By Avi Shafran, on July 24th, 2012 July 9, 2012
Parragon Books Ltd uk_info@parragon.com
To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing as the public affairs director of a national Jewish organization, Agudath Israel of America, whose Education Affairs division services Jewish private schools across North America.
A constituent who serves as a school librarian in two New York private schools has called to our attention some disturbing passages in a Parragon-published text.
The “Encyclopedia of World History: From the Stone Age to the 21st Century” includes, in the section “The Modern World,” an entry for “Israel and Palestine” (pp. 208-209).
It asserts that “the land around Jerusalem” was “the ancient homeland of the Jews,” and that after their expulsion from the Holy Land, their “desire to return led to a long conflict with the people living there.” It then notes that “small numbers of Jews, known as Zionists, began to settle in Palestine in the 1880’s.”
Leaving aside that the ancient Jewish monarchy in the Holy Land is understood by historians to have extended well beyond the environs of Jerusalem, the insinuation that there was no Jewish presence in the area for centuries until the late nineteenth century is not true. It is, to be … Read More >>
By Guest Contributor, on February 23rd, 2012 by Rabbi Yaakov Rosenblatt
Dear Deborah,
Your book, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of my Hasidic Roots, touched a lot of nerves and unsettled a lot of hearts in the Orthodox Jewish community. It is not every day that a Satmar woman divorces her husband, moves to Manhattan and writes a tell-all book about the experience. It is not every day that a Satmar woman writes about her Chassidic experience with derision and her sexual relations without inhibition.
My wife’s family is from Satmar, too. Her great-great grandfather was the shochet and chazzan in Satmar, Hungary, serving Grand Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum before WWII. Her great-grandfather left Satmar in the 1930s and moved to Portsmouth, England where he served as the Orthodox pulpit rabbi of a less than observant congregation. His wife wanted to raise their children in a more modern environment and he went along with that decision. He never trimmed his beard or payos in Satmar but did so in Portsmouth. His wife shaved her hair in Satmar but didn’t do so in Portsmouth.
They didn’t write a book about the ordeal, as you did. They respected their parents’ insular ways even if they couldn’t follow the path themselves. … Read More >>
By Emanuel Feldman, on January 16th, 2012 What could be the connection between intensified Israeli media incitement against haredim and the appearance of a new Yom-tov prayerbook designed exclusively for Israeli Jews? On the surface, none. But let’s glance beneath the surface.
Media incitement against haredim is old hat, an automatic Pavlovian reaction against their favorite bête noir. Were there no haredim, they would have to be invented for the benefit of the secular elites and their servile media. Whipping boys are hard to find.
Recently, however, the incitement has become unusually shrill. Granted, haredi society is far from perfect, and the behavior of some of its adherents far from exemplary. But even though one expects higher standards from those who defend Torah values, the fact is that whenever a haredi commits a wrong that would normally be reported on the page 15, the anti-religious media, religiously faithful to the tradition of yellow journalism, pounce on it and create a media circus: screaming headlines, attack columns, admonishing editorials.
Certainly the ugly behavior of some haredi hooligans, such as those in Beit Shemesh, are abhorrent. They bring shame to the name of Gd, Torah, and Orthodox Jewry, trampling upon the pleasant dracheha darchei noam face of Torah. … Read More >>
By Yaakov Menken, on December 11th, 2011 A Jerusalem Court has ruled in favor of Sarah Shapiro, who wrote four years ago about her plagiarism suit against Naomi Ragen. Ragen is the well-known author of Sotah, Jephte’s Daughter, and other works, all of which use fiction to portray Orthodox Jewish life, especially for women, as a stifling existence of “drudgery and subservience” (from one review). This is from a positive review of Sotah on Amazon:
Naomi Regan [sic] reveals the true twisted world of the orthodox Jews. A world that has the same rules no matter where the orthodox Jewish community choses to grow. The crooked interpretation of the bible, chauvinism, disrespect of woman, and primitive way of seeing the reality. The powerless individual who wants to have a taste of a less restricted world facing the horrors of what the society believes is right.
