Judaism – Page 47

Welcoming new rabbi

Rabbi Hannah Dresner wants “to come to know my congregation and the culture of Jewish Vancouver, to understand what the needs are and draw from our great tradition.” (photo from Rabbi Hannah Dresner)

Vancouver’s Congregation Or Shalom welcomed Rabbi Hannah Dresner as its spiritual leader this summer, recruiting her from Berkeley, Calif., where she was working part-time for Congregation Netivot Shalom, teaching niggun and meditation, and traveling broadly to hold spiritual retreats.

Dresner, a mother of three who grew up in Springfield, Mass., was ordained in January 2014 and worked previously as a visual artist and professor of fine arts. At Northwestern University, she taught painting and visual aspects of directing for graduate students in theatre direction.

“My artwork has always had a spiritual content, but I felt I needed further enrichment in developing the content of my work,” she said of her decision to seek ordination in the Jewish Renewal movement. “I began to study, got caught up in the study of Chassidic texts and became very enchanted with the imagery and worldview. I see the resultant shift of my professional energy to the rabbinate as another aspect of being an artist. I’m building my life as a work of art, and this is just another way of reaching people in a more direct manner.”

Her spiritual leadership at Or Shalom comes at an important time, she added, because it follows the recent death of Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of Jewish Renewal. Dresner has tremendous respect for the congregation’s founding rabbis, Daniel Siegel and Hanna Tiferet Siegel, and for Laura Duhan Kaplan, the rabbi who stepped back just over a year ago. “I consider them to be visionary people and I feel like, because of its strong rabbinical leadership in the past, Or Shalom is a community that’s primed and ripe for learning – head, heart, body and spirit,” said Dresner, who took over the congregation’s spiritual leadership from Louis Sutker, rabbi during the transition period.

Dresner grew up the child of a Frankfurt-born mother with an Orthodox background, and a father from the American Midwest, from a highly assimilated family. “Ours was a hybrid family that embraced an observant culture and engaged in a lot of social activism,” she noted.

She plans to develop Or Shalom’s musical davening program and Shabbat observance, to strengthen its b’nai mitzvah program, and to present varied adult education programs “that reach out not just to enrichment of our intellects but also offer points of entry that are more heart-centred.”

This fall, there is a midrash program on women in the Bible, beginning with the character of Tamar. Another new program is on spiritual eldering. “It will begin with a life review and talk about an evaluation of our lives, looking to the end of life with the perspective of wanting to live into our very fullest selves,” she said.

Dresner is also planning a davening laboratory where congregants can learn parts of the liturgy and practise their davening skills.

“As a rabbi, I think about Judaism as a treasure chest that speaks to all our human concerns,” she reflected. “I want to come to know my congregation and the culture of Jewish Vancouver, to understand what the needs are and draw from our great tradition – halachic, agadic, liturgical and Chassidic – in answering our real, current, human questions and concerns. I think these are very deep wells of wisdom that remain alive if we keep them alive.”

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond, B.C. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Building relationships

East Side Jews observes Shabbat at Trout Lake. (photo from Carey Brown)

When Rabbi Carey Brown and her family moved to Vancouver in 2011, they made their home in East Vancouver.

“We settled down in East Van and really loved the neighborhood,” Brown told the Independent. “Slowly, as I became familiar with more people, I realized there was a growing need for additional places for people to meet and connect with their roots.”

photo - Rabbi Carey Brown — Rabbi Carey Brown *(photo from Carey Brown)*

This realization was the inspiration for East Side Jews, a group that Brown founded about a year ago, and which she co-directs with Lisa Pozin. Brown is associate rabbi at Temple Sholom, and Pozin is the synagogue’s program director.

“We started with Rosh Hashana on Main Street, we invited people to join us and taste honey cake and hear a story at Solly’s, learn about honey at the Honey Shoppe, and sing songs and hear the shofar at a local park. We didn’t know how to reach people, so we posted notes in coffee shops and community centres around the area. To our surprise, the turnout was amazing. We decided to create one event every month. We hosted a tikkun olam event at the PriceSmart food store [now a Save-On] on King Edward Avenue and Knight Street, we did a Havdala under the stars at Trout Lake, and shared Shabbat dinners in local community centres. People really liked our events, a group was formed. We were really happy and excited.”

