basically stories expanding on
incidents in the Bible to derive principles of Jewish law or to teach moral lessons. For
example, there is a midrash about why Moses was not a good speaker (he put coals in his
mouth as a child as a way of proving that he was not greedy), and another one about Abram
discovering monotheism and rejecting his father's idolatry (that is a nice one: he smashes up
all his father's idols except the big one, then blames the mess on the big one, as a way of
showing his father that the idols do not really have any power). Some of them fill in gaps in
the narrative. For example, in Genesis 22,2, why does God say, "thy son, thine only son,
whom thou lovest, even Isaac"? Would not the name alone be enough? One story says that
the narrative is skipping out Abraham's responses. "Take thy son." "Which one?" "Thine only
son." "But I have two!" "Whom thou lovest." "I love them both!" "Even Isaac."

We also have a mystical tradition, known as Kabbalah. The primary written work in the
Kabbalistic tradition is the Zohar. Traditionally, rabbis discouraged teaching this material to
anyone under the age of 40, because it is too likely to be misinterpreted by anyone without
sufficient grounding in the basics.

Weekly Torah Readings

Level: Intermediate

Each week in synagogue, we read (or, more accurately, chant, because it is sung) a passage
from the Torah. This passage is referred to as a parashah. The first parashah, for example, is
Parashat Bereishit, which covers from the beginning of Genesis to the story of Noah. There
are 54 parashahs (parashiyot), one for each week of a leap year, so that in the course of a
year, we read the entire Torah (Genesis to Deuteronomy) in our services. During non-leap
years, there are 50 weeks, so some of the shorter portions are doubled up. We reach the last
portion of the Torah around a holiday called Simchat Torah (Rejoicing in the Law), which
occurs in September or October, a few weeks after Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year). On
Simchat Torah, we read the last portion of the Torah, and proceed immediately to the first
paragraph of Genesis, showing that the Torah is a circle, and never ends.
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In the synagogue service, the weekly parashah is followed by a passage from the prophets,
which is referred to as a haftarah. Contrary to common misconception, "haftarah" does not
mean "half-Torah". The word comes from a Hebrew root meaning end or conclusion.
Usually, the haftarah portion is no longer than one chapter, and has some relation to the Torah
portion of the week.

The Torah and haftarah readings are performed with great ceremony: the Torah is paraded
around the room before it is brought to rest on the bimah (podium). The reading is divided
up into portions, and various members of the congregation have the honor of reciting
blessings over a portion of the reading and doing the reading. This honor is referred to as an
"aliyah" (literally, ascension).

The first aliyah of any day's reading is customarily reserved for a kohein, the second for a
Levite, and priority for subsequent aliyoth is given to people celebrating major life events,
such as marriage or the birth of a child. In fact, a Bar Mitzvah was originally nothing more
than the first aliyah of a boy who had reached the age to be permitted by custom such an
honor (the Torah permits children to take an aliyah and to read, just like adults, and in
Yemenite congregations most six-year-olds already can take an aliyah and read for
themselves).

Celebrants of life events are customarily given the last aliyah, which includes blessings on
the last part of the Torah reading as well as several blessings of the haftarah reading. The
person given this honor is referred to as the "maftir", from the same root as haftarah, meaning
the one who concludes.

For more information about services, see Jewish Liturgy.

Jewish scriptures are sometimes bound in a form that corresponds to this division into weekly
readings. Scriptures bound in this way are generally referred to as a chumash. The word
"chumash" comes from the Hebrew word meaning five, and refers to the five books of the
Torah. Sometimes, the word chumash simply refers to a collection of the five books of the
Torah. But often, a chumash contains the entire first five books, divided up by the weekly
parashiyot, with the haftarah portion inserted after each week's parashah.

Table of Weekly Parashiyot

Below is a table of the regular weekly scriptural readings. Haftarot in parentheses indicate
Sephardic ritual where it differs from Ashkenazic. There are other variations on the readings
for Yemenites (and others), but these are the most commonly used ones. If you want to know
the reading for this week, check the Current Calendar.

There are alternative and additional special readings for certain holidays and other special
days, listed in a separate table below.

Parashah Torah Haftarah

Isaiah 42,5-43,10
Bereishit Genesis 1,1-6,8
(Isaiah 42,5-21)

Isaiah 54,1-55,5
Noach Genesis 6,9-11,32
(Isaiah 54,1-10)

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Lekh Lekha Genesis 12,1-17,27 Isaiah 40,27-41,16

2 Kings 4,1-37
Vayeira Genesis 18,1-22,24
(2 Kings 4,1-23)

Chayei Sarah Genesis 23,1-25,18 1 Kings 1,1-31

Toldot Genesis 25,19-28,9 Malachi 1,1-2,7

Hosea 12,13-14,10
Vayeitzei Genesis 28,10-32,3
(Hosea 11,7-12,12)

Hosea 11,7-12,12
Vayishlach Genesis 32,4-36,43
(Obadiah 1,1-21)

Vayyeshev Genesis 37,1-40,23 Amos 2,6-3,8

Miqeitz Genesis 41,1-44,17 1 Kings 3,15-4,1

Vayigash Genesis 44,18-47,27 Ezekiel 37,15-28

Vayechi Genesis 47,28-50,26 1 Kings 2,1-12

Isaiah 27,6-28,13; 29,22-23

Shemot Exodus 1,1-6,1
(Jeremiah 1,1-2,3)

Va'eira Exodus 6,2-9,35 Ezekiel 28,25-29,21

Bo Exodus 10,1-13,16 Jeremiah 46,13-28

Judges 4,4-5,31
Beshalach Exodus 13,17-17,16
(Judges 5,1-31)

Isaiah 6,1-7,6; 9,5-6

Yitro Exodus 18,1-20,23
(Isaiah 6,1-13)

Mishpatim Exodus 21,1-24,18 Jeremiah 34,8-22; 33,25-26

Terumah Exodus 25,1-27,19 1 Kings 5,26-6,13

Tetzaveh Exodus 27,20-30,10 Ezekiel 43,10-27

1 Kings 18,1-39
Ki Tisa Exodus 30,11-34,35
(1 Kings 18,20-39)

1 Kings 7,40-50
Vayaqhel Exodus 35,1-38,20
(1 Kings 7,13-26)

1 Kings 7,51-8,21
Pequdei Exodus 38,21-40,38
(1 Kings 7,40-50)

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Vayiqra Leviticus 1,1-5,26 Isaiah 43,21-44,23

Tzav Leviticus 6,1-8,36 Jeremiah 7,21-8,3; 9,22-23

2 Samuel 6,1-7,17
Shemini Leviticus 9,1-11,47
(2 Samuel 6,1-19)

Tazria Leviticus 12,1-13,59 2 Kings 4,42-5,19

Metzora Leviticus 14,1-15,33 2 Kings 7,3-20

Acharei Leviticus 16,1-18,30 Ezekiel 22,1-16

Amos 9,7-15
Qedoshim Leviticus 19,1-20,27
(Ezekiel 20,2-20)

Emor Leviticus 21,1-24,23 Ezekiel 44,15-31

Behar Leviticus 25,1-26,2 Jeremiah 32,6-27

Bechuqotai Leviticus 26,3-27,34 Jeremiah 16,19-17,14

Bamidbar Numbers 1,1-4,20 Hosea 2,1-22

Nasso Numbers 4,21-7,89 Judges 13,2-25

Beha'alotkha Numbers 8,1-12,16 Zechariah 2,14-4,7

Shelach Numbers 13,1-15,41 Joshua 2,1-24

Qorach Numbers 16,1-18,32 1 Samuel 11,14-12,22

Chuqat Numbers 19,1-22,1 Judges 11,1-33

Balaq Numbers 22,2-25,9 Micah 5,6-6,8

Pinchas Numbers 25,10-30,1 1 Kings 18,46-19,21

Mattot Numbers 30,2-32,42 Jeremiah 1,1-2,3

Jeremiah 2,4-28; 3,4

Masei Numbers 33,1-36,13
(Jeremiah 2,4-28; 4,1-2)

Devarim Deuteronomy 1,1-3,22 Isaiah 1,1-27

Va'etchanan Deuteronomy 3,23-7,11 Isaiah 40,1-26

Eiqev Deuteronomy 7,12-11,25 Isaiah 49,14-51,3

Re'eh Deuteronomy 11,26-16,17 Isaiah 54,11-55,5

Shoftim Deuteronomy 16,18-21,9 Isaiah 51,12-52,12

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 Ki Teitzei Deuteronomy 21,10-25,19 Isaiah 54,1-10

Ki Tavo Deuteronomy 26,1-29,8 Isaiah 60,1-22

Nitzavim Deuteronomy 29,9-30,20 Isaiah 61,10-63,9

Hosea 14,2-10; Joel 2,15-27

Vayeilekh Deuteronomy 31,1-31,30
(Hosea 14,2-10; Micah 7,18-20)

Ha'azinu Deuteronomy 32,1-32,52 2 Samuel 22,1-51

Joshua 1,1-18
Vezot Haberakhah Deuteronomy 33,1-34,12
(Joshua 1,1-9)

Table of Special Parashiyot

Below are additional readings for holidays and special sabbaths. Haftarot in parentheses
indicate Sephardic ritual where it differs from Ashkenazic. Note that on holidays, the Maftir
portion ordinarily comes from a different Torah scroll. The Maftir portion is usually the
Torah portion that institutes the holiday or specifies the holiday's offerings.