Well, not only is it a work of fiction, describing a world that bears little resemblance to the vibrancy of the Torah community — it’s also plagiarized, having borrowed content from Shapiro’s work, all of which was, of course, both positive and accurate. More to follow.
By Hillel Goldberg, on August 1st, 2011 WHATEVER our slice of Jewish culture, we all live within certain boundaries. As religious or secular or Democrat or Republican or young or old or skilled or unskilled, few can live and speak without any thought as to the consequences. The same may be said about just about anyone, Jewish or not. And this is in a free society!
Dovid Landesman never heard of this rule. He tells it like it is — that is, like he sees it, the devil may care. His new book is Food for Thought: No Hechsher Required: More Essays on Jewish Themes.
Landesman writes not to be provocative per se, not to stir the pot, but to strive for truth. More than anything — more than what his boss thinks, or his friends, or people who might have a say in recommending his children for marriage — Landesman believes in truth as redemptive.
Now, whether he actually states the truth is up to his readers to decide. But he is not hiding behind any mask, pose or hidden agenda.
What bothers Landesman, in particular, are issues that rend the Orthodox community. For example, Zionism and secular studies. It may be absurd to think … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on April 25th, 2010 TO sit /stand/walk/be silent/ recite Psalms/ study? These are the choices you have to make if you are in Israel on Holocaust Remembrance Day which the government in 1951 established the week after Pesach, with all the problematics involved. On Holocaust Day I found myself on the train to Beer Sheva at 10 am when the sirens are sounded all over Israel calling for 2 minutes of standing silence. Since no sirens are sounded in the middle of the Negev desert, I wondered what would happen. At 9:55 the conductor announced that the train soon would come to a halt for several minutes of silence, and so it was. Standing, I recited Tehillim and peered over my Psalter to see what the young Beduins in my car were doing, and indeed they too stood, respectfully silent. Once in Beer Sheva I went to hear writer Rabbi Haim Sabato, who was invited to speak at Ben-Gurion University on his latest historic novel, just out in English as From the Four Winds. The hero is a Holocaust survivor, Moshe Farkash, whose real-life diary was the basis for From the Four Winds. R. Sabato spoke about himself in 1956 … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on February 26th, 2009 In 2003, the first day of Adar brought us an early Purim present. It wasn’t food, but rather food for thought. … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on October 26th, 2008 Talk of reclaiming the Jewish bookshelf – the canonical texts that are the heritage of every Jew – is in the air. I cannot imagine a better guide on that path than Rabbi David Fohrman.
Rabbi Fohrman has been teaching mixed groups of secular and religious Jews for years. And he has now produced a rare work that will equally delight those who have been studying Chumash with the classical commentaries all their lives and those lacking even knowledge of Hebrew.
The Beast that Crouches at the Door is close reading of two of the best known Biblical stories: Adam and Chava’s eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and Kayin’s murder of his brother Hevel. The book is philosophically deep, psychologically acute, hypersensitive to the nuances of the Biblical text, and reads like a mystery. Each short chapter ends with the reader hanging on the edge of the cliff eager to proceed.
By focusing on stories whose basic outlines are familiar, Fohrman demonstrates how we are all prone – learned and unlearned alike – to the “Lullaby Effect” when confronting well-known texts. No one ever thought to ask why a baby would … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on August 24th, 2007 A well-worn anecdote has it that a teacher assigned the writing of an essay with the requirement that it relate to elephants in some way. Looking through the submitted papers, the teacher came upon the one authored by the only Italian in the class entitled “Eating Habits of the Elephant.” Next was a piece by the lone Frenchman headlined “Romantic Interests of the Elephant.” Reaching the last essay in the pile, he found the essay of the token Jew. His topic? “The Elephant and the Jewish Problem.”
One elephant that hasn’t left the room, so to speak, a full month after the publication of that article, is the one relating to the non-Jewish question — that is, the issue of what conclusions are to be drawn from the halacha that requires suspension of melacha proscriptions on Shabbos to save the life of a Jew but not that of a non-Jew, except where failure to save the latter’s life would foster enmity towards Jews, with potential violent repercussions.