Elaborating on the tikkun olam event, Brown said it was a “scavenger hunt we called Project Feed. We gave the families a list of specific food items that JFSA [Jewish Family Services Agency] told us were needed by the Jewish Food Bank and PriceSmart told us would be on sale. The families made a donation to participate and then used their lists to fill their carts. After finishing the shopping, we met at Or Shalom to sort the food and hear a short presentation from JFSA about the food bank. People learned a lot about the food bank and realities of hunger in our community. The kids were very into the experience and the parents really appreciated having a hands-on opportunity to engage with their kids in tikkun olam.”

Brown grew up in Minneapolis, went to Northwestern University, which is near Chicago, and then studied at Hebrew Union College in Jerusalem and in New York City. After her ordination, she was a rabbi at Temple Isaiah in Lexington, Mass., for six years. That community’s approach to community outreach influenced her and, when she and her husband – Dr. Gregg Gardiner, assistant professor and Diamond Chair in Jewish Law and Ethics at the University of British Columbia – brought their family (they now have two children) to Vancouver, she incorporated it into her own approach.

“The federation in Boston (CJP, Combined Jewish Philanthropy) invested a lot of time and effort in reaching out to interfaith couples. Every event, every meeting, every holiday, they always emphasize the fact that the invitation is open to interfaith couples, that they are welcome to join in, that it will be in a nonjudgmental atmosphere, that everyone will accept them and encourage them to connect to the Jewish community. I saw how meaningful that was to families and that it really impacted their participation in Jewish life. I wanted to make sure that families in Vancouver were hearing this supportive message as well.”

And it seems that the message is indeed being heard – and appreciated. East Side Jews now has some 200 names on its mailing list, it receives support from the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver and has recently been honored by the Union for Reform Judaism. The East Side Jews initiative garnered Temple Sholom one of URJ’s 2015 Belin Outreach and Membership Awards, which recognizes congregations from across North America “that have developed programs to actively welcome and integrate those new to Judaism, created relationship-based membership engagement models, or developed new, innovative ways to engage and retain members.”

“We really try to use the events to establish personal relationships with our new friends, to go for a coffee, to meet in smaller groups, to build a connection following the public events,” explained Brown about what makes East Side Jews unique. “We learned that there are many people out there who are eager to live a meaningful Jewish life, but they are having a hard time finding the right place for them. We create a Jewish experience that is very approachable, very friendly and accepting. There are many Jews who grow up here and they have a very small connection to the community. They would love to have more, but they don’t know where or when or how. We help these kinds of people get engaged and involved and find their own path to design their own Jewish life…. It’s working very well so far and our group is growing at a surprising pace.”

Next on East Side Jews’ calendar is a field trip to Fraser Common Farm/Glorious Organics in Aldergrove on the morning of Sept. 27 with Temple Sholom congregants, religious school kids and others. If you would like to catch the 9:10 a.m. bus from Temple Sholom, register at [email protected] or 604-266-7190. For more information, visit templesholom.ca/sukkot-on-the-farm.

For anyone wanting to know more about East Side Jews, visit eastsidejews.ca.

Shahar Ben Halevi is a writer and filmmaker living in Vancouver.

Enriching or superficial?

With the High Holidays around the corner, I have noticed my usual light bout of pre-holiday anxiety. So much always seems to ride on this part of the Jewish calendar. For strong believers, there’s the spiritual reckoning. For the less religious who still care about affiliation, there’s the loaded nature of synagogue attendance, compounded by the challenge of pricey tickets. And, for the simply social, there’s the pressure of ensuring some communal marking of the calendar.

Amid all of this, Reboot – an organization that bills itself as “affirm[ing] the value of Jewish traditions and creat[ing] new ways for people to make them their own” – is taking a lighter touch: its annual 10 questions project. Sign up at doyou10q.com and, starting on Sept. 13 and lasting 10 days, the website will email you one question per day encouraging you to engage in the kind of personal reflection that is customary during the intervening days between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

Once completed, the answers are sent to Reboot’s “vault” for safekeeping, and users can decide whether to share them or not. Either way, one year later, Reboot will send the answers back to the participant, and the questions will be posed again, so one can see what changes in life perspectives occur over time.

