8 Questions

Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

Dec 27-28, 2024 • 27 Kislev 5785 • Mikeitz (Gen 41-44).

Guess what? It looks like this is going to be the last Table Talk email of 2025. 
Please note that keeping this going and all JSLI programs (links at bottom) rely on generous supporters like you. 
To make an end-of-the-tax-year donation - click here.

This image is a 1,700-year-old oil lamp unearthed on the Mt. of Olives in Jerusalem and announced this week by the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA). It features a 7-branched menorah, a lulav, and an incense shovel. It's a rare find because it dates to after the dastardly Romans expelled us from Jerusalem. It's a small physical reminder that we've been here a long, long time....

Although we already on the second day of Chanukah, I'd like to propose eight questions for your table, one for each night. 

Suggestion: write down everyone's answers and put them away with the Chanukah kit. Next year, you'll discover them and see how your answers may have changed... or not.

Why are you happy you're Jewish?
At what moments are you proudest to be a Jew?
What gives you fear as a Jew?
What do you think is the Jewish People's greatest strength?
What do you think is the Jewish People's greatest weakness?
Who or what do you think is the Jewish People's greatest enemy?
If you could teach every Jewish person one thing, what would it be?
If you could teach every non-Jewish person one thing, what would it be?

Try printing this email out and keeping it by the menorah.

(By the way, your humble correspondent's email/blog two weeks ago was promoted by the editors of the Times of Israel to be a "Featured Post" and they added some snazzy professional graphics... check it out.)


Happy Chanukah and

Shabbat Shalom

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It's Wondrous, But Is It Moral?

Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

Dec 13-14, 2024 • 13 Kislev 5785 • Vayishlach (Gen 32-36).

Do you know how many days until Hannukah? Find our curated Channukah books and gift suggestions on BestJewishBooks.com (or uncurated @ Amazon). 

This week the world celebrated the restoration of Notre Dame of Paris, a truly remarkable building, especially considering it was constructed in the 13th Century.

Yet I hope they will forgive Jewish people (and anyone of conscience who knows the cathedral’s history) who may be hesitant to extend our congratulations.

Notre Dame – like many European cathedrals – is an explicit monument to the perceived or hoped-for downfall of the Jewish People and our religion.

 

This great architectural achievement has been the badge of the French Catholic Church since its completion in 1250 CE. They laid the cornerstone in 1164 and during the 86-year construction period, this rising symbol of French Catholicism paralleled a rise in official French antisemitism.

As the Church grew in power, Jewish resistance to conversion remained a thorn in the side of Christianity. Since Jesus himself was Jewish, our nearly universal refusal to convert implied something invidious about us.

By the 13th Century, Church leaders had come to suspect that the Talmud – more than any other Jewish book – is what kept Jews Jewish and prevented our acceptance of Christian theology. Across Europe, representatives of the Church staged numerous public "disputations" between Christians and Jews. Judaism was typically defended by a learned rabbi, while the prosecution was often an apostate Jew – a convert to Christianity whose knowledge of the Talmud was sufficient to give him credibility and to enable him to quote Talmudic passages.

At the first of of many nadirs of this period, in June of 1239, Pope Gregory IX ordered the Catholic kings of Europe to seize all Jewish books and to examine them for heresy. King Louis IX was the only European monarch to heed the Pope’s orders. He was perhaps encouraged by the apostate Jew who betrayed the Jews of France, Nicholas Donin, who was angry with the French rabbis and had traveled to Rome with accusations against the Talmud. Donin personally delivered the Pope’s letter to Paris, which included the order that “those books in which you find errors of this sort you shall cause to be burned at the stake.” On March 3, 1240, French soldiers confiscated approximately 10,000 handwritten volumes of the Talmud from every synagogue and yeshiva in France.

The investigation took about two years and culminated in a public trial. Donin served as prosecutor and the defense was led by two of the greatest Tosafists, Rav Yechiel of Paris (Donin’s former teacher) and Rav Moshe of Coucy.

 

On May 13, 1242, the verdict was issued: the Talmud contains heresy and all copies must be destroyed in a month’s time. King Louis IX ordered the burning of all known copies.

 

The execution of this verdict on June 17, 1242 was joyfully supervised by priests and bishops and King Louis himself. For this and other acts of piety, Louis was later beatified (declared a “saint”). Catholics remember him as the epitome of the Christian King and even named a major North American city in his honor.

 

The trial was conducted in front of the nearly-completed Notre Dame cathedral. The symbolism of this location is very important. Look carefully at the main entrance: flanking the central doorway are two statues. The one on the left depicts a woman with her head held high and a staff in her hand. She is Iglesia – the Christian Church. The statue on the right has her head down with broken staff and a snake around her eyes. She is Synagoga – Judaism.

