Year: 2020

Rashash on Endtimes Diminishing Marginal Utility

Rashash Sanhedrin 97a:

גמרא עד שתכלה פרוטה מן הכיס. עפירש”י והנה הודות לאל בדורותינו נמצאים עשירים מופלגים בעמינו וגם יתר העם הפרוטה מצויה בידם. הכי ניתן נואש ח”ו להגאולה ויל”פ הכוונה להפך דחזינן דבימיהם היתה הפרוטה נחשבה לממון כדתנן ה’ פרוטות הן (ב”מ פ”ד מ”ז) ובש”מ ואמר כאן דאז לא תהיה נחשבת למאומה ולא תראה עוד עד דאפילו בכיס ר”ל של צדקה (דנקרא כיס סתם בכתובות פ”ו מ”ה) דשם מצויים המטבעות הקטנות ביותר מנדבת דלת העם גם שם לא תמצא כי תהיה הרוחה ואף הפחותה שבנדבות לא תהיה בפרוטה.

(Or does this just refer to the spreading War Against Cash?)

Ishay Ribo: ‘From a Young Age, I Resolved to Write Only Songs Connected to God and Judaism’

Ishay Ribo: The Great Harmonizer

Jan 5, 2020  |  by 

Ishay Ribo’s star is rising, and with it comes a message of hope, faith, and unity.

Last week, on the first downpour of the winter, Ishay Ribo was sitting with his band around a wobbly wooden table in a far corner of the Jerusalem International Convention Center.

Cigarette smoke hung in the air, water bottles were scattered about, and one of his producers was playing backgammon with a balding schlepper. Ribo’s guitarist, long sidelocks reaching his shoulders, slouched in a wooden chair, texting on his phone. His bass player, a small cap atop his head, wore a weathered jacket and a blank expression. Ribo, his beard trimmed close, his short hair slightly graying, tzitzis hanging out of a gray hoodie, sat in the middle of his crew, his eyes at attention.

The linoleum on the floor is cracked, the yellow paint on the walls is peeling, and the fluorescent light above casts a dim glow, but here sits perhaps Israel’s hottest act, preparing for a show.

The scene is right out of a clubhouse – kids seated in a circle playing marbles, friends gathered around a table for a friendly game of cards. There is camaraderie in the air, but also a hint of tension, as if something big is about to happen but no one is exactly sure what.

Ribo is 30 years old, and until a few years ago he was a minor act on the Israeli music scene. Then came his big break, in 2014, when Idan Raichel, a pop star regarded as one of Israel’s most creative and popular musicians, as well as a taste maven with the ability to launch careers, invited Ribo on stage to play a song.

That song, “Tocho Ratzuf Ahavah,” remains Ribo’s calling card, his classic, the sound that other Israeli artists now try to imitate and the melody that has endeared him to the full spectrum of Israeli music lovers, from the proudly secular to the starkly religious.

The song embodies Ribo as an artist. It is both delicate and energetic, full of longing yet exploding into hope. It is also a deeply religious song, with sources in Prophets, Psalms, and Proverbs, and yet its lyrics are easily accessible. It is a foot-tapping pop song with lyrics worthy of poetry.

The song is Ishay Ribo and Ishay Ribo represents the Israeli moment. He is Sephardi but appeals to the entire mishmash of Israeli society – Ashkenazim, chassidim, unidentified. He is a yeshivah graduate who wears a big black kippah and long tzitzis, yet secular Tel Avivans sing along to his songs with the same gusto that chareidim from Beit Shemesh do. He is a former singer in the army band who was invited to perform at both Israel’s nationally televised Independence Day celebration and its Memorial Day commemoration.

To date, he has released four albums – one of which went platinum, two of which went gold – and has recorded duets with a gamut of Israeli pop stars, from legend Shlomo Artzi to chassidic star Motti Steinmetz to pop king Omer Adam. Next year he plans a worldwide tour with stops in the United States, Canada, Mexico, France, and South Africa (he plays Queens College on June 4 and Saban Theater in Los Angeles on June 7), an impressive schedule of international concerts for an Israeli musician who sings in Hebrew and speaks little English.

It’s easy to pinpoint Ribo’s appeal. His voice is smooth and melodic, with a note of truth and urgency. Many of his songs are centered around acoustic guitar, which he plays, or piano, manned by his longtime collaborator, David Ichelovitch. It’s hard to identify his style, but it’s probably best described as soul-spiritual or folk-rock.

Menachem Toker, Israel’s most popular chareidi broadcaster, describes Ribo as a musician who has accomplished the rare feat of cutting across Israel’s sharply defined societal lines.

“Ishay Ribo is totally observant, every yeshivah student can listen to his music,” says Toker. “But he’s also the bridge between the chareidi and chassidic and the dati-leumi. He is the only singer in Israel today loved by the religious and the secular. Some like [Yaakov] Shewkey and some like Omer Adam, but there’s no consensus like Ishay Ribo.”

Continue reading…

From Aish, here.

Churchill Bolstering Home Front Morale = Good. Jews Doing the Same Thing = ‘Kochi Ve’otzem Yadi’?

From Rabbi Daniel Yaakov Travis’ shaky transcription (and translation?) of Rabbi Moshe Sternbuch’s speech a year after the Har Nof attack:

In the current situation in Israel and the world, a person leaves his home and does not know what dangers lay in store for him in the streets. Almost every day people are attacked by terrorists. Since the perpetrators are civilians and even children, it is nearly impossible to protect oneself from these murderers.