It’s a truism that Jewish life is fundamentally communal. A quorum of 10 is required for prayer; weekly Shabbat dinners are often an extended-family-and-friends affair; Jews are encouraged to educate their children Jewishly in a group setting; Jewish summer camp focuses on intense communal experiences; and bar and bat mitzvahs are marked by a public aliya la-Torah.

So, are individual, web-based initiatives like Reboot’s enough to scratch the itch of Jewish communal practice? Or are they, in their push-a-button way, a frivolous addition to what should be undivided attention to the technicalities of Jewish literacy and to the bricks and mortar of conventional Jewish life, where Judaism is experienced publicly and communally?

This question isn’t a surprising one, but it may be misplaced.

In the age of “destination” bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies, where almost no one from one’s community may be in attendance, and in the age of concierge Judaism – a term the Jewish Outreach Institute now uses to suggest that Jews may be looking for an array of products and services tailored to their own individual needs – and in the generation of the Millennial who seeks to refashion Judaism to suit her own sensibilities, Reboot knows that one has to reach Jews where they are.

But there’s more to it than simply realizing that initiatives like Reboot may be what’s needed to save do-it-yourself-style Jews from disconnection. Despite the absence of Hebrew or Jewish texts or a group of Jews sitting in a study session with a rabbi, initiatives like the 10 questions project is not a challenge to Jewish literacy at all. In discussing the initiative with colleagues, I realized that, without Reboot’s initiative, I might never have given those intervening days another thought.

In my typical hectic pace, I would likely be rearranging my work schedule, securing a break-fast invitation for my family or deciding whether to host one, and practising the Haftorah my shul has asked me to prepare for Yom Kippur morning. No doubt the personal reflection bit would fall by the wayside and, even if I did try to engage in it, it likely would not be as fulsome as that encouraged by the kinds of daily questions Reboot sends. That kind of thinking and writing – including being faced with one’s past challenges – takes immersive effort, both intellectual and emotional.

So, tailored-and-trendy versus tried-and-true may be a false dichotomy, after all. We would be better placed to think of Jewish life as being enriched by as many touch points as our current crop of Jewish innovators can create.

Mira Sucharov is an associate professor of political science at Carleton University. She blogs at Haaretz and the Jewish Daily Forward. This article was originally published in the Canadian Jewish News.

Acquitting Abraham

On April 26, Congregation Har El put the patriarch Abraham on trial for attempted murder, assault and unlawful confinement. (photo from Har El)

Har El Synagogue on the North Shore was turned into a court of law on Sunday, April 26, when the community staged a mock trial of Abraham. More than 80 members of the community formed the jury, determining three charges laid against the patriarch: attempted murder, assault and unlawful confinement, all as defined under the Canadian Criminal Code. The charges related to the binding of Abraham’s son, Isaac, as recounted in the Book of Genesis.

Justice delayed is justice denied, it is said, but, even so, an elapse of some 4,000 years between the commissioning of the alleged offences and a trial is unprecedented.

Madam Justice Mary Ellen Boyd (retired B.C. Supreme Court judge) presided. Prosecuting and defence attorneys were Alastair Wade and Warren Millman, respectively, taking on the case pro bono in an interlude from their busy professional lives as Vancouver lawyers. Rabbi Shmuel Birnham provided the biblical background materials, recounting the text of Genesis 22, which formed the Agreed Statement of Facts for the legal proceedings. Birnham also assisted the jury in their deliberations, referencing a number of midrashic commentaries on the events under dispute. Psychiatrist Dr. Fred Shane proved a star turn as expert witness, opining as to the state of mind of Abraham at the time of the incident. Despite the pressures of having to support two wives and an admission of having heard the voice of God, Shane was confident of Abraham’s soundness of mind and that he was fit to stand trial.

The judge gave instructions to the jury, who then asked questions and advocated for and against the defendant.