Parashah Torah Haftarah

Genesis 21,1-34
Rosh Hashanah, Day 1 1 Samuel 1,1-2,10
Numbers 29,1-6

Genesis 22,1-24
Rosh Hashanah, Day 2 Jeremiah 31,2-20
Numbers 29,1-6

Hosea 14,2-10; Joel 2,15-27

Shabbat Shuvah
(Hosea 14,2-10; Micah 7,18-20)

Leviticus 16,1-34
Yom Kippur, Morning Isaiah 57,14-58,14
Numbers 29,7-11

Yom Kippur, Afternoon Leviticus 18,1-30 Jonah 1,1-4,11; Micah 7,18-20

Leviticus 22,26-23,44
Sukkot, Day 1 Zechariah 14,1-21
Numbers 29,12-16

Leviticus 22,26-23,44
Sukkot, Day 2 1 Kings 8,2-21
Numbers 29,12-16

Sukkot, Intermediate
Exodus 33,12-34,26 Ezekiel 38,18-39,16
Sabbath

Shemini Atzeret Deuteronomy 14,22-16,17 1 Kings 8,54-9,1

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 Numbers 29,35-30,1

Deuteronomy 33,1-34,12
Joshua 1,1-18
Simchat Torah Genesis 1,1-2,3
(Joshua 1,1-9)
Numbers 29,35-30,1

Chanukkah, First
Zechariah 2,14-4,7
Sabbath

Chanukkah, Second
1 Kings 7,40-50
Sabbath

2 Kings 12,1-17
Sheqalim Exodus 30,11-16
(2 Kings 11,17-12,17)

1 Samuel 15,2-34
Zakhor Deuteronomy 25,17-19
(1 Samuel 15,1-34)

Purim Exodus 17,8-16

Ezekiel 36,16-38
Parah Numbers 19,1-22
(Ezekiel 36,16-36)

Ezekiel 45,16-46,18
Ha-Chodesh Exodus 12,1-20
(Ezekiel 45,18-46,15)

Shabbat Ha-Gadol Malachi 3,4-24

Exodus 12,21-51 Joshua 5,2-6,1

Passover, Day 1
Numbers 28,16-25 (Joshua 5,2-6,1; 6,27)

Leviticus 22,26-23,44
Passover, Day 2 2 Kings 23,1-9; 23,21-25
Numbers 28,16-25

Passover, Exodus 33,12-34,26

Ezekiel 37,1-14
Intermediate Sabbath Numbers 28,19-25

Exodus 13,17-15,26
Passover, Day 7 2 Samuel 22,1-51
Numbers 28,19-25

Deuteronomy 15,19-16,17
Passover, Day 8 Isaiah 10,32-12,6
Numbers 28,19-25

Exodus 19,1-20,23
Shavu'ot, Day 1 Ezekiel 1,1-28; 3,12
Numbers 28,26-31

Deuteronomy 15,19-16,17 Habakkuk 3,1-19

Shavu'ot, Day 2
Numbers 28,26-31 (Habakkuk 2,20-3,19)

Tisha B'Av, Morning Deuteronomy 4,25-40 Jeremiah 8,13-9,23

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 Isaiah 55,6-56,8
Tisha B'Av, Afternoon Exodus 32,11-14, 34,1-10
(Hosea 14,2-10; Micah 7,18-20)

Minor Fasts, Morning Exodus 32,11-14, 34,1-10

Minor Fasts, Isaiah 55,6-56,8

Exodus 32,11-14, 34,1-10
Afternoon (none)

Rosh Chodesh
Numbers 28,1-15
(weekday)

Shabbat on Eve of
1 Samuel 20,18-42
Rosh Chodesh

Shabbat Rosh Chodesh Numbers 28,9-15 Isaiah 66,1-24

Prayers and Blessings

Level: Intermediate

Tefillah: Prayer

The Hebrew word for prayer is tefillah. It is derived from the root Pe-Lamed-Lamed and the
word l'hitpallel, meaning to judge oneself. This surprising word origin provides insight into
the purpose of Jewish prayer. The most important part of any Jewish prayer, whether it be a
prayer of petition, of thanksgiving, of praise of God, or of confession, is the introspection it
provides, the moment that we spend looking inside ourselves, seeing our role in the universe
and our relationship to God.

For an observant Jew, prayer is not simply something that happens in synagogue once a week
(or even three times a day). Prayer is an integral part of everyday life. In fact, one of the
most important prayers, the Birkat Ha-Mazon, is never recited in synagogue services!

Observant Jews are constantly reminded of God's presence and of our relationship with God,
because we are continually praying to Him. Our first thoughts and words in the morning,
even before we get out of bed, is a prayer thanking God for returning our souls to us. There
are prayers to be recited just before enjoying a material pleasure, such as eating or drinking,
or just after them, such as after eating or drinking or after buying new clothes or ordinary
household items; prayers to recite before performing any mitzvah (commandment), such as
washing hands or lighting candles; prayers to recite upon seeing anything unusual, such as a
king, a rainbow, or the site of a great tragedy; prayers to recite whenever some good or bad
thing happens; and prayers to recite before going to bed at night. All of these prayers are in
addition to formal prayer services, which are performed three times a day every weekday and
additional times on sabbaths and festivals. See Jewish Liturgy.

The Need for Prayer

Many people today do not see the need for regular, formal prayer. "I pray when I feel
inspired to, when it is meaningful to me", they say. This attitude overlooks two important
things: the purpose of prayer, and the need for practice.
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One purpose of prayer is to increase your awareness of God in your life and the role that God
plays in your life. If you only pray when you feel inspired (that is, when you are already
aware of God), then you will not increase your awareness of God.

In addition, if you want to do something well, you have to practice it continually, even when
you do not feel like doing it. This is as true of prayer as it is of playing a sport, playing a
musical instrument, or writing. The sense of humility and awe of God that is essential to
proper prayer does not come easily to modern man, and will not simply come to you when
you feel the need to pray. If you wait until inspiration strikes, you will not have the skills you
need to pray effectively. Before starting to pray regularly, many find that when they want to
pray, they do not know how. They do not know what to say, or how to say it, or how to
establish the proper frame of mind. If you pray regularly, you will learn how to express
yourself in prayer.

Kavanah: The Mindset for Prayer

When you say the same prayers day after day, you might expect that the prayers would
become routine and would begin to lose meaning. While this may be true for some people,
this is not the intention of Jewish prayer. As said at the beginning of this discussion, the most
important part of prayer is the introspection it provides. Accordingly, the proper frame of
mind is vital to prayer.

The mindset for prayer is referred to as kavanah, which is generally translated as

"concentration" or "intent". The minimum level of kavanah is an awareness that one is
speaking to God and an intention to fulfill the obligation to pray. If you do not have this
minimal level of kavanah, then you are not praying; you are merely reading. In addition, it is
preferred that you have a mind free from other thoughts, that you know and understand what
you are praying about and that you think about the meaning of the prayer.

Liturgical melodies are often used as an aid to forming the proper mindset. Many prayers and
prayer services have traditional melodies associated with them. These can increase your
focus on what you are doing and block out extraneous thoughts.

Hebrew: The Language for Prayer

The Talmud states that it is permissible to pray in any language that you can understand;
however, traditional Judaism has always stressed the importance of praying in Hebrew. A
traditional Chasidic story speaks glowingly of the prayer of an uneducated Jew who wanted
to pray but did not speak Hebrew. The man began to recite the only Hebrew he knew: the
alphabet. He recited it over and over again, until a rabbi asked what he was doing. The man
told the rabbi, "The Holy One, Blessed is He, knows what is in my heart. I will give Him the
letters, and He can put the words together".

Even liberal Judaism is increasingly recognizing the value of Hebrew prayer. It seems that
fifty years ago, you never heard a word of Hebrew in a Reform synagogue. Today, the
standard Reform prayer book contains the text of many prayers in Hebrew, and many of the
standard prayers are recited in Hebrew, generally followed by transliteration and an English
translation. Some Reform rabbis read from the Torah in Hebrew, also generally followed by
an English translation or explanation.

There are many good reasons for praying in Hebrew: it gives you an incentive for learning
Hebrew, which might otherwise be forgotten; it provides a link to Jews all over the world; it

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is the language in which the covenant with God was made, etc. For us, however, the most
important reason to pray in Hebrew is that Hebrew is the language of Jewish thought.

Any language other than Hebrew is laden down with the connotations of that language's
culture and religion. When you translate a Hebrew word, you lose subtle shadings of Jewish
ideas and add ideas that are foreign to Judaism. Only in Hebrew can the pure essence of
Jewish thought be preserved and properly understood. For example, the English word
"commandment" connotes an order imposed upon us by a stern and punishing God, while the
Hebrew word "mitzvah" implies an honor and privilege given to us, a responsibility that we
undertook as part of the covenant we made with God, a good deed that we are eager to
perform.

This is not to suggest that praying in Hebrew is more important than understanding what you
are praying about. If you are in synagogue and you do not know Hebrew well enough, you
can listen to the Hebrew while looking at the translation. If you are reciting a prayer or
blessing alone, you should get a general idea of its meaning from the translation before
attempting to recite it in Hebrew. But even if you do not fully understand Hebrew at this
time, you should try to hear the prayer, experience the prayer, in Hebrew.

Group Prayer

Most of our prayers are expressed in the first person plural, "us" instead of "me", and are
recited on behalf of all of the Jewish people. This form of prayer emphasizes our
responsibility for one another and our interlinked fates.

Formal prayer services are largely a group activity rather than an individual activity.
Although it is permissible to pray alone and it fulfills the obligation to pray, you should
generally make every effort to pray with a group, short of violating a commandment to do so.

A complete formal prayer service cannot be conducted without a quorum of at least 10 adult
Jewish men; that is, at least 10 people who are obligated to fulfill the commandment to recite
the prayers. This prayer quorum is referred to as a minyan (from a Hebrew root meaning to
count or to number). Certain prayers and religious activities cannot be performed without a
minyan. This need for a minyan has often helped to keep the Jewish community together in
isolated areas.

Berakhot: Blessings

A berakhah (blessing) is a special kind of prayer that is very common in Judaism. Berakhot
are recited both as part of the synagogue services and as a response or prerequisite to a wide
variety of daily occurrences. Berakhot are easy to recognize: they all start with the word
barukh (blessed or praised).

The words barukh and berakhah are both derived from the Hebrew root Bet-Resh-Kaf,
meaning knee, and refer to the practice of showing respect by bending the knee and bowing,
getting down on the knees and prostrating on the ground. There are several places in Jewish
liturgy where bowing is performed, most of them at a time when a berakhah is being recited.
At the end of the formal standing prayer, one is required to at least get down on his knees, if
not to prostrate himself altogether on the ground; this requirement is commonly ignored by
most Jews today, but continues to be the practice among Muslims all over the world, who
learned this from the Jews, who still did it at the time Islaam was founded.

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According to Jewish Law, a person must recite at least 100 berakhot each day! This is not as
difficult as it sounds. Repeating the Shemoneh Esrei three times a day (as all observant Jews
do) covers 57 berakhot all by itself, and there are dozens of everyday occurrences that require
berakhot.

Who Blesses Whom?

Many English-speaking people find the idea of berakhot very confusing. To them, the word
"blessing" seems to imply that the person saying the blessing is conferring some benefit on
the person he is speaking to. For example, in Catholic tradition, a person making a
confession begins by asking the priest to bless him. Yet in a berakhah, the person saying the
blessing is speaking to God. How can the creation confer a benefit upon the Creator?

This confusion stems largely from difficulties in the translation. The Hebrew word "barukh"
is not a verb describing what we do to God; it is an adjective describing God as the source of
all blessings. When we recite a berakhah, we are not blessing God; we are expressing
wonder at how blessed God is.

Content of a Berakhah

There are basically three types of berakhot: ones recited before enjoying a material pleasure
(birkhot ha-na'ah), ones recited before performing a mitzvah (commandment) (birkhot ha-
mitzvot) and ones recited at special times and events (birkhot hoda'ah).