I’m fully mindful that, with the onset of Feldman Fatigue Syndrome, this post might go by entirely unnoticed. But I’ve decided to launch it into the blogosphere anyway if only as … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on August 2nd, 2007 Other than history buffs, few people would associate R. Akiva Eiger (RAE) with Moses Mendelssohn. The former occupies a position of awe and reverence for those who have ever worked through the mind-boggling depth and breadth of his Talmudic commentaries or responsa; the latter is seen as the Founding Father of the heterodox movements that presided over the dismantling of loyalty to and identification with Torah Judaism in the Jewish “Enlightenment.” A classic never-the-twain-shall-meet situation if there ever was one. The greatness and depth of RAE is in fact probably understated; the role of Mendelssohn in the trajectory of those who walked out of observance may very well be overstated (although that is not the subject of this essay); and the two very much did meet. It takes nothing more than opening a RAE to Megilla 16A to prove it.
We will return to the story of how their paths crossed after illustrating a contemporary repetition of the event. (I present the story as I heard it, and welcome those who know more than I do to correct details, or falsify the incident. The point it raises is valid nonetheless.) When R. Yaakov Kamenetsky zt”l was Rosh Yeshiva of … Read More >>
By Harvey Belovski, on July 8th, 2007 Encouraged by a number of my congregants, my wife and I recently visited the impressive ‘Sacred’ exhibition at London’s British Library. Billed as ‘the rarest and most exquisite sacred books and manuscripts presented and explored, side by side, in a major UK exhibition for the first time’, it didn’t disappoint. Balanced between Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy books, the 202 exhibits are absolutely magnificent (get a taste of them here) and left me wanting to return to see them again soon. As the exhibition doesn’t end until 23rd September, if you live in the UK or are planning to visit, do make it a priority. I hope to get there at least once more.
I was especially taken with the calligraphy, the accuracy and beauty of which defy description. I am not particularly skilled with my hands: I actually struggle to read my own handwriting. In comparison, the control, artistic flair and accuracy required to produce an illuminated manuscript are quite breathtaking. I am, of course, familiar with beautiful safrus (Hebrew sacred calligraphy), but I have never been exposed to exquisite scripts from other religions written in other alphabets; I found learning about their manufacture fascinating (see … Read More >>
By Eytan Kobre, on May 3rd, 2007 Several weeks ago, a friend called with a request: would I respond in print to an essay appearing in that week’s Forward? I took a look at the piece in question and, sure enough, the writer had taken off after Orthodox Jews as ethical miscreants for declining to ordain homosexuals. Now, of course, her calumny isn’t stated quite so plainly; that would be tres gauche. Instead, she writes in a certain familiar passive-aggressive, faintly paternalistic mode, the unmistakeable upshot of which is, however, precisely as I put it above.
Not that any of this is new. Blessedly insulated Orthos may not realize it, and may care even less, but they, entire communities — and generations — of them, are regularly tarred publicly in the secular and heterodox media and literature as moral Neanderthals for their beliefs on an wide range of issues. Often, however, the tarring is more implied than explicit, complicating the response.
What had actually so exercised my friend was another of the writer’s assertions: that one way of “changing the status of [homosexual] men . . . is to view the words the Torah uses to describe the realities of its own day as … Read More >>
By Guest Contributor, on April 24th, 2007 by Sarah Shapiro
In the Jerusalem Post of February 23, 2007, I read of a plagiarism charge against the author Naomi Ragen, and was prompted by that report to inform the plaintiff’s attorney of my own related experience. Two respected rabbinical authorities on shmiras halashon were consulted as to whether it was advisable and permissible to make this matter public, before doing so.
