Culture

A Bur in the Talmudist’s Side

Forward reader Kenny Steinman writes: “In a recent Talmud lesson, my friends and I came across the Hebrew term bur in the sense of an unlettered person or ignoramus. Might this be related to the biblical ba’ar, as in the verse in Psalms that begins, Ish ba’ar lo yeda, ‘The dull man does not know’?…

First Night Yid Vid: In Israel, Even the Monkeys Celebrate Hanukkah

November 30, 2007

100 Years Ago in the forward In last week’s Forward, a letter from Cyrus Sulzburger was printed. In it, he complained that we had wrongly editorialized against the Jewish Territorialist Organization plan to settle Jewish immigrants in the south and west of the country, because conditions for working people were so bad. This week, the…

When Rites Go Wrong

Contested Rituals: Circumcision, Kosher Butchering and Jewish Political Life in Germany, 1843-1933 By Robin Judd One of the historian’s most important tasks is to teach us things we do not know. One significant form this can take is to complicate our understanding of the past by helping us re-imagine how events unfolded. It is too…

As Winter Falls, a Time To Learn From the Orthodox

As daylight-saving time ends and the winter approaches in earnest, Shabbat begins to be inconvenient again. In the northeastern United States, it now begins at four, even three in the afternoon Friday, early enough to encroach on the workday, and render the day a little bit useless. For families with children, the Sabbath now starts…