A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.
If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.
The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.
It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.
Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.
My name is Rob Kutner. I’m a writer for “The Daily Show,” as well as the creator of annual NYC Purim spiel “The Shushan Channel,” and the co-writer of a little piece of fun-with-stereotypes you may or may not have seen called “Jewno.”
But most recently, I’ve authored a book entitled APOCALYPSE HOW, a tongue-in-cheek “survival” guide that goes through topical chapters n Food, Clothing, Shelter, Social Life, Dating, Politics, Career, Recreation, and Finance — to show you how the world to come will be much better than the current one.
However, since the book’s publication, I’ve received numerous complaints from Jews (I know, can you believe it???) that the book does not sufficiently address specifically Jewish end-time issues.
So, I want to assure you that the next edition will contain an entire “Olam ha-Bagraphy,” including such critical tachliss as:
-Food — Ten low-fat, delicious, and totally blecch-friendly recipes for Levyatan (ever tried it smoked with a nice shmear?)
-Relocation — Finding a comfortable place to stay in Israel when all the world’s Jews have returned there (Hint: How do you feel about the Negev?)
-Home Makeover — Design advice for Beit HaMikdash 3 (Ex: Who makes the best dolphin skin, and where you can buy it wholesale)
-Personnel — Telling the real Mashiach from impostors (Spoiler alert: It is Schneerson after all - should have donated to the telethon!)
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BUT, I cannot release this updated version until ALL COPIES of the current run are sold out. So it’s up to you guys. Â Go towww.apocalypsehowthebook.com
and buy one now! Hint: Makes a great Bar/Bat Mitzvah gift — and much funnier than a savings bond.
By now, we are all pretty familiar with Pastor John Hagee and his quote-on-quote “pro-Israel” outfit Christians United for Israel (CUFI). Hagee had been a big endorser of Republican presidential candidate John McCain until audiotape surfaced last week of Hagee preaching that God sent Hitler to cause the Holocaust so that Jews would move to Israel, in fulfillment of Hagee’s conception of biblical prophecy. Under much pressure, McCain finally rejected the endorsement.
But Sen. Joe Lieberman (CT-I), perhaps the most prominent Jewish politician in the country, is still planning to give the keynote presentation at CUFI’s Israel Summit in July! J Street is out with a video campaign calling on Joe to join his friend John McCain in rejecting Hagee and to withdraw his speaking commitment for Hagee’s summit. Check out the video below and sign the petition here.
Also, let it not be said that Hagee is worthy of rejection only because of his comments about Hitler. These are just the latest of a series of atrocious comments and positions that make him worthy of rebuke by every major politician and Jewish leader. He has called the Catholic Church a “great whore” and said Hurricane Katrina was the judgment of God against New Orleans for planning a gay pride parade. And his so-called “pro-Israel” positions include opposing territorial concessions for peace and a two-state solution, support for military action against Iran, and raising money to build illegal Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories.
It’s time that the Jewish community be done with John Hagee.
Ed Koch, the irascible former mayor of New York City, has purchased a burial plot in Trinity Church, the only uptown cemetery still accepting burials. According to the Times (of course!) Says Koch, “The idea of leaving Manhattan permanently irritates me.â€
The Times reports:
Mr. Koch also said he had ordered a tombstone to “adorn my grave upon my death, which I hope won’t be for another 8 to 10 years.â€
Carved on the tombstone is the most important prayer in Judaism, “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,†in English, Hebrew and a transliteration, and the last words of the journalist Daniel Pearl before he was murdered by Islamic terrorists: “My father is Jewish; my mother is Jewish; I am Jewish.â€
…I called a number of rabbis to see if this was doable,†he said. “I was going to do it anyway, but it would be nice if it were doable traditionally.â€
He said he had been advised to request that the gate nearest his plot be inscribed as “the gate for the Jews,†and the cemetery agreed.
He was also instructed to have rails installed around his plot, so he ordered them.
Being buried in Manhattan, Mr. Koch said, would also make it easier for former constituents to visit.
“I’m extending an open invitation,†he said.
Although the plot is non-denominational, I am very struck by this irony, of someone declaring his Jewishness by… buying a burial plot in a churchyard, and then declaring it “the Gate of the Jews.”
He is spending a lot of money on a place where his remains will be, but I wonder, what could that money have done for the Jewish community.