It was agreed that the entire audience would comprise the jury, whose decision would be by majority vote. After more than two hours of hearing the evidence, arguments and jury deliberations, the jury foreman, Morley Lertzman, returned the verdict as follows: not guilty of attempted murder and assault, but guilty of unlawful confinement. The judge reserved judgment as to the sentence to be imposed.

The morning proved to be an enlightening and entertaining mix of Torah study combined with a refresher on the Canadian criminal justice system.

This event was part of a monthly Sunday morning series called LoxTalks, now in its third year. Programs are varied and, in the past, included presentations like Growing Up Jewish, where congregants shared personal tales of life in Germany, Romania, Hungary, Ireland, Israel and Morocco. This program was followed by Jewish by Choice, at which congregants discussed their experiences with conversion and their lives as Jews. A discussion period with questions from the audience is an essential part of each program.

The final program before the summer break is on May 31 and will feature a talk by Daniel Friedmann, an astrophysicist and author who will discuss a reconciliation of Genesis and current scientific observations. All are welcome from the Jewish and non-Jewish communities, however, please do call the synagogue office ahead of time at 604-925-6488 so the caterers know how many bagels to prepare.

In a separate program, the synagogue will host Dianne Watts, former mayor of Surrey, to share her firsthand knowledge of Israel and its importance in today’s word of business and technology, on June 7, at noon. Tickets to this talk are $18 and an RSVP is required to [email protected] or 604-925-6488, ext. 4.

Torah, grain … a lady

As a famous Jewish comedian used to kvetch, “I don’t get no respect.” I feel we treat Shavuos similarly. In Temple days, how would you compare the Holy of Holies to a Jerusalem tavern down the street? Silly question, yes? Then why does Shavuos get such minor league attraction?

We got the Torah! The cradle of Western civilization! So, some of us go to shul (compare it to Yom Kippur attendance) and we study, or nap, through the night over an open Chumash. We eat dairy and read the Book of Ruth. No bugles blare and no rabbis make two-hour presentations.

Even books designed to explain Judaism’s beauty give it short shrift: 10 pages to the Jacob/Esau rivalry, a page and a half to this modest holiday. I’m only a scribbler, not a sage, but I don’t get it. Then, there’s the fact that our reception of the Torah is combined with a harvest celebration. What’s the connection? The relationship between barley and Torah seems odd. Maybe one is food for the body, the other for the soul. Are we trying to economize on holidays? Two for the price of one?

And why do we read the Book of Ruth, which is a tract featuring intermarriage – a practice loudly condemned by dozens of statements in the Torah? It seems to be written by someone who favored fraternization with our deadly enemies, the Moabites. Remember that the path to the Promised Land goes through Moab. We fought our way through it. How did this book get chosen? Did they take a vote on Purim after a day of gorging on the grape?

The Book of Ruth is a book in which everyone is gentle, even the Moabites. Everyone is supportive of their fellow characters. If it were a play, this story would run for years on Broadway.

Ruth, a Moabite, is loyal to her mother-in-law, Naomi. Her first husband, Naomi’s son, has died. Naomi – remember, a Jew – strategizes with Ruth to win the heart of Boaz, also a Jew. A famine stalks the land. Perhaps the agricultural setting explains the use of the holiday as a harvest celebration, but not its connection with the Torah. I consider this every time I think of Shavuos, one of the three special occasions, along with Sukkot and Pesach, when all Israel flocked to the Temple. With the destruction of the Temple, I think we lost the grandeur of Shavuos.

They shouldn’t have named it Shavuos, Hebrew for weeks. Indeed, seven weeks after Pesach comes Shavuos. Like in a Jewish wedding ceremony – seven times the bride (Israel) circles her groom (the Creator), thereby remembering and reenacting our covenant. We rest on the seventh day and, for seven years, the land must lie fallow. Even today, that ancient poetic number still glows with luck – from the sublime to the ridiculous, the seven wins initially for the dice shooter and excites the roar of the winners.

I can see it now. It’s 1000 BCE and the annual meeting of the Israelite holiday commemoration committee. “We need a special day to honor and commemorate that fateful day when God gave us the Torah,” said the chairman. A chorus of agreement rocked the room. Done. Then that guy in the back of every room (yes, he was around even then) shouted, “Yeah, but what about the grain harvest?” Puzzled, the committee men looked at each other in bewilderment. The grain harvest?