Berakhot recited before enjoying a material pleasure, such as eating and drinking,
acknowledge God as the creator of the thing that we are about to enjoy. The berakhah for
bread praises God as the one "who brings forth bread from the earth". The berakhah when
putting on our clothing every morning praises God as the one "who clothes the naked". By
reciting these berakhot, we acknowledge that God is the Creator of all things, and that we
have no right to use things until we recognize what He has done. The berakhah essentially
gains permission to use the thing.

Berakhot recited before performing a mitzvah (commandment), such as washing hands or

lighting candles, praise God as the one "who sanctified us with his commandments and
commanded us" to do whatever it is we are about to do. Reciting such a blessing is an
essential element of the performance of a mitzvah. In Jewish tradition, a person who
performs a mitzvah with a sense of obligation is considered more meritorious than a person
who performs the same mitzvah because he feels like it. Recitation of the berakhah focuses
our attention on the idea that we are performing a religious duty with a sense of obligation. It
is worth noting that we recite such berakhot over both biblical and rabbinical
commandments. In the latter case, the berakhah can be understood as "who sanctified us with
his commandments and commanded us to obey the rabbis, who commanded us to" do
whatever it is we are about to do. See Halakhah: Jewish Law for an explanation of the
distinction between biblical and rabbinical commandments.

Berakhot recited at special times and events, such as when seeing a rainbow or a king or
hearing good or bad news, acknowledge God as the ultimate source of all good and evil in the
universe. It is important to note that such berakhot are recited for both good things and things
that appear to us to be bad. When we see or hear something bad, we praise God as "the true
Judge", underscoring the idea that things that appear to be bad happen for a reason that is
ultimately just, even if we in our limited understanding cannot always see the reason.

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Form of a Berakhah

Many of the berakhot that we recite today were composed by Ezra and the Men of the Great
Assembly nearly 2500 years ago, and they continue to be recited in the same form.

All berakhot use the phrase "Barukh atah Hashem, Eloheynu, melekh ha-olam", Blessed art
thou LORD, our God, King of the Universe. This is sometimes referred to as shem umalkhut
(the name and the sovereignty), the affirmation of God as king.

The use of the word "thou" is worth discussing: in modern English, many people think of the
word "thou" as being formal and respectful, but in fact the opposite is true. Thou (like the
Hebrew atah) is the informal, familiar second person pronoun, used for friends and relatives.
This word expresses our close and intimate relationship with God.

Immediately after this phrase, the berakhah abruptly shifts into the third person; for example,
in the birkhot ha-mitzvot, the first two phrases are blessed art thou, LORD our God, King of
the Universe, who has sanctified us with his commandments and has commanded us to . . .
This grammatical faux pas is intentional. The use of the third person pronoun while speaking
to a person in Hebrew is a way of expressing extreme respect and deference. This shift in
perspective is a deliberately jarring way of expressing the idea that God is simultaneously
close to us and yet far above us, intimately related to us and yet transcendent. This paradox is
at the heart of the Jewish relationship with God.

Birkat Ha-Mazon: Grace After Meals

One of the most important prayers, one of the very few that the Bible commands us to recite,
is never recited in synagogue. That prayer is birkat ha-mazon, grace after meals.

In Deuteronomy 8,10, we are commanded that when we eat and are satisfied, we must bless
the LORD, our God. This commandment is fulfilled by reciting the birkat ha-mazon
(blessing of the food) after each meal. Reciting birkat ha-mazon is commonly referred to as
bentsching, from the Yiddish word meaning to bless. Although the word "bentsch" can refer
to the recitation of any berakhah, it is almost always used to refer to reciting birkat ha-mazon.

The grace after meals is recited in addition to the various berakhot over food recited before
meals.

Birkat ha-mazon actually consists of four blessings, three of which were composed around
the time of Ezra and the Great Assembly and a fourth which was added after the destruction
of the Temple. These blessings are:

1. Birkat Hazan (the blessing for providing food), which thanks God for giving food to the world,
2. Birkat Ha-Aretz (the blessing for the land), which thanks God for bringing us forth from the
land of Egypt, for making His covenant with us, and for giving us the Land of Israel as an
inheritance,

3. Birkat Yerushalayim (the blessing for Jerusalem), which prays for the rebuilding of Jerusalem
and the coming of the Mashiach; and

4. Birkat Ha-Tov v'Ha-Maytiv (the blessing for being good and doing good), was added after the
destruction of the Temple, although it existed before that time. It emphasizes the goodness
of God's work, that God is good and does good.

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In addition to these four blessings, the full birkat ha-mazon incorporates some psalms and
additional blessings for various special occasions (holidays, guests, etc.)

Jewish Liturgy

Level: Intermediate

Observant Jews pray in formal worship services three times a day, every day: at evening
(Ma'ariv), in the morning (Shacharit), and in the afternoon (Minchah). Daily prayers are
collected in a book called a siddur, which derives from the Hebrew root meaning order,
because the siddur shows the order of prayers. It is the same root as the word seder, which
refers to the Passover home service.

Undoubtedly our oldest fixed daily prayer is the Shema. This consists of Deuteronomy 6,4-9,
Deuteronomy 11,13-21, and Numbers 15,37-41. Note that the first paragraph commands us
to speak of these matters "when you retire and when you arise". From ancient times, this
commandment was fulfilled by reciting the Shema twice a day: morning and night.

The next major development in Jewish prayer occurred during the Babylonian Exile, 6th
century B.C.E. People were not able to sacrifice in the Temple at that time, so they used
prayer as a substitute for sacrifice. "The offerings of our lips instead of bulls", as Hosea said.
People got together to pray three times a day, corresponding to the two daily sacrifices
morning and afternoon and the burning of what was left over of the sacrifices at night. There
was an additional prayer service on Sabbaths and certain holidays, to correspond to the
additional sacrifices of those days. Some suggest that this may already have been a common
practice among the pious before the Exile.

After the Exile, these daily prayer services continued. In the 5th century B.C.E., the Men of
the Great Assembly composed a basic prayer, covering just about everything you could want
to pray about. This is the "Shemoneh Esrei", which means 18 and refers to the 18 blessings
originally contained within the prayer. It is also referred to as the Amidah (standing, because
we stand while we recite it), or Tefillah (prayer, as in The Prayer, because it is the essence of
all Jewish prayer). This prayer is the cornerstone of every Jewish service.

The blessings of the Shemoneh Esrei can be broken down into 3 groups: three blessings
praising God, thirteen making requests (forgiveness, redemption, health, prosperity, rain in its
season, ingathering of exiles, etc.), and three expressing gratitude and taking leave. But
wait! That is 19! And did we not just say that this prayer is called 18?

One of the thirteen requests (the one against heretics) was added around the 2nd century C.E.,
in response to the growing threat of heresy (primarily Christianity), but at that time, the
prayer was already commonly known as the Shemoneh Esrei, and the name stuck, even
though there were now 19 blessings.

Another important part of certain prayer services is a reading from the Torah (first 5 books of
the Bible) and the Prophets. The Torah has been divided into sections, so that if each of these
sections is read and studied for a week, we can cover the entire Torah in a year every year
(this works nicely in 13-month leap years, but in 12-month regular years we double up
shorter portions on a few weeks). At various times in our history, our oppressors did not
permit us to have public readings of the Torah, so we read a roughly corresponding section
from the Prophets (referred to as a Haftarah). Today, we read both the Torah portion and the
Haftarah portion. The Torah is read on Mondays, Thursdays, Sabbaths, and some "holidays"
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(including fasts). The Haftarah is read on Sabbaths and some holidays. The Torah and
haftarah readings are performed with great ceremony: the Torah is paraded around the room
before it is brought to rest on the bimah (podium), and it is considered an honor to have the
opportunity to recite a blessing and do the reading (this honor is called an aliyah). For more
information, see Weekly Torah Readings.

That is the heart of the Jewish prayer service. There are a few other matters that should be
mentioned, though. There is a long series of morning blessings at the beginning of the
morning service. Some people recite these at home. They deal with a lot of concerns with
getting up in the morning, and things we are obligated to do daily. There is a section called
Pesukei d'Zemira (verses of song), which includes a lot of Psalms and hymns. Some like to
think of it as a warm-up, getting you in the mood for prayer in the morning.

There are also a few particularly significant prayers. The most important in the popular mind
is the Kaddish, the only major prayer in Aramaic, which praises God. Here is a small piece
of it, in English:

May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified in the world that He created as He willed. May He
give reign to His kingship in your lifetimes and in your days, and in the lifetimes of the entire family of
Israel, swiftly and soon. May His great Name be blessed forever and ever. Blessed, praised, glorified,
exalted, extolled, mighty . . .

There are several variations on it for different times in the service. One variation is set aside
for mourners to recite, the congregation only providing the required responses. Many people
think of the Kaddish as a mourner's prayer, because the oldest son customarily recites it for a
certain period after a parent's death, but in fact it is much broader than that. It seems that
originally it separated each portion of the service, and a quick glance at any prayer book or
our outline below shows that it is recited between each section; in recent generations, it has
become to be used as a mourner's prayer, even outside the context of formal prayer services
or Torah study.

Another popular prayer is Aleinu, which most people recite at or near the end of every
service, though it is required only within Musaf on Rosh Hashanah. It also praises God.
Here is a little of it in English, to give you an idea:

It is our duty to praise the Master of all, to ascribe greatness to the Molder of primeval creation, for
He has not made us like the nations of the lands . . . Therefore, we put our hope in you, Adonai our
God, that we may soon see Your mighty splendor . . . On that day, Adonai will be One and His Name
will be One.

On certain holidays, we also recite Hallel, which consists of Psalms 113-118.

Many holidays have special additions to the liturgy. See Yom Kippur Liturgy for additions
related to that holiday.

Outline of Services

There are a few other things, but this is a pretty good idea of what is involved. Here is an
outline of the order of the daily services:

1. Evening Service (Ma'ariv)

a. Shema and its blessings

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 b. Kaddish

c. Silent Amidah (standing prayer)

d. Kaddish

2. Morning Service (Shacharit)

a. Kaddish

b. Shema and its blessings

c. Amidah

d. Kaddish

e. Hallel, if appropriate

f. Torah reading (Mondays, Thursdays, Sabbaths, and holidays) followed by Kaddish

g. Ashrei (Psalm 145), and other closing prayers, Psalms, and hymns (not on Sabbaths
and holidays; recited at the end of Musaf instead on those days) followed by Kaddish

3. Additional Service (Musaf) (Sabbaths and holidays only; recited immediately after Shacharit)

a. Amidah

b. Kaddish

c. closing prayers, Psalms, and hymns

d. Kaddish

4. Afternoon Service (Minchah)

a. Ashrei (Psalm 145)

b. Kaddish

c. Amidah

d. Kaddish

Variations from Movement to Movement

The above is according to Orthodox practice. The Reform service, although much shorter,
follows the same basic structure and contains shorter versions of the same prayers with a few
significant changes in content (for example, in one blessing of the Shemoneh Esrei, instead of
praising God who "gives life to the dead", they praise God who "gives life to all" because
they do not believe in resurrection). The Conservative version is very similar to the Orthodox
version, and contains only minor variations in the content of the prayers (similar to the
Reform example). See Movements of Judaism for more on the theological distinction
between Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform.