Speaking more generally, I have often been struck when doing funerals, by how odd it is that people who aren’t particularly interested in being active in the Jewish community while alive want to be buried by a rabbi, after it can’t make much of difference any more. There’s some odd niggle that I can’t quite put my finger on about people who want to be Jews in their deepest moments, but who don’t do Jewish. On this day of gevurah in gevurah, it seems to me that we need to be asking how to make our American Jewish sisters and brothers think about being Jewish as something which is more than a -meaningful, perhaps, but only a - hobby, something to be done for one’s own satisfaction, at one’s own convenience, but not to interfere with the business of life.
Perhaps some of you out there in blogoland can get at that niggle better than I.
Benny Shanon, professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has argued that the miraculous sights and sounds in the Exodus account of God’s giving of the Torah to Moses may have been drug-induced.
And how do you think he deduced that?
Shanon, who published his theory in the scholarly journal “Time and Mind”, said the Mount Sinai spectacle recalled a “trip” he experienced after drinking psychotropic drugs of a kind that can be found in some desert plants.
“I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations,” Haaretz quoted him as saying. “It seems logical that something was altered in people’s consciousness. There are other stories in the Bible that mention the use of plants: for example, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden.”
And here’s the kicker:
But he added: “I have no direct proof of this interpretation.”
According to Shanon, the drug theory is more feasible than other explanations for the Mount Sinai story — that indeed the Israelites communicated with God, or that it is all just a fairy tale.
Seriously? For a far more interesting piece on the relationship of psychedics to Judaism, check out this article over at Jewcy.
Reports of religious impropriety in today’s U.S. military appear with the regularity of abuse reports from Rubashkins meat plants. Unlike the Agriprocessors scandal, however, the problem of Evangelical Christian influence in places like the U.S. Air Force Academy has attracted little Jewish attention and less organized response, except from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and its founder, retired J.A.G. Michael Weinstein.
The latest issue exposed by the MRFF is the invitation of three Arab converts to Christianity to speak at a weeklong conference on terrorism organized by cadets at the Air Force Academy. The three speakers, Walid Shoebat, Kamal Saleem and Zak Anani, claim to be reformed Islamist terrorists and “have appeared numerous times on Fox News Channel, The 700 Club, the Pastor John Hagee program and other venues in which they engaged in embellished stories of their conversion from Islam to Christianity, extolling its virtues and the wholesale denigration of Islam and its followers,” according to the MRFF’s Richard Baker.
The Academy’s official story, on the other hand, as related by spokesman Brett Ashworth to a NY Times reporter, is that “the three were invited because ‘they offered a unique perspective from inside terrorism,’… [and that] the conference is to result in a report on methods to combat terrorism that will be sent to the Pentagon, members of Congress and other influential officials.”
There must be individuals out there with more reliability than Shoebat, Saleem, and Anani who can provide that kind of perspective, however, considering that experts who have heard them speak have serious doubts about the stories they present: More »
Not like we ever expected much from this woman, but come on. This is really off the hook, even for her.
Editor and Publisher reports,
Appearing on Donny Deutsch’s CNBC show, “The Big Idea,” on Monday night, columnist/author Ann Coulter suggested that the U.S. would be a better place if there weren’t any Jewish people and that they needed to “perfect” themselves into — Christians.
It led Deutsch to suggest that surely she couldn’t mean that, and when she insisted she did, he said this sounded “anti-Semitic.”
Asked by Deutsch whether she wanted to be like “the head of Iran” and “wipe Israel off the Earth,” Coulter stated: “No, we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. … That’s what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament.”
Excerpts from the transcript of the show under the cut. More »
Nebraska State Senator Ernie Chambers (D - Omaha) filed suit against God Friday, asking a court to order the Almighty and his followers to stop making terrorist threats.
The suit, filed in a Nebraska district court, contends that God, along with his followers of all persuasions, “has made and continues to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons.” Those threats are credible given God’s history, Chambers’ complaint says.
Chambers, in a fit of alliteration, also accuses God of causing “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects, and the like.”
U.S. restaurant chain Hooters, known for waitresses in low-cut blouses and short skirts, will open its first branch in Israel this summer, in the Mediterranean seaside city of Tel Aviv.
“I strongly believe that the Hooters concept is something that Israelis are looking for,” Ofer Ahiraz, who bought the Hooters franchise for Israel, told Reuters on Monday. “Hooters can suit the Israeli entertainment culture.”