Some people have entered a state of panic and do not leave their homes. Others attempt to lead their lives as normally as possible, trying as much as possible to remain aloof from the situation. While we can certainly understand these reactions,    

During the frequent German bombardments of London in World War II, Winston Churchill would address the country by radio each day. His message was “Tell Adolf Hitler, ‘We can take it!’” Amidst the worst attacks, Churchill understood that morale must be kept strong, and one must use all of one’s strength to defeat the enemy.

We must use the same strategy in our current situation. While it is definitely distressing to hear the news and be living during such turbulent times, we must remember that these stabbings are communications from Above. We must strengthen our emunah, and use these messages to make changes in our lives.

Is Evolution Jewishly ‘Fixable’? – Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan

Aryeh Kaplan on Evolution- A Missing Chapter of The Handbook of Jewish Thought

Posted on October 24, 2019 by 

In honor of Bereshit, here is Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan on reading Genesis as presenting the truths of 20th century science, as discussing a world 2 billion years old with humans as existing for 25,000 years.

This is part VII in a series on Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan- for biography see Part I, Part II, Part III, for Kabbalah see Part IV  Part V  and Part VI Much of the prior biographic discussion has already been incorporated into Wikipedia.

Aryeh Kaplan’s Handbook of Jewish Thought has become a classic of synthesizing the classic positions of Jewish thought into an order fashion both an introductory guide and simultaneously a reference book

Below is a pdf of a full chapter of Aryeh Kaplan’s Handbook of Jewish Thought left out of the published work because he presents evolution as part of the basic tenets of Judaism. The already typeset chapter has an editor’s note across the top asking if the chapter is “fixable” and “true kosher”? There is also an editor’s note that dates the chapter to 1968 when Kaplan was leading a Conservative congregation in Dover NJ.

The Handbook of Jewish Thought was published in two volumes, the first, containing 13 chapters, appeared in the author’s lifetime in 1979. The second volume edited by Avraham Sutton, was published posthumously in 1992. This volume has 25 chapters. While the first volume had no introduction from the author, the second volume contains the following statement:

The bulk of the present volume is from the author’s original 1967- 1969 manuscript that consisted of 40 chapters. Thirteen of these chapters were prepared for publication by Rabbi  Kaplan himself and published in 1979 as the Handbook of Jewish thought – Volume I. It is clear that the remaining chapters were set aside with the thought of eventually preparing them for publication. Of these remaining chapters, 25 are presented here

Despite the assertion that the first volume was called “volume 1”, no such statement is to be found in the original Handbook of Jewish thought.

Quick arithmetic – 13 (volume 1) and 25 (volume 2) indicates that 2 chapters of the original 40 were suppressed. In the end, they – Moznayim – or the Kaplan family concluded to leave these chapters out of the book.  Generally, the works published by Moznayim are much more circumspect than the audio recording of his lectures. Here is an extreme case.

Moznayim assigned people to edit Kaplan’s writings  or tapes of his lectures who were not there at the lectures or had left for other teachers years before.

I thank Rabbi Ari Kahn for providing access by sending me the pdf of this gem. If someone has the final – 40th chapter – I would love to see it.

Evolution      

Kaplan is explicit in his affirmation of evolution in this piece.

In the first three paragraphs, he states that the creation account in Genesis is not literal and not science but narrated to teach the history of Israel. He believes that new concepts in science are always being discovered beyond the limited science known in the Biblical and rabbinical era.  We are, according to Kaplan, to continuously interpret the Biblical text according to currently available knowledge.

Even though the explicit text is to narrate Israel’s history, nevertheless Kaplan states that the scientific knowledge is hinted at in the Masoretic text through “subtle variations”. In addition, we have traditions that aid in our discovering the scientific truth in the text. Maimonides and other medieval commentators interpreted the text based on Aristotle. Maimonides in his Guide II:29 explains how he would be willing to read texts based on current science. Similarly, Kaplan footnotes Ramchal in his commentary of the Aggadot.

Kaplan considers the creation of the universe as billions of years ago when there was the initial creation as the creation of matter as well as the initial creation of time/space. The creation at the start of Genesis was billions of years ago according to Kaplan, even if the Torah does not explicitly state it.

Kaplan explicitly rejects the 19th century Gosse theory, a theory that the world only appears to be older because God created it that way. Kaplan writes: “God does not mislead humans by making the world appear older.” Many of the members of the Association of Orthodox Scientists of his era did accept Gosse as did the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

Kaplan defines the creation with the date of 3761 BCE as only the date when Adam (the new being with intelligence) was created. The world itself is billions of years old and various species of men, including Neanderthals and Homo Erectus, pre-date this created Adam.  People generally assume the creation of the world, creation of men, and creation of the intelligent descendants of Adam occurred at the same time; Kaplan differentiates these events.

The metaphoric sixth day was only when Adam was created in Divine thought as the plan for creation, not the actual date of his creation- see below on Kaplan’s acknowledging humanoids before Adam. (Berakhot 61b  Eruvin 18a)

Kaplan makes a general statement that the “time of creation is not essential to our thought.” He proves this from a citation in Yehuda Halevi’s  Kuzari,1:60-61”

Al Khazari: Does it not weaken thy belief if thou art told that the Indians have antiquities and buildings which they consider to be millions of years old?” To which the Rabbi in the dialogue answers: “The Rabbi: It would, indeed, weaken my belief had they a fixed form of religion, or a book concerning which a multitude of people held the same opinion, and in which no historical discrepancy could be found. Such a book, however, does not exist.”

Kaplan takes this to mean that Halevi would only be bothered if they had a form of religion accepted by the multitude with discrepancy, but not about the claim concerning civilization and ancient books.

Continue reading…

From Kavvanah, here.