- The word "haggadah" means "the telling." (page 8)
- The Pope chose to do so because:
A. "In matters of religious conviction, the pope does not care about
creating controversy and criticism."
B. He is canonizing more saints than any of this papal predecessors.
C. For the pope, "sainthood and martyrdom are inextricably linked." As
he wrote in his book, "Crossing the Threshold of Hope," "The saints of
our century have been in large part martyrs. Concentration
camps--which produced, among other things, the monstrous Holocaust of
the Jews--revealed authentic saints among Catholics and Orthodox and
among Protestants as well."
D. The pope deeply respected Edith Stein "as a model of a Catholic
intellectual and theologian. He read her writings on phenomenology and
studied with some of her disciples....In the encyclical he refers to
five modern Catholics who advanced philosophical thinking while
contributing to the Catholic faith. Edith Stein is the only woman so
designated." (pp. 37-39)
- According to "The Placebo God" author Rabbi Harold Schulweis, "in
the Bible we are enjoined by God to resist all forms of magic. 'There
shall not be found among you any one that makes his son or daughter
pass through fire or one that uses divination, a soothsayer, or an
enchanter or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or one that consults a ghost or
a familiar spirit or a necromancer who inquires of the dead'
(Deuteronomy 18:10). And the Jerusalem Talmud declares: 'It is
prohibited to live in a city that has no medical doctor.'" (pp. 43-44)
- In the mid-seventeenth century, some 200 Sephardic Jews
established the first autonomous Jewish settlement in the Americas in
the interior of Dutch Guyana (now Suriname) in South America. The
settlers were descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had
reluctantly or forcibly converted to Christianity some 150 years
earlier during the mass expulsion of Jews from the Iberian Peninsula.
The Jewish settlers carved sugar plantations, and the colony was
granted a wide range of self-governing privileges, including its own
militia. Historians now believe that these Jewish settlers paved the
way for the more equitable treatment of Jews throughout the Americas.
Suriname's economic and political success enabled the community to
assist other Jews
coming to the New World and helped build the foundations of the
burgeoning Jewish community in North America, funding, for example, the
construction of a synagogue building for Congregation Shearith Israel
in New York City. (pp.58-59)
- The Abayudaya (Descendants of Judah) are a community of Ugandans
who have come to embrace Jewish rituals and consider themselves Jewish.
They have built four synagogues; one, in Mbale, Uganda, is a mud hut
with the Ten Commandments written in chalk on the walls. The Abayudaya
trace their roots back to Semet Kakungulu, an Ugandan tribal chief who,
eighty years ago, picked up a Bible given to him by Christian
missionaries. After immersing himself in its study, he decided that the
whole tribe should switch its religion to Judaism. Ever since, the
Abayudaya have observed Shabbat, circumcised their newborn sons, and
learned Hebrew from Jewish visitors. (p.64)
- The Bnei Avraham (Children of Abraham) are a group of Inca
Indians in Peru who wish to join the Jewish people through formal
conversion. Says Rabbi Myron Zuber, formerly of the Dakota Street
Synagogue in Dorchester, MA: "They have lived a Jewish life for many
years. They look like Incas. They speak like Incas. But they're
Jewish." The Bnei Avraham adopted the Jewish faith from the teachings
of a fellow Inca named Villanueva in the 1960s. A community leader with
a forceful personality, Villanueva began questioning the teachings of
Catholicism in his coastal city of Trujillo. After years of study
Villanueva decided to adopt Judaism and began talking to his neighbors
and friends about the Torah and Jewish customs. Local officials had
his electricity cut off and ordered people not to socialize with him,
which only attracted more interest in his teachings. Eventually,
hundreds of Incas in Trujillo, Lima, and Cajamarca joined him in
learning Hebrew and davening every day. (p.66)
- Wallace Stevens. Says "Carnival of Ghosts" author Steve Stern,
"Wallace Stevens' maxim...might well be inscribed on [Prague's] coat of
arms. To get under Prague's skin, not an altogether comfortable
proposition, you must first allow it to get under yours." (p.74)
- The remains of the golem were reputedly stored by the Maharal in
the attic of the tent-shaped Alneushul, Prague's ancient synagogue.
(p.74)
- Venice, Italy. Almost 400 years ago, the doors of a stone gate
walled off the Jews from dusk to dawn as armed guards patrolled the
entrance. In the Venetian dialect, "getto" means foundry. The German
Jews pronounced the soft "g" of the Romance language like the hard "g"
of their Teutonic tongue, and thus the word "ghetto" was coined.
(pp.76-78)
- The Documentary Hypothesis is the assertion that the Bible was
written not by one author but by four. Identified by the initials J
(for Jehovah), E (Elohim), P (Priestly), and D (Deuteronomy), the four
authors are believed to have lived at different times and in different
places several hundred years after the events they describe. In his
book, "Who Wrote the Bible," one of the UAHC's selected Significant
Jewish Books, author Richard Elliott Friedman presents the evidence for
both the 19th-century claims of multiple authorship and his own
refinements of that view, among them that the book of Deuteronomy was
not the work of a committee but rather of a single author; that the
redactor who combined these four strains into one was Ezra the priest;
and that the J author might have been a woman. (pp.86-87)
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