There are a few significant differences in the way that services are conducted in different
movements:

1. In Orthodox, women and men are seated separately; in Reform and Conservative, all sit
together. See The Role of Women in the Synagogue.

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 2. In Orthodox and usually Conservative, everything is in Hebrew. In Reform, most is done in
the local language, though they are increasingly using Hebrew.

3. In Orthodox, the person leading the service has his back to the congregation, and prays
facing the same direction as the congregation; in Conservative and Reform, the person
leading the service faces the congregation.

4. Conservative and Reform are rather rigidly structured: everybody shows up at the same
time, leaves at the same time, and does the same thing at the same time; Orthodox is
somewhat more free-form: people show up when they show up, catch up to everybody else
at their own pace, often do things differently than everybody else. This is difficult if you do
not know what you are doing, but once you have got a handle on the service, you may find it
much more comfortable and inspirational than trying to stay in unison.

Halakhah: Jewish Law

Level: Intermediate

What is Halakhah?

Judaism is not just a set of beliefs about God, man, and the universe. Judaism
is a comprehensive way of life, filled with rules and practices that affect
every aspect of life: what you do when you wake up in the morning, what
you can and cannot eat, what you can and cannot wear, how to groom
yourself, how to conduct business, who you can marry, how to observe the
holidays and Sabbaths, and perhaps most important, how to behave towards
God, other people, and animals. This set of rules and practices is known as halakhah.

The word "halakhah" is usually translated as "Jewish Law", although a more literal
translation might be "the path that one walks". The word is derived from the Hebrew root
Heh-Lamed-Kaf, meaning to go, to walk, or to travel.

Some non-Jews and non-observant Jews criticize this legalistic aspect of traditional Judaism,
saying that it reduces the religion to a set of rituals devoid of spirituality. While there are
certainly some Jews who observe halakhah in this way, that is not the intention of halakhah,
and it is not even the correct way to observe halakhah.

On the contrary, when properly observed, halakhah increases the spirituality in a person's life,
because it turns the most trivial, mundane acts, such as eating and getting dressed, into acts of
religious significance. When people write and ask how to increase their spirituality or the
influence of their religion in their lives, the only answer we can think of is: observe more
halakhah. Keep kosher or light sabbath candles, say the grace after meals, or pray once or
twice a day. When you do these things, you are constantly reminded of your faith, and it
becomes an integral part of your entire existence.

What Does Halakhah Consist of?

Halakhah is made up of mitzvot from the Torah as well as laws instituted by the rabbis and
certain customs. All of these have the status of Jewish law and all are equally binding. The
only difference is that the penalties for violating laws and customs instituted by the rabbis are
less severe than the penalties for violating Torah law, and laws instituted by the rabbis can be
changed by the rabbis in rare, appropriate circumstances.

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The 613 Mitzvot

At the heart of halakhah is the unchangeable 613 mitzvot that God gave to the Jewish people
in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). The word "mitzvah" means commandment.
In its strictest sense, it refers only to commandments instituted in the Torah; however, the
word is commonly used in a more generic sense to include all of the laws, practices and
customs of halakhah, and is often used in an even more loose way to refer to any good deed.

Some of the mitzvot are clear, explicit commands in the Bible (thou shalt not murder; to write
words of Torah on the doorposts of your house), others are more implicit (the mitzvah to
recite grace after meals, which is inferred from "and you will eat and be satisfied and bless
the LORD your God"), and some can only be ascertained by Talmudic logic (that a man shall
not commit incest with his daughter, which is derived from the commandment not to commit
incest with his daughter's daughter).

Some of the mitzvot overlap; for example, it is a positive commandment to rest on the
Sabbath and a negative commandment not to do work on the Sabbath.

Although there is not 100% agreement on the precise list of the 613 (there are some slight
discrepancies in the way some lists divide related or overlapping mitzvot), there is complete
agreement that there are 613 mitzvot. This number is significant: it is the numeric value of
the word Torah (Tav = 400, Vav = 6, Resh = 200, Heh = 5), plus 2 for the two mitzvot whose
existence precedes the Torah: "I am the LORD, your God" and "You shall have no other gods
before Me". There is also complete agreement that these 613 mitzvot can be broken down
into 248 positive mitzvot (one for each bone and organ of the male body) and 365 negative
mitzvot (one for each day of the solar year).

The most accepted list of the 613 mitzvot is Maimonides' list in his Mishneh Torah. In the
introduction to the first book of Mishneh Torah, Maimonides lists all of the positive mitzvot
and all of the negative mitzvot, then proceeds to divide them up into subject matter
categories. See List of the 613 Mitzvot.

Many of these 613 mitzvot cannot be observed at this time for various reasons. For example,
a large portion of the laws relate to sacrifices and offerings, which can only be made in the
Temple, and the Temple does not exist today. Some of the laws relate to the theocratic state
of Israel, its king, its supreme court, and its system of justice, and cannot be observed because
the theocratic state of Israel does not exist today. In addition, some laws do not apply to all
people or places. Most agricultural laws only apply within the Land of Israel, and certain
laws only apply to kohanim or Levites. The modern scholar Rabbi Israel Meir of Radin,
commonly known as the Chafetz Chayim, has identified 77 positive mitzvot and 194 negative
mitzvot which can be observed outside of Israel today.

Gezeirah: A Fence around the Torah

A gezeirah is a law instituted by the rabbis to prevent people from accidentally violating a
Torah mitzvah. For example, the Torah commands us not to work on the Sabbath, but a
gezeirah commands us not to move a object only used to perform prohibited work (such as a
pencil, money, a hammer), because someone handling the implement might forget that it was
the Sabbath and perform prohibited work.

It is important to note that from the point of view of the practicing Jew, there is no difference
between a gezeirah and a Torah mitzvah. Both are equally binding. The difference is just in

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the severity of punishment: a Torah violation of the Sabbath is punishable by death, while a
rabbinical violation of a gezeirah is punishable by whipping.

Another difference between a gezeirah and a mitzvah is that the rabbis can, in rare
appropriate circumstances, modify, or abrogate a gezeirah. Rabbis cannot change the Torah
law that was commanded by God.

Takkanah: A Law Instituted by the Rabbis

Halakhah also includes some laws that are not derived from mitzvot in the Torah. A takkanah
is a law that was instituted by the rabbis. For example, the "mitzvah" to light candles on
Chanukkah, a post-biblical holiday, is a takkanah. The practice of public Torah readings
every Monday and Thursday is a takkanah instituted by Ezra.

Some takkanot vary from community to community or from region to region. For example,
around the year 1000 C.E., a rabbi instituted a prohibition of polygyny, a practice clearly
permitted by the Torah and the Talmud. It was accepted by Ashkenazic Jews, who lived in
Christian countries where polygyny was not permitted, but was not accepted by Sephardic
Jews, who lived in Islamic countries where men were permitted up to four wives.

A takkanah, like a gezeirah, is just as binding as a Torah mitzvah.

Minhag: A Custom with the Status of Law

A minhag is a custom that evolved for worthy religious reasons and has continued long
enough to become a binding religious practice. For example, the second, extra day of
holidays was originally instituted as a gezeirah, so that people outside of Israel, who were
uncertain about the exact date of a holiday, would not accidentally violate the holiday's
mitzvot. After the mathematical calendar was instituted and there was no doubt about the
days, the added second day was not necessary. The rabbis considered ending the practice at
that time, but decided to continue it as a binding custom (minhag).

It is important to note that these "customs" are a binding part of halakhah, just like a mitzvah,
a takkanah, or a gezeirah.

The word "minhag" is also used in a looser sense, to indicate a community or an individual's
customary way of doing some religious thing. For example, it may be the minhag in one
synagogue to stand while reciting a certain prayer, while in another synagogue it is the
minhag to sit during that prayer. Even in this looser sense, it is generally recommended that a
person follow his own minhag, even when visiting another community.

Love and Brotherhood

Level: Basic

Many people think of Judaism as the religion of cold, harsh laws, to be contrasted with
Christianity, the religion of love and brotherhood. This is an unfair characterization of
both Judaism and Jewish law. Laws are at the heart of Judaism, but a large part of Jewish
law is about love and brotherhood, the relationship between man and his neighbors.
Jewish law commands us to eat only kosher food, not to do forbidden work on shabbat,
and not to wear wool woven with linen; but it also commands us to love all Jews (and
converts in particular), to give aid to the poor and needy, and to do no wrong to anyone in
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speech or in business. In fact, acts of love and kindness are so much a part of Jewish law
that the word "mitzvah" (literally, "commandment") is commonly used to mean any good
deed.

The Talmud tells a story of Rabbi Hillel, who lived around the time of Jesus. A pagan came
to him saying that he would convert to Judaism if Hillel could teach him the whole of the
Torah in the time he could stand on one foot. Hillel replied, "What is hateful to yourself, do
not do to your fellow man. That is the whole Torah; the rest is just commentary. Go and
study it".

The "Golden Rule" is not an idea that began with Christianity. It was a fundamental part of
the Torah long before Hillel or Jesus. It is a common-sense application of the Torah
commandment to love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19,18), which Rabbi Akiba
described as the essence of the Torah.

The true difference between Judaism and Christianity lies in Hillel's last comment: Go and
study it. The Torah is not content to leave love and brotherhood as a general ideal, to be
fulfilled as each individual sees fit; it spells out, in intricate detail, how we are meant to show
that love.

Jewish law includes within it a blueprint for a just and ethical society, where no one takes
from another or harms another or takes advantage of another, but everyone gives to one
another and helps one another and protects one another. Again, these are not merely high
ideals; the means for fulfilling these ideals are spelled out in the 613 commandments, which
are to be put into practice in the real world, not just thought about.

Everyone knows that the Ten Commandments command us not to murder. The full scope of
Jewish law goes much farther in requiring us to protect our fellow man. We are commanded
not to leave a condition that may cause harm, to construct our homes in ways that will
prevent people from being harmed, and to help a person whose life is in danger. These
commandments regarding the preservation of life are so important in Judaism that they
override all of the ritual observances that people think are the most important part of Judaism.

We are commanded to help those in need, both in physical need and financial need. The
Torah commands us to help a neighbor with his burden, and help load or unload his beast, to
give money to the poor and needy, and not to turn them away empty handed. See Tzedakah:
Charity.