The chairman spoke: “Look, we got enough holidays now – nobody’s working. Let’s save a holiday and throw it in with Shavuos. [And they hadn’t even made Tu b’Shevat yet!] After all, the grain harvest lasts seven weeks, and the Holy One gave us Torah seven weeks after we paraded out of Egypt. We’ll make Shavuos celebrate both events, thereby economizing on holidays. Done.”

Shavuos, for all its importance, doesn’t get its due. No big feasting, no dramatic breast-beating, no triumphant chauvinism; only the satisfaction that more than three millennia ago in the darkest of the dark ages we were chosen to receive from the Hand of God a solemn covenant that we would be a light of civilization to the nations of the world.

No matter how many weeks after Pesach it falls, let’s face it: “Weeks” doesn’t do it justice. They should have called it Yom Torah or something like that. If I were a member of the holiday naming committee, I’d have called it Independence Day.

Ted Roberts is a freelance writer and humorist living in Huntsville, Ala.

More than fitness at the JCC

The fitness centre at the Rosen JCC in Orlando, Fla. (photo by Cyndy Phillips)

For Daphna Krupp, her workouts at the Jewish Community Centre (JCC or J) of Greater Baltimore have become somewhat of a ritual. She not only attends fitness classes but also engages with the instructors and plugs the J’s social programs on her personal Facebook page.

“It’s the gym and the environment,” said Krupp. “It’s a great social network.”

Krupp, who lives in Pikesville, Md., is one of an estimated one million American Jewish members of more than 300 Js around the country. Each J – in line with the bylaws of their umbrella organization, the JCC Association of North America (JCCA) – has a fitness centre that serves as one of its core businesses. Often, the fitness centre can be perceived as a for-profit enterprise of the J, with thousands of dollars invested annually in facility maintenance and gym advertising. But Steve Becker, vice-president of health and wellness at JCCA, says that is a myth. “JCCs are not fitness centres, we are engagement centres,” he said. “All fitness-related programs are structured to be relationship-building activities.”

The institution of the J was founded in 1854 as the Young Men’s Hebrew Association (YMHA), to provide help for Jewish immigrants. A Young Women’s Hebrew Association was established as an annex to the YMHA in New York in 1888. The first independent YWHA was set up in 1902. In 1917, these organizations were combined into a Jewish Welfare Board, and later renamed Jewish community centres. “After World War One, the Jewish Welfare Board morphed into an organization to meet the cultural, intellectual, physical and spiritual needs of the Jewish community,” said JCCA communications manager Marla Cohen, noting that physical needs were always part of the equation.

The much-debated 2013 Pew Research Centre study of the American Jewish community found that 62 percent of Jews say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture, rather than religion. The study showed a decline in non-Orthodox individuals involved with the organized Jewish community. As such, communal leaders – from award-winning author and lecturer Dr. Erica Brown to Jewish Agency for Israel president and chief executive officer of international development Misha Galperin – have been calling for increased “low-barrier, high-content” programming to meet Jews where they are. This, says Cohen, is a niche the J can fill. “For some people, aside from High Holiday attendance, working out at the J is probably the only flavor of Judaism they have. The J could be a very big part of these people’s Jewish identity,” Krupp said.

In the last two decades, many Js have opened their doors on Shabbat, in consultation with rabbis and community leaders. “These individuals are not choosing between the JCC and synagogue. They are choosing between everything else – the mall, soccer, snowboarding, you name it – and the J,” said Cohen. “The JCC just gives Jews another option. And many JCCs have stepped in offering meaningful programs for Jews seeking something other than a traditional service.”

Fruits, nuts, traditions

Tu b’Shevat, the New Year of the Trees, coincides with the flowering of the almond tree in Israel. (photo from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shevat)

Tu b’Shevat, which falls this year on Feb. 3-4, marks the end of the rainy season in Israel. Buds are beginning to appear on the trees, and the blossoming almond trees, the harbinger of spring, have begun to dot the landscape. So, on the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat, we celebrate the yearly cycle for the growth of trees in Eretz Israel.

