More in ‘Torah’

Of the many sins of modern journalism, there are few I hate more than the wretched stunt of asymmetrical historical comparisons.
No doubt you’ve seen this black magic practiced before, and most likely, you’ve found it odious. But if you’ve never stopped to ponder the mechanics of this feeble act of conjuring, here’s a primer into ...

• Turkeys aren’t the only animals that should be shaking in their boots this week. Israel and the Jewish community in Senegal have donated 99 sheep to needy Muslim families there to sacrifice for the holiday of Tabaski, which marks Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael, as “a symbolic gesture between Israel and Senegal, ...

The oldest surviving complete Torah scroll from pre-Inquisition Spain was sold at Sotheby’s yesterday to an unnamed American private collector for $398,500—not quite the half-million bucks the auction house gave as the high estimate, but impressive nonetheless. The 700-year-old scroll was put up for sale by Rabbi Yitzchok Reisman, a Torah scribe and repairman on ...

Hey, you know what you shouldn’t be paying retail for this holiday season? Torahs. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, discount giant Costco is going to start selling a special edition at select stores later this month. The distributor told the news service that The Illustrated Torah, published by Gefen Publishing House of Jerusalem in ...

• For a strange and degrading appearance on Lopez Tonight, Larry David took a DNA test and host George Lopez revealed that the comedian “really is a bad Jew,” as he is, supposedly, 37 percent Native American. [Monsters and Critics]
• The overzealous printing of Torah-study pamphlets by Israeli synagogues has led to a garbage crisis, ...

Alicia Jo Rabins has been around the block, musically speaking. She began as a toddler, with Suzuki violin lessons, then went on to play in punk rock bands, klezmer ensembles, and, in 2003, released a solo album of original and traditional Appalachian and shtetl-influenced songs on fiddle. She also performs with the ...

The codex, a bound volume of handwritten manuscript pages, was invented in the third century BCE. In 751, at the Battle of Talas, Arabs captured Chinese papermakers, developed mass-production techniques, and spread paper manufacturing to the West. By the mid-15th century, Gutenberg’s printing press was churning out Bibles. Yet for more than 2,000 years, the ...

When Yael Buechler was growing up, her Conservative synagogue in Dix Hills, New York celebrated Simchat Torah by taking out a Torah scroll and unfurling it around the entire perimeter of the sanctuary. All the adults—her father was the rabbi—would spread out around the edge of the room, clasping the parchment, while the children ran ...

Bookforum offers one of the first reviews of Robert Crumb’s illustrated version of Genesis, and it sounds like a winner. Crumb’s interpretation departs from other graphic representations of the Torah by not bowdlerizing it, writes Jeet Heer; the legendary artist “doesn’t hide the fact that the holy book is filled with stories of incest (Abraham ...

Growing up in Israel, I was filled with leaden dread leading up to one day each year. On that day, all of us schoolchildren all over the country were instructed to wear a white shirt and, the caressing sun of spring be damned, sacrifice recess to attend a ceremony. Gathering in the school’s auditorium or basketball court, a few poems were recited, a song was sung, and six candles lit, one for each of the Nazi death camps. The day is still known in Israel simply as Yom Ha’Shoah, Holocaust Day.