Jewish law forbids us from cheating another or taking advantage of another. Jewish law
regarding business ethics and practices is extensive. It regulates conduct between a
businessman and his customer (for example, not to use false weights and measures, not to do
wrong in buying and selling, not to charge interest) and between a businessman and his
employee (to pay wages promptly, to allow a worker in the field to eat from the produce he is
harvesting, and not to take produce other than what he can eat while harvesting).

Entire books have been written on the subject of Jewish laws against wronging another
person in speech. We are commanded not to tell lies about a person, nor even
uncomplimentary things that are true. We are commanded to speak the truth, to fulfill our
promises, and not to deceive others. See Speech and Lashon Ha-Ra.

Contrary to what many people think, many of these laws regarding treatment of others apply
not only to our treatment of our fellow Jews, but also to our treatment of Gentiles (for
example, it is not only forbidden to sell non-kosher meat to a Gentile as if it were kosher,
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which the Gentile is not commanded to be concerned about; it is even forbidden to sell him
ordinary leather shoes as if they were from a kosher slaughtered animal, which even Jews are
not commanded to be concerned about). Some of these laws deal with our treatment of
animals (for example, first we feed our animals and then we eat). In fact, some of these laws
even extend kind treatment to inanimate objects (for example, we are forbidden to toss slices
of bread to each other at the dinner table, taking our bread lightly, and are forbidden to
destroy fruit trees, even in time of war for use in fighting our enemy). All of this is calculated
to make us not only lovers of God, but lovers of the men and the world God made for us.

Speech and Lashon Ha-Ra

Level: Intermediate

When non-observant people talk about how difficult it is to observe Jewish law, they usually
mention the difficulty of observing Shabbat or keeping kosher or other similarly detailed
ritual laws. Yet the laws that are most difficult to keep, which are most commonly violated
even by observant Jews (unintentionally, of course!), are the laws regarding improper speech.

This is a very important area of Jewish law: entire books have been written on the subject,
though in one chapter in Mishneh Torah all one really needs to know is summarized along
with the laws against revenge and holding a grudge. (It is worth mentioning that the most
widely accepted code and the supposed basis for Jewish law today, the Shulkhan Arukh, does
not even mention these laws; Mishneh Torah covers everything for all places and times, but
Shulkhan Arukh does not even cover everything needed for here and now.)

The Power of Speech

Judaism is intensely aware of the power of speech and of the harm that can be done through
speech. The rabbis note that the universe itself was created through speech. Of the 43 sins
enumerated in the Al Chet confession recited on Yom Kippur, 11 are sins committed through
speech. The Talmud tells that the tongue is an instrument so dangerous that it must be kept
hidden from view, behind two protective walls (the mouth and teeth) to prevent its misuse.

The harm done by speech is even worse than the harm done by stealing or by cheating
someone financially, because amends can be made for monetary harms, but the harm done by
speech can never be repaired. For this reason, some sources indicate that there is no
forgiveness for lashon ha-ra (disparaging speech). A Chasidic tale illustrates this point: A
man went about the community telling malicious lies about the rabbi. Later, he realized the
wrong he had done, and began to feel remorse. He went to the rabbi and begged his
forgiveness, saying he would do anything he could to make amends. The rabbi told the man,
"Take a feather pillow, cut it open, and scatter the feathers to the winds!" The man thought
this was a strange request, but it was a simple enough task, and he did it gladly. When he
returned to tell the rabbi that he had done it, the rabbi said, "Now, go and gather the feathers.
Because you can no more make amends for the damage your words have done than you can
recollect the feathers".

Speech has been compared to an arrow: once the words are released, like an arrow, they
cannot be recalled, the harm they do cannot be stopped, and the harm they do cannot always
be predicted, for words like arrows often go astray.

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Tale-Bearing

There are two mitzvot in the Torah that specifically address improper speech: "Thou shalt
not go up and down as a tale-bearer among thy people" (Leviticus 19,16), and "ye shall not
wrong one another" (Leviticus 25,17, which according to tradition refers to wronging a
person with speech).

Tale-bearing is, essentially, any gossip. The Hebrew word for tale-bearer is "rakheel" (Resh-
Kaf-Yod-Lamed), which is related to a word meaning trader or merchant. The idea is that a
tale-bearer is like a merchant, but he deals in information instead of goods. In our modern
"Information Age", the idea of information as a product has become more clear than ever
before, yet it is present even here in the Torah.

It is a violation of this mitzvah to say anything about another person, even if it is true, even if
it is not negative, even if it is not secret, even if it hurts no one, even if the person himself
would tell the same thing if asked! It is said that the telling of gossip leads to bloodshed,
which is why the next words in the Torah are "you shall not stand aside while your fellow's
blood is shed". The story of Do'eig the Edomite (I Samuel Chs. 21-22) is often used to
illustrate the harm that can be done by tale-bearing. Do'eig saw Achimelekh the Kohein give
David bread and a sword, a completely innocent act intended to aid a leading member of
Saul's court. Do'eig reported this to Saul. Do'eig's story was completely true, not negative,
not secret, and Achimelekh would have told Saul exactly the same thing if asked (in fact, he
did so later). Yet Saul misinterpreted this tale as proof that Achimelekh was supporting
David in a rebellion, and proceeded to slaughter all but one of the kohanim at Nob.

The person who listens to gossip is even worse than the person who tells it, because no harm
could be done by gossip if no one listened to it. It has been said that lashon ha-ra
(disparaging speech) kills three: the person who speaks it, the person who hears it, and the
person about whom it is told.

In Jewish law, all things are considered to be secret unless a person specifically says
otherwise. For this reason, you will note that in the Torah, God constantly says to Moses,
"Speak to the Children of Israel, saying" or "Speak to the Children of Israel and tell them". If
God did not specifically say this to Moses, Moses would be forbidden to repeat his words!
Nor is there any time-limit on secrets. The Talmud tells the story of a student who revealed a
secret after 22 years, and was immediately banished from the house of study!

The gravest of these sins of tale-bearing is "lashon ha-ra" (literally, "the evil tongue"), which
involves discrediting a person or saying negative things about a person, even if those negative
things are true. Some sources indicate that lashon ha-ra is equal in seriousness to murder,
idol worship, and forbidden sexual relations (the only three sins that you may not violate even
to save a life).

It is forbidden to even imply or suggest negative things about a person. It is forbidden to say
negative things about a person, even in jest. It is likewise considered a "shade of lashon ha-
ra" to say positive things about a person in the presence of his enemies, because this will
encourage his enemies to say negative things to contradict you!

One who tells disparaging things that are false is referred to as a motzi sheim ra, that is, one
who spreads a bad report. This is considered the lowest of the low.

It is generally not a sin to repeat things that have been told "in the presence of three persons".
The idea is that if it is told in the presence of three persons, it is already public knowledge,
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and no harm can come of retelling it. However, even in this case, you should not repeat it if
you know you will be spreading the gossip further.

When Tale-Bearing is Allowed

There are a few exceptional circumstances when tale-bearing is allowed, or even required.
Most notably, tale-bearing is required in a Jewish court of law, because it is a mitzvah to give
testimony and that mitzvah overrides the general prohibition against tale-bearing. Thus, a
person is required to reveal information, even if it is something that was explicitly told in
confidence, even if it will harm a person, in a Jewish court of law.

A person is also required to reveal information to protect a person from immediate, serious
harm. For example, if a person hears that others are plotting to kill someone, he is required to
reveal this information. That is another reason why the commandment not to go about as a
tale-bearer is juxtaposed with "you shall not stand aside while your fellow's blood is shed".

In limited circumstances, one is also permitted to reveal information if someone is entering

into a relationship that he would not enter if he knew certain information. For example, it
may be permissible to tell a person that his prospective business partner is untrustworthy, or
that a prospective spouse has a disease. This exception is subject to significant and complex
limitations; however, if those limitations are satisfied, the person with the information is
required to reveal it.

In all of these exceptions, a person is not permitted to reveal information if the same
objective could be fulfilled without revealing information. For example, if you could talk a
person out of marrying for reasons other than the disease, you may not reveal the disease.

Wronging a Person through Speech

Leviticus 25,17 says, "You shall not wrong one another". This has traditionally been
interpreted as wronging a person with speech. It includes any statement that will embarrass,
insult, or deceive a person, or cause a person emotional pain or distress.

Here are some commonly-used examples of behavior that is forbidden by this mitzvah:

You may not call a person by a derogatory nickname, or by any other embarrassing name,
even if he is used to it.
You may not ask an uneducated person for an opinion on a scholarly matter (that would
draw attention to his lack of knowledge or education).

You may not ask a merchant how much he would sell something for if you have no intention
of buying.

You may not refer someone to another person for assistance when you know the other
person cannot help (in other words, it is a violation of Jewish law to give someone the run-
around!).

You may not deceive a person, even if no harm is done by the deception; for example, you
may not sell non-kosher meat to a non-Jew telling him that it is kosher, even though no harm
is done to the non-Jew by this deception.

You may not sell a person damaged goods without identifying the damage, even if the price
you give is fair for the goods in their damaged condition.

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 You may not offer a person a gift or invite a person to dinner if you know that the person will
not accept.

You may not compliment a person if you do not mean it.

Kashrut: Jewish Dietary Laws

Level: Intermediate

Kashrut is the body of Jewish law dealing with what foods we can and cannot eat and how
those foods must be prepared and eaten. "Kashrut" comes from the Hebrew root Kaf-Shin-
Resh, meaning fit, proper, or correct. It is the same root as the more commonly known word
"kosher", which describes food that meets these standards. The word "kosher" can also be
used, and often is used, to describe ritual objects that are made in accordance with Jewish law
and are fit for ritual use.

There is no such thing as "kosher-style" food. Kosher is not a style of cooking. Chinese food
can be kosher if it is prepared in accordance with Jewish law, and there are many fine kosher
Chinese restaurants in Philadelphia and New York. Traditional Ashkenazic Jewish foods like
knishes, bagels, blintzes, and matzah ball soup can all be non-kosher if not prepared in
accordance with Jewish law. When a restaurant calls itself "kosher-style", it usually means
that the restaurant serves these traditional Jewish foods, and it almost invariably means that
the food is not actually kosher.

Food that is not kosher is commonly referred to as "treyf" (literally, torn, from the
commandment not to eat animals that have been torn by other animals).

Why Do We Observe the Laws of Kashrut?

Many modern Jews think that the laws of kashrut are simply primitive health regulations that
have become obsolete with modern methods of food preparation. There is no question that
some of the dietary laws have some beneficial health effects. For example, the laws
regarding kosher slaughter are so sanitary that kosher butchers and slaughterhouses have been
exempted from many USDA regulations.