My first book, entitled “Growing With My Children: A Jewish Mother’s Diary,” was published in 1990 by Targum Press. A daily journal from the years 1986 to 1989, the book recorded virtually all the events in my life during that period but its main focus was my participation in an ongoing parenting workshop, and the ups and downs I experienced along the way to becoming a more skilled and patient parent. After its publication, the head of Targum at the time, Rabbi Moshe Dombey zt”l, called to say he had given a copy of the book to Naomi Ragen, of whom I hadn’t heard at that point. He said she had previously done some work as an editor for Targum, and he thought my book would be of interest to her.
I soon received a call … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on April 10th, 2007 One story that is sure to grip the Orthodox world in coming months is the civil suit for plagiarism brought against best-selling author Naomi Ragen by Michal Tal. Well-known chareidi writer Sarah Shapiro has entered the fray with her own story of Ragen’s “borrowing” from her book Living with My Children (1990), a tale that she shared with me already many years ago. Below is a copy of the letter published by Mrs. Shapiro in last Thursday’s Jerusalem Post in response to Ragen’s op-ed piece “I am not a plagiarist.”
Readers who are interested in a full list of Ragen’s borrowings are invited to Email Mrs. Shapiro at sarahkit@netvision.net.il Yet another flagrant example of Ragen lifting incidents from the works of chareidi writers has been uncovered, though whether that writer will bring a civil suit (and if so in what forum) still depends on the ruling of her rebbe. Incidentally, Michel Tal, the original plaintiff is not Orthodox, and Mrs. Shapiro, who is chareidi, has not been joined as a plaintiff nor has she yet brought suit independently in civil court.
Sir,
Re: “I am not a plagiarist” by Naomi Ragen (March 22)
In 1994, … Read More >>
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on March 16th, 2007 R’ Meir Soloveichik, always a source of food for thought, offers some gourmet nibbles in the current issue of Commentary (subscription only; not online). In what is ostensibly a book review, Soloveitchik offers some plain and compelling talk about interreligious dialogue, an expose of the non-orthodox thought of some nominally Orthodox figures, and yet another glimpse into the wisdom of his grandfather’s brother. zt”l.
The book is the work of Maria Johnson, an Oxford-trained Catholic theologian at University of Scranton, who becomes close with some of the fervently Orthodox families in her neighborhood. Strangers and Neighbors: What I Have Learned About Christianity by Living Among Orthodox Jews represents to Soloveichik a better alternative to two older views on the encounter of Judaism with other faiths.
One of these demands that Christians elide parts of their belief and Scripture that grate on the sensitivities of others. In response to the 2003 Pontifical Biblical Commission (headed by Cardinal Ratziger, since elevated to the papacy), Rabbi James Rudin of the American Jewish Committee suggested that Christians should declare that “the messiah’s identity remains unknown, and Jesus, whom Christians believe to be the messiah, is not waiting at the end of days … Read More >>
By Avi Shafran, on March 9th, 2007 That a recent book’s reported claim of Jewish ritual murder in the Middle Ages stirred considerably more commotion in the Jewish media than in the Muslim world may be a hopeful sign. Or it might just testify to the depth and breadth of the longstanding belief in Arab and Asian countries that, why, yes, of course Jews murder non-Jews to use their blood in Passover matzos and wine (although the extension of that belief to Purim’s hamantaschen is of more recent vintage).
The Western media’s unanimous condemnation and ridicule of the blood libel assertion in the Italian book “Bloody Passover” is certainly heartening. As many reports noted, the book’s author, Professor Ariel Toaff, based his speculation on confessions extracted from victims of torture. Surely, many whose bodies were pierced, stretched or torn by the horrific devices employed by European authorities in the 1400s – or who were even merely confronted with the prospect of such technology – would have just as readily admitted to being demons or Martians too.
There is, of course, no basis of any sort to the contention that the Jewish faith includes, or ever included, the consumption, on Passover or anytime, of human or animal … Read More >>
By Jonathan Rosenblum, on December 17th, 2006 Reviewers have not been kind to The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, professor of something called “the public understanding of science” at Oxford. Critics have found it to be the atheist’s mirror image of Ann Coulter’s Godless: The Church of Liberalism - long on in-your-face rhetoric and offensively dismissive of all those holding an opposing view.
