Sha-na-na-nah TOVA
(Source: jewsonyoutube, via fuckyeahjewish)
Ethiopian Jewry gets its first Haggadah
The historic saga of Ethiopian Jewry, with its unique traditions and customs, will be incorporated into the mainstreamPesach story for the first time in a new Haggada written by Ethiopian-Jewish history expert Rabbi Menachem Waldman.
Set to reach bookstores this weekend, the 195-page Haggada features prayers and commentaries on the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt translated from Amharic into Hebrew, as well as an account of how Ethiopia’s Beta Israel community escaped to Israel first via Sudan in Operation Moses in 1984-85 and later during Operation Solomon in 1991.
(Source: theyiddisheworld)
Religion as Practice, not Belief?
To a certain extent, a certain amount of syncretism is inevitable. We live in a culture that views religion through a Christian outlook - quite different than Judaism’s: Judaism views religion as a system of practices, and primarily through a lens of communal practice for communal relationship,and salvation, insofar as Jews think about it, is a communal salvation. Christianity, on the other hand, views religion as primarily a belief-focused system (which is not to say that it doesn’t have behavioral expectation, merely that behavior is the result of belief; in Judaism belief is necessary, but what one must believe is fairly limited: one must believe in one, undivided, disembodied God, who has never been and never will be embodied, also one must believe in some kind of reward and punishment system after death, details unspecified. That’s it. All the rest is what you do: go and learn) and salvation is individual. There’s a lot we could talk about here, in terms of how Jewish behavior and practices have been affected by the culture, but let’s save that for another time, shall we?
"It may seem cognitively dissonant, but Modern Orthodoxy is built on cognitive dissonance. Every educated person knows that the Bible is likely the product of human hands, for example. Yet, to be modern and Orthodox is to accept a dialectical tension between the dictates of reason and those of faith, which, in this case, hold that God wrote the Torah. Most Modern Orthodox Jews I know do not resolve this tension. They accept it, and get on with the important business of living."
— Jay Michaelson (via captainjew)
(Source: honor-not-honors)
Mosques in the Arab world are not just places go pray in, they are centers of learning, reflection, rest and socialising, don’t be surprised if you enter one and find someone sleeping in a corner or a group of people talking quietly in another corner, in fact the larger mosques are known as “Gatherings” in Arabic because its a place where people come together.
In Judaism, synagogues have many names: “beit knesset” (house of assembly), “beit midrash” (house of study), and “beit tefilah” (house of prayer) are amongst them.
So badass to see the same thing in Islam.
(Source: , via honor-not-honors)