According to Jewish mystical tradition, Tu b’Shevat is the day when G-d renews sustenance and the “life-cycle” of the trees, when the sap starts to rise.

There are many customs to remind us of the meaning of this day, including a Tu b’Shevat seder, not unlike the ritual meal we have on Passover.

On Tu b’Shevat, fruit trees were measured for growth in order to calculate the annual tithe to the Temple. Even long after the Temple was destroyed, this seder was a new way to reaffirm the spiritual bond with the land in celebration of the approach of spring and the fruit of the earth.

This ancient tradition was developed in Safed, the seat of kabbalistic studies in the 16th century. Traditionally, we eat nuts and the fruits for which the Torah praises the Land of Israel, including grapes, figs and pomegranates, olives and dates. The table is set with a snowy white tablecloth, candles, fruit and nuts, and the sharing of prayers, readings and songs.

It is traditional to enjoy four cups of wine, like on Passover. Those glasses of wine can be paired with a corresponding fruit and divided into ascending levels of spirituality.

The first cup, therefore, is often white wine, symbolizing winter, accompanied by a fruit that needs a protective covering, such as oranges or almonds.

The second cup is white wine mixed with a small amount of red, signifying spring, the budding of new life. This glass is served with olives, apples, peaches and dates: the outer layer is eaten, yet the heart is protected and has within it the seed of new life.

The third cup is red wine with a small amount of white mixed in. This is the symbol of summer and a perfect world in which nothing is wasted. With this, fruits such as figs, grapes and berries are eaten. These are considered to symbolize the highest level of spiritual openness.

The fourth cup is red wine only, representing fertility and the bounty of the autumnal crops.

What else happens on Tu b’Shevat? Very little religiously, but a lovely ritual has arisen in Israel, one that’s now been adopted all over the Jewish world. It is a popular observance to plant trees, one of the greatest mitzvot we can perform.

Trees have great significance in Judaism. This Tu b’Shevat, however, we are still in a Shmita (jubilee) year in Israel; the land is resting, so no plantings will take place.

Trees hold a special place in Judaism. It is written in Deuteronomy: “When you besiege a city for many days to wage war against it to seize it, don’t destroy its trees….” In the Midrash Shmuel on Pirkei Avot 3:24, it is written that man is like a tree in that his good deeds are his produce, his “fruits,” and his arms and legs the “branches,” which bear these fruits. He is, however, an “upside-down tree,” for his head is rooted in the heavens, nestled in the spiritual soils of the Eternal, and nourished by his connection to his Creator.

At the end of the Hasmonean dynasty, there lived a holy man named Honi, known as the circle drawer, Honi HaMa’agel, and we read his story in Talmud Ta’anit 23a. One day, Honi sees a man planting a carob tree and asks him, “How many years does it take for the carob tree to bear fruit?” The man replies, “Seventy years.” Honi asks, “Do you think you will live another 70 years and reap its fruit?” The man responds, “I am planting the tree not for myself, but for my grandchildren.”

Although the world may not regard Jews as being tied closely to the land, the truth is that Judaism has close ties to agriculture and ecology. The midrash teaches us that man’s life depends on the tree, and we are forbidden to live in a city that has no gardens and trees. They are so important that Rabbi Yohanan Ben-Zakai declared, “If you hold a sapling in your hand and are told, ‘Come look, the Messiah has arrived,’ plant the sapling first and only then go and greet the Messiah.”

Happy Tu b’Shevat!

Dvora Waysman is the author of 13 books, which are available through Amazon, or from the author at [email protected]. Her website is dvorawaysman.com.

The indefatigable people

With antisemitism on the rise in France, England and around the world, and Israel once again facing strong headwinds, it seems like a good time to turn to history in search of some perspective on current events.

Earlier this year, PBS aired a popular two-part series on Jewish history written and presented by historian Simon Schama. The account was based largely on his book The Story of the Jews: Finding the Words 1000 BC-1492 AD (ecco, 2013), published last year in Great Britain. The second volume – from 1492 to the present – is expected this fall.

