Birds as Dads, Babysitters, and Hats

The commandment to send the mother bird from her nest before taking her eggs or chicks, known in Jewish tradition as shiluach hakan, is found in Deuteronomy 22:6–7. This essay addresses dominant perspectives on the mother bird mitzvah—its association with good luck, bad luck, and compassion—before showcasing rabbinic texts from Mishnah and Babylonian Talmud Hullin Chapter 12 that evince interest in birds as ingenious builders, as fathers and not just mothers, as queer parents and altruists, as rebel spirits who resist captivity even unto death and, finally, in birds as co-inhabitants of the earth whose lives are parallel to as well as enmeshed with our own. I offer here a bird-centric approach to the commandment, an effort to read it in a spirit of anti-anthropocentrism, drawing on animal studies scholar Matthew Calarco’s notion of indistinction.

Making a Maskil Mainstream: Adapting Haskalah Scholarship for a 19th-Century Rabbinic Audience

The Passover Cup of Elijah is often explained as an expression of rabbinic uncertainty regarding a fifth cup mandated by some opinions in the Babylonian Talmud. The explanation is based upon other talmudic passages which mention halakhic uncertainties that will be resolved by Elijah when he eventually comes to herald the long anticipated redemption. The explanation is commonly attributed to the Gaon of Vilna; however, no historically reliable source supports this attribution. This explanation was first published by the great maskil, Isaac Ber Levinsohn, and was attributed to the Gaon of Vilna by Eliezer Zweifel. An alternate shift of attribution was to R. Ephraim Zalman Margolioth. Attribution to a great rabbinic authority helped the explanation gain circulation and approval among the general rabbinic audience to the present day.

On the Yehi Raẓon Formula in the Blessing for the New Month in the Ashkenazic Rite

In the early custom of Ashkenaz, on the Shabbat preceding the beginning of the month, the coming of the new month (Rosh Ḥodesh) would be announced after the reading from the Torah and before the Torah scroll was returned to the synagogue's Holy Ark. The ritual included reciting the paragraph beginning with the words mi she-‘asah nissim (may He who performed miracles) and continuing with an announcement of the timing of Rosh Ḥodesh. In the second half of the eighteenth century, an addition to the liturgy appeared before the Mi She-‘asah Nissim section: a passage beginning yehi raẓon (may it be Your will) that the Babylonian Talmud relates was recited daily by the sage Rav following the Amidah prayer. This article suggests some reasons for the addition of the passage, traces the spread of the practice of its recitation among Ashkenazic communities, and concludes with an examination and explanation of two apparently erroneous additions to the Yehi Raẓon formula.

AN ANALYTICAL COMPARISON OF MONASTICISM IN SEMITIC RELIGION

Monasticism is voluntary sustain and systemic program of self discipline and self denial in which immediate sensual gratifications are renounced in order to attain some valued spiritual or mental state. Monasticism demands to get away from normal sentiment & human emotions particularly to attain spirituality. Purposes of monasticism are to find out the pure inner self, raise above all flaws & human deficiency, spiritual excellence, liberation, and deliverance. The research paper is an approach to show the comparison between the monastic worlds as revealed through the texts of Semitic religious communities. The comparison of monastic text has the potential to yield a large amount of informative facts. In the areas of asceticism, spirituality, and the balance between sacred and routine life, analogies are numerous and propose many avenues of further comparison still waiting to be explored. The research paper is an approach to show the comparison & in- depth analysis of the Babylonian Talmud, Bible and Quran that find literary analogues in the monastic texts, strategies’, historical examples and suggestions. These examples open the door for a reconsideration of the nature of the relationship between Jews and Christians in the ancient world. This article aimed to highlight the main features of ancient monasticism and to share information in Semitic religion regarding hermit, ascetic and monk. Likewise, this paper also focuses on several processes of changes and transformation of monasticism from a negative view to the enlightenment of identity which lead to the development of a normal and stable society.

‘The Palestinian Talmud Was Not Tampered with by the Pens of Emenders’: Clarifying a Textual Version Rule

This article will demonstrate that Nahmanides’s statement regarding the unamended Palestinian Talmud relates to the sources cited in that work. The advantage of the Palestinian Talmud stemmed from the neglect suffered by that work which enabled it to escape the hegemony of the Babylonian Talmud whose textual versions were imposed on all other Oral Torah works. Of course, it also stemmed from the proximity of the Palestinian Talmud in both time and place to the Mishnah and Tosefta. This advantage lent great significance to the exegesis of these sources in the Palestinian Talmud.

The Concept of Diaspora in Rabbinic Sources

The rabbinic diaspora in the Persianite and Sasanian empires of the second through seventh century CE provided the context for the production of one the great monuments of the culture of Jewish learning, the Babylonian Talmud. As the originary compilation of the rabbinic movement, the Mishnah (second century ce), on the other hand, appears as a text that was not only produced in the “land of Israel,” but also remained tethered to the land in its vision. This chapter discusses the dynamics of cultural mobility that enabled the rabbinic movement to transplant its traditions of learning to the geographic diaspora of what the rabbis referred to as Bavel (Babylonia). It traces some specific rhetorical strategies and, more generally, the consciousness that allowed the rabbis to transform Jewish dispersion into diaspora.

“Jesus is Going to Be Stoned”

Anti-Semitic interpretations of the gospels and Christian hostility towards Jews are both rooted, in terribly complex ways, in the first centuries of the Christian era. The death of Jesus is certainly the “most resentment-laden” theme in Christian history. But this chapter argues that it is not a sign of primitive Christian resentment that the gospels depict a Judaean moment in Jesus’ legal ordeal in Jerusalem—an ordeal which culminates in a Roman verdict, and a Roman punishment. In fact, the Judaeans’ condemnation of Jesus is less decisive in the gospels than in many revered Judaic texts. This chapter thus seeks to reconstruct a Judaic ‘passion’ narrative in which Jesus dies, and Pilate is innocent, from the ‘Judaean’ testimonies of a pagan philosopher (Celsus), from the pages of an illustrious rabbinic collection (Babylonian Talmud), and from a tradition of parodic ‘gospels’ (Toledot Yeshu).

Mani’s Metivta: Manichaean Pedagogy in its Late Antique Mesopotamian Context

This article investigates the nature of Manichaean pedagogy as expressed through the late antique codices known as the Kephalaia of the Teacher and the Kephalaia of the Wisdom of my Lord Mani. By paying attention to a range of contextual cues that frame each moment of instruction, it first argues that much like their rabbinic and Christian neighbors, Mesopotamian Manichaeans did not study in academic institutions. Rather, instruction took place on an ad-hoc, individual basis, often based on happenstance events; there is no mention of a building dedicated to learning, a standard curriculum, or a semester schedule. This article then contextualizes this form of non-institutionalized Manichaean instruction by comparing three formulae found in the Kephalaia codices that have parallels in the Babylonian Talmud: the formula of Mani “sitting among” his disciples (or of his disciples “sitting before” Mani), of Mani’s disciples “standing before” Mani, and of various people “coming before” Mani. In so doing, this article ultimately argues that the Babylonian Rabbis and Syro-Mesopotamian Manichaeans shared a common pedagogical habitus, one expressed through bodily comportment and hierarchy rather than through the imposition of institutional norms.