However, health is not the only reason for Jewish dietary laws. Many of the laws of kashrut
have no known connection with health. To the best of our modern scientific knowledge, there
is no reason why camel or rabbit meat (both treyf) is any less healthy than cow or goat meat.
In addition, some of the health benefits to be derived from kashrut were not made obsolete by
the refrigerator. For example, there is some evidence that eating meat and dairy together
interferes with digestion, and no modern food preparation technique reproduces the health
benefit of the kosher law of eating them separately.

The short answer to why we observe these laws is: because the Torah says so. The Torah
does not specify any reason for these laws, and for a Torah-observant, traditional Jew, there is
no need for any other reason. Some have suggested that the laws of kashrut fall into the
category of "chukkim", laws for which there is no reason. We show our obedience to God by
following these laws even though we do not know the reason. Others, however, have tried to
ascertain God's reason for imposing these laws.

In his book "To Be a Jew" (an excellent resource on traditional Judaism), Rabbi Hayim
Halevy Donin suggests that the dietary laws are designed as a call to holiness. The ability to

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distinguish between right and wrong, good and evil, pure and defiled, the sacred and the
profane, is very important in Judaism. Imposing rules on what you can and cannot eat
ingrains that kind of self control. In addition, it elevates the simple act of eating into a
religious ritual. The Jewish dinner table is often compared to the Temple altar in rabbinic
literature.

How Difficult is it to Keep Kosher?

People who do not keep kosher often say how difficult it is. Actually, keeping kosher is not
particularly difficult in and of itself; what makes it difficult to keep kosher is that the rest of
the world does not do so.

As we shall see below, the basic underlying rules are fairly simple. If you buy your meat at a
kosher butcher and buy only kosher certified products at the market, the only thing you need
to think about is the separation of meat and dairy.

Keeping kosher only becomes difficult when you try to eat in a non-kosher restaurant, or at
the home of a person who does not keep kosher. In those situations, your lack of knowledge
about your host's ingredients and the food preparation techniques make it very difficult to
keep kosher. Some commentators have pointed out, however, that this may well have been
part of what God had in mind: to make it more difficult for us to socialize with those who do
not share our religion.

The Fundamental Rules

Although the details of kashrut are extensive, the laws all derive from a few fairly simple,
straightforward rules:

1. Certain animals may not be eaten at all. This restriction includes the flesh, organs, eggs, and
milk of the forbidden animals.
2. Of the animals that may be eaten, the birds and mammals must be slaughtered in
accordance with Jewish law.

3. All blood must be drained from the meat or broiled out of it before it is eaten.

4. Certain parts of permitted animals may not be eaten.

5. Meat (the flesh of birds and mammals) cannot be eaten with dairy. Fish, eggs, fruits,
vegetables, and grains can be eaten with either meat or dairy.

6. Utensils that have come into contact with meat may not be used with dairy, and vice versa.
Utensils that have come into contact with non-kosher food may not be used with kosher
food. This applies only where the contact occurred while the food was hot.

7. Grape products made by non-Jews may not be eaten or drunk.

The Details

Animals that may not be eaten

Of the "beasts of the earth" (which basically refers to land mammals with the exception of
swarming rodents), you may eat any animal that has cloven hooves and chews its cud.
Leviticus 11,3; Deuternomy 14,6. Any land mammal that does not have both of these
qualities is forbidden. The Torah specifies that the camel, the rock badger, the hare and the

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pig are not kosher because each lacks one of these two qualifications. Sheep, cattle, goats,
and deer are kosher.

Of the things that are in the waters, you may eat anything that has fins and scales. Leviticus
11,9; Deuteronomy 14,9. Thus, shellfish such as lobsters, oysters, shrimp, clams, and crabs
are all forbidden. Fish like tuna, carp, salmon, and herring are all permitted.

For birds, the criteria are less clear. The Torah lists forbidden birds (Leviticus 11,13-19;
Deuteronomy 14,11-18), but does not specify why these particular birds are forbidden. All of
the birds on the list are birds of prey or scavengers, thus the rabbis inferred that this was the
basis for the distinction. Other birds are permitted, such as chicken, geese, ducks, and
turkeys.

Of the "winged swarming things" (winged insects), a few are specifically permitted
(Leviticus 11,21).

Rodents, reptiles, amphibians, and insects (except as mentioned above) are all forbidden
(Leviticus 11,29-30, 42-43).

Some authorities require a post-mortem examination of the lungs of cattle, to determine

whether the lungs are free from adhesions. If the lungs are free from such adhesions, the
animal is deemed "glatt" (that is, "smooth"). In certain circumstances, an animal can be
kosher without being glatt; however, the stringency of keeping "glatt kosher" has become
increasingly common in recent years.

As mentioned above, any product derived from these forbidden animals, such as their milk,
eggs, fat, or organs, also cannot be eaten. Rennet, an enzyme used to harden cheese, is often
obtained from non-kosher animals, thus kosher hard cheese can be difficult to find.

Kosher slaughtering

The mammals and birds that may be eaten must be slaughtered in accordance with Jewish
law; "as I have commanded thee" (Deuteronomy 12,21) is according to the Oral Torah on
kosher slaughter given to Moses at Sinai. We may not eat animals that died of natural causes
(Deuteronomy 14,21) or that were killed by other animals (Exodus 22,30). In addition, the
animal must have no disease or flaws in the organs at the time of slaughter. These restrictions
do not apply to fish, which may be merely "gathered" (Numbers 11,22).

Ritual slaughter is known as shechitah, and the person who performs the slaughter is called a
shochet, both from the Hebrew root Shin-Chet-Tet, meaning to slaughter. The method of
slaughter is a quick, deep stroke across the throat with a perfectly sharp blade with no nicks
or unevenness. This method is painless, causes unconsciousness within seconds, and is
widely recognized as the most humane method of slaughter possible.

Another advantage of shechitah is that ensures rapid, complete draining of the blood, which is
also necessary to render the meat kosher.

The shochet is not simply a butcher; he must be a pious man, well-trained in Jewish law,
particularly as it relates to kashrut. In smaller, more remote communities, the rabbi and the
shochet were often the same person.

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Draining of Blood

The Torah prohibits consumption of blood. Leviticus 7,26-27; Leviticus 17,10-14. This is
the only dietary law that has a reason specified in Torah: we do not eat blood because the life
of the animal is contained in the blood. This applies only to the blood of birds and mammals,
not to fish blood. Thus, it is necessary to remove all blood from the flesh of kosher animals.

The first step in this process occurs at the time of slaughter. As mentioned above, shechitah
allows for rapid draining of most of the blood.

The remaining blood must be removed by salting, and then either broiling or emersing the
salted meat in boiling water till it whitens. Liver may only be koshered by the broiling
method, because it has so much blood in it and such complex blood vessels. This final
process must be completed within 72 hours after slaughter, and before the meat is frozen or
ground. Most butchers and all frozen food vendors take care of the salting for you, but you
should always check this when you are buying someplace you are unfamiliar with.

An egg that contains a blood spot may not be eaten. This is not very common, but one finds
them once in a while. It is a good idea to break an egg into a container and check it before
you put it into a heated pan, because if you put a blood-stained egg into a heated pan, the pan
becomes non-kosher.

Forbidden Fats and Nerves

The sciatic nerve and its adjoining blood vessels may not be eaten. The process of removing
this nerve is time consuming and not very cost-effective, so most kosher slaughterers simply
sell the hind quarters to non-kosher butchers.

A certain kind of fat, known as chelev, which surrounds the vital organs and the liver, may
not be eaten. Kosher butchers remove this. Modern scientists have found biochemical
differences between this type of fat and the permissible fat around the muscles and under the
skin.

Separation of Meat and Dairy

On three separate occasions, the Torah tells us not to "boil a kid in its mother's milk" (Exodus
23,19; Exodus 34,26; Deuteronomy 14,21). The Oral Torah explains that this passage
prohibits eating meat and dairy together. The rabbis extended this prohibition to include not
eating milk and poultry together. It is, however, permissible to eat fish and dairy together,
and it is quite common. It is also permissible to eat dairy and eggs together. According to
some views, it is not permissible to eat meat and fish together, but we are not certain of the
reason for that restriction (it has been attributed to medical opinion in the Middle Ages, for
example).

This separation includes not only the foods themselves, but the utensils, pots and pans with
which they are cooked, the plates and flatware from which they are eaten, the dishwashers or
dishpans in which they are cleaned, and the towels on which they are dried. A kosher
household will have at least two sets of pots, pans, and dishes: one for meat and one for
dairy. See Utensils below for more details.

One must wait a significant amount of time between eating meat and dairy. Opinions differ,
and vary from one or two to six hours. This is because fatty residues and meat particles tend
to cling to the mouth. From dairy to meat, however, one need only rinse one's mouth and eat
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a neutral solid like bread, unless the dairy product in question is also of a type that tends to
stick in the mouth.

The Yiddish words fleishig (meat), milchig (dairy), and pareve (neutral) are commonly used
to describe food or utensils that fall into one of those categories.

Note that even the smallest quantity of dairy (or meat) in something renders it entirely dairy
(or meat) for purposes of kashrut. For example, most margarines are dairy for kosher
purposes, because they contain a small quantity of whey or other dairy products to give it a
dairy-like taste. Animal fat is considered meat for purposes of kashrut. You should read the
ingredients very carefully, even if the product is kosher-certified.

Utensils

Utensils (pots, pans, plates, flatware, etc., etc.) must also be kosher. A utensil picks up the
kosher "status" (meat, dairy, pareve, or treyf) of the food that is cooked in it or eaten off of it,
and transmits that status back to the next food that is cooked in it or eaten off of it. Thus, if
you cook chicken soup in a saucepan, the pan becomes meat. If you thereafter use the same
saucepan to heat up some warm milk, the fleishig status of the pan is transmitted to the milk,
and the milchig status of the milk is transmitted to the pan, making both the pan and the milk
a forbidden mixture.

Kosher status can be transmitted from the food to the utensil or from the utensil to the food
only in the presence of heat, thus if you are eating cold food in a non-kosher establishment,
the condition of the plates is not an issue. Likewise, you could use the same knife to slice
cold cuts and cheese, as long as you clean it in between, but this is not really a recommended
procedure, because it increases the likelihood of mistakes.

Stove tops and sinks routinely become non-kosher utensils, because they routinely come in
contact with both meat and dairy in the presence of heat. It is necessary, therefore, to use
dishpans when cleaning dishes (do not soak them directly in the sink) and to use separate
spoon rests and trivets when putting things down on the stove top.

Dishwashers are a kashrut problem. If you are going to use a dishwasher in a kosher home,
you either need to have separate dish racks or you need to run the dishwasher in between
meat and dairy loads.