 

These symbols – found on numerous European cathedrals – mean quite plainly that the core mission and meaning of this building is the triumph of Christianity over Judaism. Make no mistake: the building itself is an intentional monument to the Jewish People’s alleged downfall.

 

This history should inform our response when, 777 years later, Notre Dame of Paris burned.

 

For example, consider the reaction of Barbara Drake Boehm, senior curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s medieval Cloisters branch in New York (her voice shaking): “It’s the very soul of Paris, but it’s not just for French people. For all humanity, it’s one of the great monuments to the best of civilization."

Question for your table - Do you agree with Ms. Boehm? Does Notre Dame represent the best of civilization?

One of the most virulent videos from the burning of the Cathedral on April 15, 2019 shows the main spire falling. This video appears to have been shot from the nearby City Hall Plaza (Place de Hotel de Ville) where the Talmud burning took place. However, it may have been shot from the Holocaust Museum, which is about the same distance.

 

One wonders if the placement of the Holocaust museum there must be either a statement of repentance or an historic irony – so close to two locations that are associated with virulent anti-Semitism and that surely contributed, through the persistence of cultural memory, to the Holocaust itself.

 

The current caretakers of Notre Dame have had five years and 900 million dollars to restore their beloved church. I had hoped to see the offensive grand entryway modified. Alas, le plus ça change….

 

Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg witnessed the Paris burning and wrote, “My tears formed a river that reached to the Sinai desert and to the graves of Moshe and Aharon. Is there another Torah to replace the Torah which you have taken from us?"

Your thoughts?

(By the way, Jewish history does point toward a happy ending... for example, click the above image.)

Shabbat Shalom

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Appreciated this Table Talk? Like it, tweet it, forward it....{VR_SOCIAL_SHARING} This message can also be read on Times of Israel .

Fight Fire With Water?

Shabbat Table Talk from the desk of Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld

Dec 6-7, 2024 • 6 Kislev 5785 • Vayeitzei (Gen 25-28).

Do you know how many days until Hannukah? 

Find our curated Channukah books and gift suggestions on BestJewishBooks.com (or uncurated @ Amazon). 

Once in a blue moon a reply comes in from a reader of this Friday email... sometimes with an answer to the big question at the bottom, sometimes with a request for more information, sometimes to (respectfully) disagree....

(Whatever the reason, it's uplifting to know that somebody is reading this blog once in awhile!)

Such a message arrived in reply to last week's Thanksgiving message - from an old friend I hadn't heard from in many years... apparently he reads this email every week!

I guess our friendship has become rather one-directional. But it was good to hear from him.

At other times, I wonder, is anyone listening?

That's how we Jews should be feeling right now regarding yesterday's shocking news from Down Under.

Sunrise in Melbourne, Australia is presently about 5:51 am. That means that the earliest morning service begins around 5:20.
At around 4:30 am yesterday morning (Thursday, December 5, 2024), two men had arrived to Melbourne's largest synagogue, Adass Israel, to study Torah before the morning service. They heard and investigated some noises and found two men breaking a window and tossing in Molotov cocktails. The fire completely destroyed the shul.
The two men escaped with minor injuries. Had it occurred an hour later, there would have been hundreds of people inside.
Thankfully, miraculously, some (possibly all) of the Torah Scrolls were spared.
Wondering why you didn't hear about it? Maybe because no one was killed?
Last I checked - last night - literally none of the MSM outside of Australia and Israel carried the story on their front page - not the BBC nor the the NYT(still giving top billing to the the 2-day-old story about the Brian Thompson murder; the latter did however make space for the new Amnesty International Blood Libel), not the WP, not the LA Times (who decided a false tsunami warning was newsworthy, but not the firebombing of a synagogue), not the Miami Herald. Even the Sidney Morning Herald had the story way down their Home page, after more urgent items such as the death of "Australia’s first supermodel Maggie Tabberer." 

This shul was built by Holocaust survivors. Think about that.

Question for your table: Had it been a Melbourne church or mosque, do you suppose the MSM would have ignored or buried the story?My daughter has a writing assignment this week about how October 7 has affected Jewish people's sense of Jewish identity and commitment around the world.

How would you answer that?

My personal perception is that October 7 was like rolling a heavy stone off of a well, allowing the worldwide waters of antisemitism to flow.... and the best response would be to roll the heavy stone off of the well of Jewish wisdom and make sure that those Jews who are waking up thirsty for Jewishness have something to quench their Jewish thirst.

Your thoughts?

Shabbat Shalom

To learn more about how we're quenching Jewish thirst, see the links below.
To become a partner in the thirst-quenching business during this week of "Giving Tuesday" or anytime - click here.
Appreciated this Table Talk? Like it, tweet it, forward it.... This message can also be read on Times of Israel.
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