Tablet Magazine - a new read on Jewish life
a safe space
A favorite rhetorical format in the Talmud is one in which a sage verbally faces off with a mighty opponent. The format implies that an antagonism relocated away from an arena of physical rivalry and into the realm of knowledge is one in which the sages are guaranteed the triumphant last word. But as the scholar Mira Balberg argues, such a verbal contest did not only function to “solidify rabbinic standing,” it also allowed the rabbis a safe space to grapple with theological, political and aesthetic questions and doubts without crossing boundaries of faith and tradition.
spun out on spinoza
An Overview of Spinoza’s “Ethics”
Joel Friedman
Beth Lord
Newsletter
Those who do not remember the past are ... probably not Jewish
Jerada and Oujda
42
The number of unarmed Jewish civilians murdered by angry mobs on June 7th and 8th 1948 in Jerada and Oujda in Northeastern Morrooco. The massacres followed Israel’s declaration of statehood and Sultan Mohammed V’s public affirmation of the Jews’ traditional protected status in Morocco.


YIVO Encyclopedia
“Three panels from a cycle of paintings documenting the work of the Prague Burial Society: sewing shrouds, washing and preparing the deceased for burial, and digging the grave.”
(Oil on canvas, 1780)
judengasse


jüdisches museum frankfurt
A lithograph depicting the Haupt Synagogue on Judengasse in Frankfurt by artist Anton Burger (1824-1905). The synagogue was built after the great fire in the Judengasse in 1711.


Following a fire and with the redevelopment of Frankfurt’s Judengasse in the second half of the 19th century, the Haupt Synagogue was rebuilt in 1860. The new synagogue would become the spiritual center of Reform Judaism in Frankfurt. It was destroyed during Kristallnacht.


The Börneplatz Synagogue was built in 1882 also on the Judengasse as a synagogue for the Orthodox community. It was designed by Siegfried Kuznitzky and destroyed during Kristallnacht.