You should use separate towels and pot holders for meat and dairy. Routine laundering
koshers such items, so you can simply launder them between using them for meat and dairy.

Certain kinds of utensils can be "koshered" if you make a mistake and use it with both meat
and dairy. Consult a rabbi for guidance if this situation occurs.

Grape Products

The restrictions on grape products derive from the laws against using products of idolatry.
Wine was commonly used in the rituals of all ancient religions, and wine was routinely
sanctified for pagan purposes while it was being processed. For this reason, use of wines and
other grape products made by non-Jews was prohibited. (Whole grapes are not a problem,
nor are whole grapes in fruit cocktail).

For the most part, this rule only affects wine and grape juice. This becomes a concern with
many fruit drinks or fruit-flavored drinks, which are often sweetened with grape juice. You
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may also notice that it is virtually impossible to find kosher baking powder, because baking
powder is made with cream of tartar, a by-product of wine making.

Kashrut Certification

The task of keeping kosher is greatly simplified by widespread kashrut certification.

Approximately 3/4 of all prepackaged foods have some kind of kosher certification, and most
major brands have reliable Orthodox certification.

The symbols at right are all widely-accepted kashrut

certifications commonly found on products throughout the
United States. With a little practice, it is very easy to spot
these marks on food labels, usually near the product name,
occasionally near the list of ingredients. There are many other certifications available, of
varying degrees of strictness.

The most controversial certification is the K, a plain letter K found on products asserted to be
kosher. All other kosher certification marks are trademarked and cannot be used without the
permission of the certifying organization. The certifying organization stands behind the
kashrut of the product. But you cannot trademark a letter of the alphabet, so any
manufacturer can put a K on a product. For example, Jell-O brand gelatin puts a K on its
product, even though almost every reliable Orthodox authority agrees that Jell-O is not
kosher.

It is becoming increasingly common for kosher certifying organizations to indicate whether

the product is fleishig, milchig, or pareve. If the product is dairy, it will frequently have a D
or the word Dairy next to the kashrut symbol. If it is meat, the word Meat or an M may
appear near the symbol. If it is pareve, the word Pareve (or Parev) may appear near the
symbol (Not a P! That means kosher for Passover!). If no such clarification appears, you
should read the ingredient list carefully to determine whether the product is meat, dairy, or
pareve.

Kosher Sex

Level: Advanced

Note: This page addresses issues of Jewish law that may not be appropriate for younger readers.
Please exercise appropriate discretion.

Attitude Towards Sexuality

In Jewish law, sex is not considered inherently shameful, sinful, or obscene. Sex is not seen
as a necessary evil for the sole purpose of procreation. Although sexual desire comes from
the yetzer hara (the so-called "evil impulse"), it is no more evil than hunger or thirst, which
also come from the yetzer hara. Like hunger, thirst, or other basic needs, sexual desire must
be controlled, channeled, and satisfied in the proper time, place, and manner. But when
sexual desire is satisfied between a husband and wife at the proper time and out of mutual
love and desire, sexual relations are actually a mitzvah (a Biblical commandment, see Exodus
21,10 referring to "conjugal rights" and the commentary on it).

Sexual enjoyment (whether involving intercourse or mere hand holding) is permissible for
Jews only within the context of marriage. For Torah, sex is not merely a way of experiencing
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physical pleasure. It is properly an act of immense significance, which requires commitment
and responsibility. The requirement of marriage before sex ensures that sense of commitment
and responsibility. The Torah forbids all sexual contact short of intercourse outside of the
context of marriage, recognizing that such contact is likely lead to intercourse and is
damaging in and of itself. Jews are rabbinically forbidden to even engage in sexual fantasy,
let alone masturbation alone or mutual masturbation outside of marriage.

The primary purpose of sexual relations is to reinforce the loving marital bond between
husband and wife. The first and foremost purpose of marriage is intimate long-term
companionship (not just bearing children in a family context), and sexual relations play an
important role in that. Procreation is also a reason for sex, but it is not the only reason; after a
woman is no longer able to bear children, she is still expected to have an active sex life, just
as during her child-bearing years (the idea that old folks should not or do not have sexual
relations is an alien one in a Torah context). Sex between husband and wife is also
recommended (and even required) at other times when conception is impossible, such as
when the woman is pregnant or when the woman is using a permissible form of
contraception. Kosher sexual relations are not necessarily limited to those that can lead to
pregnancy, either: anal and oral relations are permitted, if enjoyable to both marital partners,
though Jewish men have a separate commandment to reproduce, and should generally end up
having normal vaginal intercourse.

In the Written Torah, one of the words used for sex between husband and wife comes from
the root Yod-Dalet-Ayin, meaning to know, which vividly illustrates that proper Jewish
sexuality involves both the heart and mind, not merely the body. (The English expression
"sexual knowledge" seems to be derived from this Biblical idea, but generally has a negative
connotation lacking in the Hebrew.)

Nevertheless, Torah does not ignore the physical component of sexuality. The need for
physical compatibility between husband and wife is recognized in Jewish law. A Jewish
couple must meet at least once before the marriage, and if either prospective spouse finds the
other physically unattractive, they should not marry.

Sexual relations should only be experienced in a time of joy. Sex for selfish personal
satisfaction, without regard for the partner's pleasure, is wrong and evil. A man may never
force his wife to have sex. A couple may not have sexual relations while drunk or
quarreling. Sex may never be used as a weapon against a spouse, either by depriving the
spouse of sex or by compelling it. It is a serious offense to use sex (or lack thereof) to punish
or manipulate a spouse.

Sex is the woman's right, not the man's. A man has a duty to give his wife sex regularly and
to ensure that sex is pleasurable for her. He is also obligated to watch for signs that his wife
wants sex, and to offer it to her without her asking for it. The woman's right to sexual
intercourse is referred to as onah, and is one of a wife's three basic rights (the others are food
and clothing), which a husband may not reduce. The Talmud specifies both the quantity and
quality of sex that a man must give his wife. It specifies the frequency of sexual obligation
based on the husband's occupation, although this obligation can be modified in the ketubah
(marriage contract). A man may not take a vow to abstain from sex for an extended period of
time, and may not take a journey for an extended period of time, because that would deprive
his wife of sexual relations. In addition, a husband's consistent refusal to engage in sexual
relations is grounds for compelling a man to divorce his wife, even if the couple has already
fulfilled the halakhic obligation to procreate.

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Although sex is the woman's right, she does not have absolute discretion to withhold it from
her husband. A woman may not withhold sex from her husband as a form of punishment, and
if she does, the husband may divorce her without paying the substantial divorce settlement
provided for in the ketubah.

Although some sources take a more narrow view, the general view of halakhah is that any
sexual conduct that does not regularly involve ejaculation outside the vagina is permissible.
As one passage in the Talmud states, "a man may do whatever he pleases with his wife". In
fact, there are passages in the Talmud that encourage foreplay to arouse the woman, and oral
and anal sex are permitted (though not necessarily desirable), if they are not to the exclusion
of vaginal sex.

Niddah: The Laws of Separation

One of the most mysterious areas of Jewish sexual practices is the law of niddah, separation
of husband and wife during the woman's menstrual period. These laws are also known as
taharat ha-mishpachah, family purity. Few people outside of the Orthodox community are
even aware that these laws exist, which is unfortunate, because these laws provide many
undeniable benefits. The laws of niddah are not deliberately kept secret; they are simply
unknown because most non-Orthodox Jews do not continue their religious education beyond
bar mitzvah, and these laws address subjects that are not really suitable for discussion with
children under the age of 13.

According to the Torah, a man is forbidden from having sexual intercourse with a niddah,
that is, a menstruating woman. The law of niddah is the only law of ritual purity that
continues to be observed today. At one time, a large portion of Jewish law revolved around
questions of ritual purity and impurity. The other laws mainly had significance in the context
of the Temple, and are not applicable today.

The time of separation begins at the first sign of blood and ends in the evening after the
woman's seventh "clean day". This separation lasts about 12 to 14 days. The rabbis
broadened this prohibition, providing that a man may not even touch his wife during this
time. Weddings must be scheduled carefully, so that the woman is not in a state of niddah on
her wedding night.

At the end of the period of niddah, as soon as possible after nightfall after the seventh clean
day, the woman must immerse herself in a kosher mikveh, a ritual pool. The mikveh was
traditionally used to cleanse a person of various forms of ritual impurity. Today, it is used
almost exclusively for this purpose and as part of the ritual of conversion. It is important to
note that the purpose of the mikveh is solely ritual purification, not physical cleanliness; in
fact, immersion in the mikveh is done only after a woman has bathed and shampooed and
combed her hair. The mikveh is such an important part of traditional Jewish ritual life that a
new community is required to build a mikveh before they build a synagogue.

The Torah does not specify the reason for the laws of niddah, but this period of abstention has
both physical and psychological benefits.

The fertility benefits of this practice are obvious and undeniable. In fact, it is remarkable
how closely these laws parallel the advice given by medical professionals today. When
couples are having trouble conceiving, modern medical professionals routinely advise them
to abstain from sex during the two weeks around a woman's period (to increase the man's
sperm count at a time when conception is not possible), and to have sex on alternate nights
during the remaining two weeks. When you combine this basic physical benefit with the
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psychological benefit of believing that you are fulfilling God's will, it is absolutely shocking
that more couples with fertility problems do not attempt this practice. The rejection of this
practice by the liberal movements of Judaism is not a matter of "informed choice", but simply
a matter of ignorance or blind prejudice.

In addition, women who have sexual intercourse during their menstrual period are more
vulnerable to a variety of vaginal infections, as well as increased risk of cervical cancer.

But the benefits that the rabbis have always emphasized are the psychological ones, not the
physical ones. The rabbis noted that a two-week period of abstention every month forces a
couple to build a non-sexual bond as well as a sexual one. It helps to build the couple's desire
for one another, making intercourse in the remaining two weeks more special. It also gives
both partners a chance to rest, without feeling sexually inadequate. They also emphasized the
value of self-discipline in a drive as fundamental as the sexual drive.

Birth Control

In principle, birth control is permitted, so long as the couple is committed to eventually

fulfilling the mitzvah to be fruitful and multiply (which, at a minimum, consists of having
two children, one of each gender).

The issue in birth control is not whether it is permitted, but what method is permitted. It is
well-established that methods that destroy the seed or block the passage of the seed are not
permitted, thus condoms are not permitted for birth control. However, the pill and IUD are
acceptable forms of birth control under Jewish law.

Abortion

Jewish law not only permits, but in some circumstances requires abortion. Where the
mother's life is in jeopardy because of the unborn child, abortion is mandatory.