At Hooters, scantily clad waitresses the company calls Hooters Girls serve spicy chicken wings, sandwiches, seafood and drinks.
Ahiraz said a specific location in Tel Aviv, Israel’s most cosmopolitan city, had yet to be chosen, but he said it would not open restaurants near large religious populations, and they would not be kosher.
“They would not be kosher.” Understatement of the year.
Looks like Hooters is also planning to open in Dubai.
Sigh.
Today (if you’re in Australia — Monday night and Tuesday, I mean) is the birthday of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, the coolest Jew ever…please ignore the background music and groove on this.
Happy birthday, Rebbe Nachman. And mazel tov, sis-in-law and about-to-be bro-in-law.
I’ve been thinking lately a lot about rebbes. being as though right now we’re all gathered for the impending wedding, i’m surrounded by Lubavitcher Chasidim, and it’s both beautiful and creepy how they talk about the Lubavitcher Rebbe — as if he’s right around the corner, waiting, each of their best friends who is both loving and stern, ready to do anything for htem and ready to kick their asses if they need it. which, you know, is kind of what G*d is for me.
Yeah — it’s a hard, weird thing, using a person as an intermediary (or even, sometimes, as a stand-in) for g*d. but in a certain way, it’s a beautiful, powerful thing. the function of a rebbe is half parent and half rock star, except that we don’t choose our parents (and, therefore, we give them hell and run away from them and ignore what they say sometimes) and we do choose our rebbe. more than anything else, it’s a mark of respect that i feel sort of violated whenever my Lubavitch friends always talk about the Lubavitcher as “The Rebbe,” as if nobody else in the universe had a rebbe — and, dammit, that’s why Rebbe Nachman is my rebbe.
Hisbodidus (see video) is the most amazing thing in the world. One day, I was talking to Rabbi Davide and he was like, “do you pray?” I said yes, but that praying was getting on my nerves lately. He told me, “That’s because you aren’t doing it enough. You need to pray constantly — when you walk down the street, when you’re fighting with people, when you’re in a mosh pit. Just take yourself out of it for a second and say ‘hey’ to G*d.”
These days, I live in Chicago. There aren’t too many deserted fields around to run away to and do hisbodedus. But Rebbe Nachman teaches us that hisbodedus is as far away as your brain is — and that’s as far away from us as his teachings are — you just have to remember they’re there. Selah.
Cannabis chassidis is about to retire, as I’m pretty sure I’ve said
most of what I want to say with it. I’m probably going to keep writing
something somewhere else, but before it folds: Is there anything that
still needs to be explored on it? I’ve taken the questions of religion
and drugs as far as I think I can without getting redundant too often,
but if there’s anything else anyone wants explored there, post a
comment on www. cannabischassidis.blogspot.com. I’ll do one more big
post in a month or so based on whatever feedback I get, and then one
more after that to tie it all together.
Otherwise, feel free to rifle the archives, they should be up for at
least a little bit longer, and if you want, feel free to save, print
them out, and translate or distribute the Torah there as needed. I’m
commenting here now and again, and also on this one raw, unkempt blog
called sevenfatcow.wordpress.com, amongst others as needed.
Zai Gezunt, happy redemption, and Stay High.
—Yoseph Leib
The Today segment on MSNBC had a section on the Jewish view of heaven. Although IMO the treatment of Judaism was listing heavily toward comedy - I suspect they won’t treat Christianity this way, on their segment- I have to admit that Joan Rivers was in fine form (if it’s heaven, that means I’ll be able to get Wavy Gravy flavor, right?). But I do have to ask, where were the other five questions?
Shabbat 31a:
Raba said, When man is led in for Judgment he is asked, Were you honest in business, did you fix times for learning, did you engage in procreation, did you hope for salvation, did you engage in the dialectics of wisdom, did you understand one thing from another? Yet even so, if ‘the fear of the Lord is his treasure,’ it is well: if not, [it is] not [well].
The LA Times offers a thorough examination of eschatological church movements in America, and their designs for world Jewry:
According to various polls, an estimated 40% of Americans believe that a sequence of events presaging the end times is already underway. Among the believers are pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America, who converged at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood in February to finalize plans to start 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years.
[...]
For Christians, the future of Israel is the key to any end-times scenario, and various groups are reaching out to Jews — or proselytizing among them — to advance the Second Coming.