Princeton University philosopher Thomas Nagel found Dawkins’s “attempts at philosophy, along with a later chapter on religion and ethics, particularly weak.” Prof. Terry Eagleton began his London Review of Books critique: “Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the British Book of Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology.”
Dawkins’s “central argument” is that because every complex system must be created by an even more complex system, an intelligent designer would have had to be created by an even greater super-intellect.
New York Times reviewer Jim Holt described this argument as the equivalent of the child’s question, “Mommy, who created God?”
Nagel provides the grounds for rejecting this supposed proof. People do not mean by God “a complex physical inhabitant of the … Read More >>
By Shira Schmidt, on December 7th, 2006 16 bKislev 5767
“After the prince lost the first two diamonds that the king gave him, the king gave him a beautifully cut glass gem for the prince’s ring.”
That is the parable used by Rav Zvi Zeltzer, principal of the Beer Sheva Beit Yaakov school, to explain in the 1970s one way haredim relate to the state of Israel. Many of the then-religious-Zionist-American olim who immigrated to Beer Sheva 3 decades ago sent their daughters to the haredi Beit Yaakov because at that time it was the best alternative. Some parents worried about what would happen on Yom Atzmaut (nothing happened, neither for nor against), what would transpire when their girls would go to the Bnai Akiva clubhouse which happened to be on the street where the principal lived (nothing happened).
In those days I had been blissfully unaware of the hashkafic divisions in philosophic outlook among the Orthodox, one advantage of coming from a non-observant home. After several decades I find these differences fascinating and important, reflecting a healthy passionate intensity.
I discussed some of these issues in a Jerusalem Post interview with Prof.Yakov Rabkin, author of the recently published The Threat from Within: A Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism.
My oped interview was published Wednesday 15 bKislev (Dec.6) in the Jerusalem Post, and so far there are 42 talkbacks. I spent part of “Kaf-Tet beNovember” rereading Rabkin’s book. What is special about the date Nov.29?……….. Continue reading → A glass gem instead of a diamond
By Shira Schmidt, on October 9th, 2006 Was Biblical Ezra the Scribe ultra-Orthodox? What lies behind this seemingly silly question is a set of serious questions: When did Torah-observant Jewry divide into Orthodox, modern Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox, etc.? Were Moshe Rabbenu, Ezra & Nehemia, Maimonides, Rashi, and Yehuda Halevi haredim?
This came to mind when someone asked me whether Ezra, the fictitious hero of Dawning of the Day, Rav Haim Sabato’s newest novel, was haredi.
For those who will be in Jerusalem on Monday after Simhat Torah (24 bTishrey) Oct. 16, there will be an evening devoted to the Dawning of the Day at 8 pm at Mishkenot Shaananim (Yemin Moshe, near Montefiore’s windmill down the block from the King David).Rav Sabato will speak (in Hebrew) and answer questions, and several literary critics will speak (in English).
The Friday English Haaretz published my review (co-authored with Jessica Setbon) of The Dawning of the Day, the exquisite translation into English translation (by Yacob Dweck a young scholar of Syrian descent) of R. Sabato’s K’Afapey Shahar. We know a lot about the book’s hero, Ezra Siman Tov, an Aleppo (Syrian) Jew living in Jerusalem’s Mahaneh Yehuda. We even know that
Ezra Siman Tov has a secret – a dark, sinful secret. He hides from it, but it intrudes like a specter on his peaceful life in the Jerusalem community of immigrants from Aleppo (Halab). “For several years he wept and pleaded for his sin to be pardoned, and he scrubbed and scoured the stain with all his might.”
Continue reading → Was Ezra haredi?
By Shira Schmidt, on November 29th, 2005 29 b Heshvan
On November 27 Ori Pomerantz posed a question under the heading, The end of heterodoxy?
Imagine that tonight there was a miracle, and tomorrow morning all the rabbis and chazzanim of the heterodox movements were to wake up orthodox.