An unborn child has the status of "potential human life" until its head has emerged from the
mother. Potential human life is valuable, and is not to be terminated casually, but it does not
have as much value as a life in existence. The Talmud makes no bones about this: it says
quite bluntly that if the fetus threatens the life of the mother, you cut it up within her body
and remove it limb by limb if necessary, because its life is not as valuable as hers. But once
the head has emerged, you cannot take its life to save the mother's, because you cannot
choose between one human life and another.

Homosexuality

Male homosexual relations are clearly forbidden by the Torah (Leviticus 18,22). Such acts
are condemned in the strongest possible terms, as abhorrent, and are punishable by death
(Leviticus 20,13), as are the sins of adultery, incest, and bestiality.

It is important to note, however, that it is homosexual acts that are forbidden, not homosexual
orientation. The Torah focuses on a person's actions rather than a person's desires. A man's
desire to have sex with another man is no more a sin than his desire to have sex with another
man's wife, so long as he does not act upon that desire. In fact, Jewish tradition recognizes
that a person who chooses not to do something because it is forbidden is worthy of more
merit than someone who simply chooses not to do it because he does not feel like doing it;
thus, a man who feels such desires but does not act upon them is worthy of more merit in that
regard than a man who does not feel such desires.
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Interestingly, female homosexual relations are not specifically mentioned by the Written
Torah, but are only forbidden in the general prohibition of "the [lewd] practices of Egypt"
(Leviticus 18,3, translated "the doings of the land of Egypt" in the JPS Bible).

Tzedakah: Charity

Level: Intermediate

Charity is a fundamental part of the Torah way of life: Traditional Jews give at least ten
percent of their income to charity. Traditional Jewish homes commonly have a box for
collecting coins for the poor, and coins are routinely placed in the box. Jewish youths are
continually going from door to door collecting for various worthy causes. In many ways,
charitable donation has taken the place of animal sacrifice in Jewish life: giving to charity is
an almost instinctive Jewish response to express thanks to God, to ask forgiveness from God,
or to request a favor from God. According to Jewish tradition, the spiritual benefit of giving
to the poor is so great that a beggar actually does the giver a favor by giving a person the
opportunity to perform tzedakah.

The Meaning of "Tzedakah"

"Tzedakah" is the Hebrew word for the acts that we call "charity" in English: giving aid,
assistance, and money to the poor and needy or to other worthy causes. But the nature of
tzedakah is very different from the idea of charity. The word "charity" suggests benevolence
and generosity, a magnanimous act by the wealthy and powerful for the benefit of the poor
and needy. The word "tzedakah" is derived from the Hebrew root Tzade-Dalet-Qof, meaning
righteousness, justice, or fairness. In Judaism, giving to the poor is not viewed as a generous,
magnanimous act; it is simply an act of justice and righteousness, the performance of a duty,
giving the poor their due.

The Obligation of Tzedakah

Giving to the poor is an obligation in Judaism, a duty that cannot be forsaken even by those
who are themselves in need. Some sages have said that tzedakah is the highest of all
commandments, equal to all of them combined, and that a person who does not perform
tzedakah is equivalent to an idol worshipper. Tzedakah is one of the three acts that gain us
forgiveness from our sins. The High Holiday liturgy states that God has inscribed a judgment
against all who have sinned, but teshuvah (repentance), tefillah (prayer) and tzedakah can
reverse the decree. See Days of Awe.

According to Jewish law, we are required to give one-tenth of our income to the poor. This is
generally interpreted as one-tenth of our net income after payment of taxes. Those who are
dependent on public assistance or living on the edge of subsistence may give less; no one
should give so much that he would become a public burden, nor more than twenty percent of
his assets even if he would not become a public burden.

The obligation to perform tzedakah can be fulfilled by giving money to the poor, to health
care institutions, to synagogues, or to educational institutions. It can also be fulfilled by
supporting your children beyond the age when you are legally required to, or supporting your
parents in their old age. The obligation includes giving to both Jews and Gentiles; contrary to
popular belief, Jews do not just "take care of our own".

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Judaism acknowledges that many people who ask for charity have no genuine need. In fact,
the Talmud suggests that this is a good thing: if all people who asked for charity were in
genuine need, we would be subject to punishment (from God) for refusing anyone who
asked. The existence of frauds diminishes our liability for failing to give to all who ask,
because we have some legitimate basis for doubting the beggar's sincerity. It is permissible to
investigate the legitimacy of a charity before donating to it.

We have an obligation to avoid becoming in need of tzedakah. A person should take any
work that is available, even if he thinks it is beneath his dignity, to avoid becoming a public
charge. In particular, Jewish legal scholars, teachers, and rabbis must make their living at
something other than teaching the Oral Torah and relying on charity, even if this entails
hardships for them, lest they profane God's name, and lose their part in the World to Come.
Unfortunately, many rabbis have failed to take this seriously in recent generations; some have
brazenly gone so far as to say that the public must support them, and that they are forbidden
to work.

If a person is truly in need, however, and has no way to obtain money on his own, he should
not feel embarrassed to accept tzedakah. No one should feel too proud to take money from
others. In fact, it is considered a transgression to refuse tzedakah. One who would sooner die
than to accept tzedakah, when he must do so in order to survive, is as if he sheds his own
blood.

Levels of Tzedakah

Certain kinds of tzedakah are considered more meritorious than others. The Talmud
describes these different levels of tzedakah, and Maimonides organized them into a list. The
levels of charity, from the least meritorious to the most meritorious, are:

1. Giving begrudgingly
2. Giving less than you should, but giving it cheerfully.

3. Giving after being asked

4. Giving before being asked

5. Giving when you do not know the recipient's identity, but the recipient knows your identity

6. Giving when you know the recipient's identity, but the recipient does not know your identity

7. Giving when neither party knows the other's identity

8. Enabling the recipient to become self-reliant

Treatment of Animals

Level: Intermediate

"Herod also got together a great quantity of wild beasts, and of lions in very great abundance, and of
such other beasts as were either of uncommon strength or of such a sort as were rarely seen. These
were trained either to fight one with another, or men who were condemned to death were to fight
with them. And truly foreigners were greatly surprised and delighted at the vast expenses of the
shows, and at the great danger of the spectacles, but to the Jews it was a palpable breaking up of
those customs for which they had so great a veneration." -Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews.

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Prohibition Against Cruelty to Animals

Judaism places great stress on proper treatment of animals. Unnecessary cruelty to animals is
strictly forbidden, and in many cases, animals are accorded the same sensitivity as human
beings. This concern for the welfare of animals is unique to Judaism; Christianity does not
share this value, nor did most civilized nations until quite recently. Cruelty to animals was
not outlawed until the 1800s.

Judaism expresses no definitive opinion as to whether animals are capable of experiencing

physical or psychological pain as humans do; however, Judaism has always recognized the
link between the way a person treats animals and the way a person treats human beings. A
person who is cruel to a defenseless animal will undoubtedly be cruel to defenseless people,
and a person who cares for the lowest of creatures will certainly care for his fellow man.

Jacob, Moses, and David were all shepherds, people who cared for animals. The Talmud
specifically states that Moses was chosen for his mission because of his skill in caring for
animals. "The Holy One, Blessed Be He, said 'Since you are merciful to the flock of a human
being, you shall be the shepherd of My flock, Israel.'" Likewise Rebekah was chosen as a
wife for Isaac because of her kindness to animals. When Abraham's servant asked for water
for himself, she volunteered to water his camels as well, and thereby proved herself a worthy
wife.

On the other hand, the two hunters in the Bible, Nimrod and Esau, are both depicted as
villains. A great rabbi who was insensitive to the fear of a calf being led to slaughter was
punished with years of pain.

In the Torah, humanity is given dominion over animals, and has the right to use animals for
legitimate needs. Animal flesh can be consumed for food; animal skins can be used for
clothing; the Torah itself must be written on parchment, that is, animal hides.

However, we are permitted to use animals in this way only when there is a genuine,
legitimate need, and we must do so in the manner that causes the animal the least suffering.
Kosher slaughtering is designed to be as fast and painless as possible, and if anything occurs
that might cause pain (such as a nick in the slaughtering knife or a delay in the cutting), the
flesh may not be consumed. Hunting for sport is strictly prohibited, and hunting and trapping
for legitimate needs is permissible only when it is done in the least painful way possible.

The laws regarding treatment of animals are referred to as Tzaar Baalei Chayim, prevention
of cruelty to animals.

Under Jewish law, animals have some of the same rights as humans do. Animals rest on
Shabbat, as humans do. We are forbidden to muzzle an ox while it is working in the field,
just as we must allow human workers to eat from the produce they are harvesting.

Several commandments demonstrate concern for the physical or psychological suffering of

animals. We may not plow a field using animals of different species, because this would be a
hardship to the animals. We are required to relieve an animal of its burden, even if we do not
know its owner, or even if it is ownerless. We are not permitted to kill an animal in the same
day as its young, and are specifically commanded to send away a mother bird when taking
the eggs, because of the psychological distress this would cause the animal. In fact, the Torah
specifically says that a person who sends away the mother bird will be rewarded with long
life, precisely the same reward that is given for honoring mother and father. This should give
some indication of the importance of this law.
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We are permitted to relax certain rabbinical rules for the Sabbath to rescue an animal in pain
or at risk of death.

In the Talmud, the rabbis further dictated that a person may not purchase an animal unless he
has made provisions to feed it, and a person must feed his animals before he feeds himself.

Pets

Jewish law does not prohibit keeping pets, and indeed many observant Jews have dogs, cats,
or other household pets.

As with all animals, we are required to feed our pets before ourselves, and make
arrangements for feeding our pets before we obtain them. Also, like all animals, household
pets are entitled to Sabbath rest, thus you cannot have your dog retrieve the paper for you on
Shabbat, etc.

It is permissible to feed non-kosher food to pets. In fact, it is permissible to use products of

non-kosher animals as long as you do not eat them; for example, it is permissible to use a
toothpaste that contains non-kosher ingredients as long as the toothpaste is not fit for human
consumption. Likewise, it is permissible to feed non-kosher food to your pets, as long as you
do not consume it yourself.

The laws of Passover, however, are somewhat broader. During Passover, it is impermissible
to have any chametz (leavened grain products) in your home, or to derive any benefit from
chametz, thus you cannot use chametz to feed your pets. You must either feed your pet
something that contains no chametz (such as 100% beef dog food, kosher for Passover table
scraps, or matzah meal to feed fish or rodents) or temporarily sell the pets to a non-Jew.

It is a violation of Jewish law to neuter a pet. The Torah prohibits castrating males of any
species. This law does not apply to neutering female pets.

It is a violation of the general prohibition against cruelty to animals to have your pet
physically altered in any way without a genuine, legitimate need. For example, declawing
cats and docking the ears or tails of dogs are forbidden.

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