Schama, a highly accomplished, award-winning historian, has written 16 books and 40 television documentaries, focusing mostly on art histories and histories of France, the Netherlands, Britain and the United States. He has also written a book about Israel and the Rothschilds.

In The Story of the Jews, he abandons the distance of an academic historian right at the start. This is the story of his people, not an abstract theoretical exercise of writing history. He is emotionally invested in this project and his passion spills out on every page.

It is also clear from the beginning that he is foremost a storyteller. With incredible details, Schama delights the reader with engaging vignettes about both ordinary and powerful people. He recreates pivotal moments in history by describing the events in the life of individuals, from Sheloman, a young Jewish mercenary in service of the Persian authorities in 475 BCE, to Abraham Zacuto, a talmudist and astronomer who put together the almanac used by Christopher Columbus in 1492.

His chatty approach to history occasionally drifts sideways, as if he just thought about something else he has to tell you. It is sometimes difficult to keep up with him, as he jumps across centuries, from country to country, commenting about historical figures without much of an introduction.

Yet, the story he tells is compelling. Schama wanders through numerous far-flung Jewish communities offering fascinating glimpses of their lives and surprising perspectives on Jewish worship, relations with non-Jews and violence against Jews.

More than is usually acknowledged, the Jewish community has lived in harmony with paganism, Christianity and Muslim societies. Yet the portrait of Jewish history, as he presents it, is not pretty.

Despite periods of well-being, sometimes stretching over hundreds of years, the story of the Jews is an account of a people caught in a Sisyphean cycle of settlement, prosperity, persecution and devastation, over and over again, beginning in Egypt in the 13th century BCE.

Schama delves deep into the brutal rhetoric and cruel fantasies that provoked the recurring waves of murder and expulsion. Over two millennia, the venom spread from Egypt to Palestine and throughout the empires of Persia, Greece, Rome and Constantinople, through the Near East and the Iberian peninsula.

He shines an especially bright light on the vile attacks by the disciples and followers of Jesus, who turned Jews into god-killers and child murderers. He writes about Jewish moneylenders, international traders, tax collectors and confidantes of royalty who were once in favor and then were not.

Schama begins his story in Elephantine, an island in the Nile. The Persians in 525 BCE found a thriving, well-established Jewish community in Elephantine, with a temple that had many similarities to the First Temple in Jerusalem that had been destroyed 61 years earlier.

Documents describing Elephantine provide the first hard evidence of daily life of Jews in antiquity. The Elephantine community was wiped out by the mid-fourth century BCE.

Again and again, Jewish communities were decimated. England expelled its Jews in 1290; France issued edicts expelling Jews in 1306 and again in 1394. Spain followed in 1492 and Portugal in 1497. Schama identifies 29 towns under Christian rule across Europe that kicked out Jews between 1010 and 1540.

Many civilizations have thrived and then disappeared. But Judaism has always found a way to thrive and survive. Schama attributes the durability of Judaism to its devotion to words.

Judaism depends neither on its leaders, its places of worship nor its institutions. The Jewish people are the People of the Book; words are the invisible thread that binds Jews together over the millennia, Schama posits. And, according to his perspective, the Torah is the work of the religious and intellectual elite in the eighth to fifth century BCE, nearly 500 years after the Exodus was supposed to have happened.

Reverting to his role as academic, he notes that no evidence – archeological or otherwise – has turned up to substantiate the Exodus story. By his account, the Hebrew Bible is a picture of Israel’s imagined origins and ancestry that converges at some point with the reality of Jewish history.

The genius of the priests, prophets and writers, intellectual elites, was to make their writing sacred, in standardized Hebrew, as the exclusive carrier of YHWH’s law and historic vision, Schama writes. “Thus encoded and set down, the spoken (and memorized) scroll could and would outlive monuments and military forces of empires.”

The Hebrew Bible was fashioned to be the common possession of elite and ordinary people, he writes. The divinity was reflected in the words of the Torah, not in an image of a divine creature or a person. And the message of the Torah was not confined to a holy sanctuary. It is to be posted on the doorpost of every Jew and bound on the head and arms of all Jews as they prayed.

