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Baruch Dayan Emet - Nathan George Anton

Saturday morning, 2 hours before I was scheduled to get on a plane to Canada for a 11 day book tour, I received a phone call from my father's caregivers in Santa Barbara that he had died during the night. Besides being 91 and in no so perfect health, there was no reason to suspect that my father would die so soon. As deaths go, it was a good one - peacefully in his sleep, in his own bed, no pain or suffering, and still maintaining his faculties. Certainly it was a relief for me and my sister - no moving him out of his long time home, no long painful decline, no dealing with hospitals or nursing homes, no decisions about life support or not.

Of course I canceled my flight, but after some thought and discussion with my family [and after making funeral/cemetery arrangements], I flew to NYC on Monday to honor my commitments and get some very important book business done. I know my father would have wanted it that way. Ironic, but "Book III - RACHEL" was dedicated to my father, Nathan George Anton, and there was still time to change the that page to "In memory of." He was inordinately proud of my success as an author, especially since I wrote under my maiden name, Anton.

MISHNAHYOMIT

Those of you who have heard me speak know that the stealth reason I wrote "Rashi's Daughters" is to encourage more women and liberal Jews to study Talmud. Well, now's your chance. In Rashi's time, students spent 2 to 3 years learning Mishnah before going onto Gemara, and now you have a chance to study Mishnah, with explanations, everyday. This is courtesy of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ), who will send you a daily lesson via email. Yesterday we started tractate Zevahim, Ch 10, and I want to share it with you because it has some relevance to how we pray together.

Mishnah 1 -- Reading for Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Introduction: The first five mishnayot of this chapter deal with the order in which different sacrifices are offered. There are two general rules, one that we will see in this mishnah and one in the next mishnah.

Mishnah I
1) Whatever is more frequent than another, takes precedence over the other.
2) The daily offerings precede the additional offerings;
3) The additional offerings of Shabbat precede the additional offerings of Rosh Hodesh;
4) The additional offerings of Rosh Hodesh precede the additional offerings of Rosh Hashanah.
5) As it is said, "You shall present these in addition to the morning portion of the regular burnt offering" (Numbers 28:23).

Explanation
Section 1: This is a general principle that is today often invoked when determining which prayer, or which blessing is recited first (for instance over the matzah on Pesah). As is frequently the case, a principle that plays a large role in later halakhah, has its origins in sacrificial law.
Sections 2-4: Here, the principle is invoked in connection to the daily offerings and the additional offerings (musaf). A more frequent sacrifice is offered first.
Section 5: This is the proof text that the daily tamid, the morning offering, is offered before the other additional offerings for holidays. The verse implies that the morning offering has already been offered before the other sacrifices are offered. Hence, whatever is more frequent comes first.

To get these daily short text studies of Mishnah, send a message to listserv@uscj.org that reads: subscribe MISHNAHYOMIT

New website up and running

I meant to post this last night, but the earthquake in Los Angeles [epicenter only a few miles away from my house] distracted me, even though we had no damage.

Hallelujah. After many designs and redesigns, plus testing all the pull-down menus and links, the new version of my website is up and running. Besides information on Book III - RACHEL, there are new links [under Resources], more articles I've written, a Rashi family tree, plus direct links to my Facebook group and the Rashi's Daughters page on Wikipedia. On the right side of this page, there are now links to other interesting Jewish blogs.

Go to www.rashisdaughters.com, then bring your cursor to rest anywhere on the toolbar. Pull-down menus should appear; move your cursor to explore the new goodies, including Chapter One of RACHEL . But if you’re desperate to read it immediately, click on the direct link.

Happy Lag b'Omer

According to the Jewish calendar, today is/was Lag b'Omer, the date I chose for Joheved and Mei's wedding in Book I: JOHEVED. An obscure holiday whose origins are shrouded in legend and myths,
Lag b’Omer is neither commanded in the Torah nor described in the Talmud. Yet it is now the almost universal practice among traditional Jews to observe the season of counting the "Omer" as a time of sadness, by refraining from activities that are associated with gaiety and celebration. This mourning period lasts from Passover until the thirty-third day, Lag b'Omer, hence the sudden profusion of Jewish weddings.

The melancholy mood of the Omer season is usually linked to the Talmudic tradition about how thousands of Rabbi Akiva's students perished between Passover and Shavuot. The Babylonian Talmud states that they died of a plague, though historians discern a reference to death in battle, in the ill-fated Bar Kochba revolt (in 135 CE) of which Rabbi Akiva was an active supporter. There is no mention of any respite on the 33rd day.

The earliest records of mourning during the Omer are contained in the Responsa of the Babylonian Geonim, who observed the restrictions during the entire 49-day period by holding no weddings and doing no work after nightfall. Not until the thirteenth century was the list augmented to include shaving and cutting the hair.

Medieval Ashkenazi Jews, instead of excluding the last third of the Omer period from the mourning observances, began mourning two weeks into the Omer--at the beginning of Iyar--and continued them until Shavuot. The intensity of their mourning was increased by forbidding additional activities, such as wearing new clothing, bathing for pleasure and trimming fingernails.

What were the tragic events these practices commemorated? In 1096, during the First Crusade, bloodthirsty marauders marched through the Rhine basin, slaughtering over 10,000 Jewish men, women and children. The worst bloodshed occurred between the first of Iyar and Shavuot. It is hardly surprising that subsequent generations of Ashkenazi Jews came to focus their grief on the massacres that had occurred during that time of the year, events that I was not able to ignore in writing Book III: RACHEL.

A fabulous Israeli woman's blog on Talmud

I want to share with you a fabulous blog I found by an Israeli woman who not only studies Talmud, but writes limericks about the text [as well as other interesting things in her life]. Here are a few of her poems, plus a link to her website

[Git 30a]
Said the man to his wife, "Have no fear
Have this Get if I do not appear
Back within thirty days."
There were dreadful delays
O'er the river, he called out, "I'm here!!"

[Git 23a)
A blind man cannot see a thing
Thus no image can any bells ring.
Well then how does he know
It's his wife who does go
With him into his bed, not his fling?

[Git 6b)
Says Rav Chisda, "No man should instill
Excess fear in his household." Men will
Come home before Shabbat
Say, "Did you light or not?"
But their tone must be calm and not shrill.

[Git 11b)
Says a man: "Give this Get to my wife.
Nope! I now change my mind! By your life!"
May the husband retract?
Can he take the Get back?
If he's causing her gladness, not strife.