The question is not so fanciful. I suggest that the newly Orthodoxy rabbis should remain in their heterodox shuls on the condition that they try to move the congregants towards Orthodox observance. Something similar took place in the middle of the previous century when it was common for rabbis who had graduated from Orthodox rabbinical schools to take pulpits of Conservative synagogues, or in nominally Orthodox shuls where (a) the mehitza had been removed, (b)most people drove on Shabbat, and (c)few kept kosher. Such rabbis would often stipulate that they assumed the pulpit on the condition that they would move the congregants in the direction of Orthodoxy, e.g. installing a mehitza or balcony, prohibiting cars from using the parking lot on Shabbat, etc. The steps by which this was accomplished and the implications for Ori’s question above, are told by many rabbis in Baruch Litwin’s book Sanctity of the Synagogue (out of print but available on amazon.com.) The chapters by Rabbis Riskin, Soloveitchik, and Dolgin are particularly moving.
I just spoke with the daughter of the late Rabbi Dolgin who succeeded with patience spanning many years, in installing a mehitza in his Beth Jacob synagogue in Beverly Hills. His daughter told me details of the story and she remembers sitting with her mother and a few elderly ladies in the balcony while the rest of the congregation was downstairs in mixed pews. Slowly, persistently, wisely her father moved the congregants to accept a mehitza in the entire shul. Rabbi Emanuel Feldman tells about his successes and setbacks until he finally succeeded in turning the tide in his now-thriving Orthodox Atlanta synagogue in his book Tales Out of Shul.
For a fascinating debate over which of the two issues, mehitza or parking lots, was the defining moment in the Conservative-Orthodox divide, see Continue reading → End of heterodoxy, deja vu.
By Toby Katz, on August 18th, 2005 Two articles in the NY Times in the last few days caught my attention. The first:
August 12, 2005
After Decades of Disappointment, Gazans Are Preparing to Rejoice
By GREG MYRE
Already from the headline you get a sense of whose side the NY Times is on.
GAZA, Aug. 11 – In this land of poverty, violence and dashed dreams of statehood, the Palestinians are revving up for the rarest of events in the Gaza Strip: a celebration.
Not all THAT rare. Apparently the NY Times has forgotten how the Palestinians rejoiced when scud missiles fell on Tel Aviv during the First Gulf War, and how ecstatic they were on 9/11.
The Palestinian Authority is planning rallies as if it were the homestretch of an election campaign. Small sewing factories are cranking out thousands of Palestinian flags and street banners, T-shirts and backpacks that proclaim, “Today Gaza, tomorrow the West Bank and Jerusalem.” That message, intended to give Palestinians hope that Gaza first will not be Gaza last, is not exactly what the Israelis want to hear.
“Today Gaza, tomorrow Jerusalem”
The tone of the piece makes it clear that the NY Times agrees Continue reading → “Preparing to Rejoice” — NY Times
By Marvin Schick, on December 1st, 2004 In his much admired new book commemorating 350 years of Jewish life in America, Jonathan Sarna displays a 1879 poster announcing the Great Revival of the Jewish National Holiday of Chanucka. In the accompanying text, the holiday is referred to as Hanukkah, a usage that is not true either to how we say the word or the poster that is being referred to. Is there any longer a justification for this pseudo-scholarly affectation that is embraced by too many Jews who should know better. After all, no one not even our tiny and incestuous little community of sterile American Judaic scholars refers to the next holiday on the calendar as Khristmas.
By Yitzchok Adlerstein, on November 25th, 2004 In a column in Scientific American (Nov., pg. 34) appropriately enough called Skeptic, Michael Shermer (publisher of a journal that bears that name) tells us what is wrong with the recent spate of scientific investigations into the efficacy of prayer. The ultimate fallacy is theological: if G-d is omniscient and omnipresent, he should not need to be reminded or inveigled into healing someone.
Youve got to sort of wonder how people who do not believe in G-d often claim to know so much about Him, and how He works. Continue reading → Skeptical About Skeptics
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