“No part of life, no dwelling or body, was to be free of the scroll-book … the Torah was compact, transferable history, law, wisdom, poetic chant, prophecy, consolation and counsel…. The speaking scroll was designed to survive incineration … the people of YHWH could be broken and slaughtered, but their book would be indefatigable.”

In other words, survival depends on, as his subtitle says, “finding the words” for Torah study and the story of the Jews.

Media consultant Robert Matas, a former Globe and Mail journalist, still reads books. Simon Schama’s book is available at the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library. To reserve it, or any other, call 604-257-5181 or email [email protected]. To view the catalogue, visit jccgv.com and click on Isaac Waldman Library.

Tel Motza excavation points to “pagan Yahwism”

A horse figurine is evidence of early Jewish ritual practice.
(photo by Clara Amit/IAA.COM)

One might think that a significant archeological find a few hours’ walk from Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem would turn up artifacts we would recognize as Jewish. But since the Judaism of the day was not what we know, the find yielded ritual objects that seem vaguely pagan, almost heretical by today’s standards.

Archeologist Shua Kisilevitz describes the religion of the era as “pagan Yahwism.”
(photo from cjnews.com)

Shua Kisilevitz, the archeologist who was part of the team that excavated the site at Tel Motza, about seven kilometres west of Jerusalem, prefers the phrase “pagan Yahwism” to describe the religion of the era.

Last December, Kisilevitz and three fellow archeologists announced what they called an “unusual and striking” find, unearthed in construction for a highway: the 2,750-year-old walls of a temple, along with a cache of ritual objects that included a pedestal decorated with lions and sphinxes, pendants, pottery and vessel fragments, and figurines – two human and two animal – that may or may not have depicted deities.

The dig provides “rare archeological evidence for the existence of temples and ritual enclosures in the Kingdom of Judah in general and in the Jerusalem region in particular,” the team announced.

The uniqueness of the find is even more remarkable, the archeologists said, because of its proximity to the First Temple, built, according to the Bible, under King Solomon in 960 BCE. But archeologists know little about the period’s religious practices because there are hardly any remnants of ritual buildings from the era, according to Kisilevitz.

While more study is needed, the find provides valuable insights into what those rituals might have been, she said in an interview prior to her recent talk on the subject at the University of Toronto. While those practices may seem strange and un-Jewish today, they were in keeping with the rules of the time, Kisilevitz said.

Previous excavations showed that Motza functioned within the royal administration of the Kingdom of Judah, she said. “It was very much connected to Jerusalem. [It couldn’t] create its own religion. The people of Motza didn’t wake up one morning and say, ‘Oh, we want to create something new.’ They couldn’t break off so easily.”

photo - artifacts from Tel Motza excavation — According to Shua Kisilevitz, artifacts such as these found at Tel Motza, are important because they reflect a formative time for Judaism.
*(photo by Clara Amit/IAA.COM)*

The artifacts are important because they reflect a formative time for Judaism, she noted, adding they show that the ancient Israelite faith was not always centralized in Jerusalem and its practitioners may have used ritual objects now forbidden as graven images. “There are all these presumptions we have which we project onto the early formation of religion,” Kisilevitz said. “This temple finally shows us how the religion started out and what it really looked like at the time. They [were] doing what was common in the period.”

The find also conforms to biblical accounts, which mention local religious precincts outside Jerusalem, she added. And “Motza” is mentioned in the Book of Joshua as a town in the tribal lands of Benjamin, which bordered Judah.

Kisilevitz, who works for the Israeli Antiquities Authority and is in Ontario for several months on an exchange with the University of Toronto, said the team does not know whether the human and animal figurines served a religious purpose. “It’s kind of tricky and a little bit hard to say,” she noted.

The archeological team believes the temple at Tel Motza must have functioned before religious reforms enacted in the times of kings Hezekiah and Josiah, which abolished all ritual sites outside Jerusalem and concentrated religious practices solely in the Temple.

Kisilevitz believes the artifacts do not conflict “at all” with modern understanding of Judaism. “We just have to change the way we think of the religion at the beginning.”

Ron Csillag is a Toronto freelance writer. A version of this article was originally published in the Canadian Jewish News.