More Food for Thought

Interfaith Spring Colloquium:  As Abq Jew announced recently (see Food for Thought):

The Jewish Christian Dialogue Presents

21st Annual Interfaith Colloquium

Food for Thought:
Healing Mind, Body, Spirit, and World

Congregation B'nai Israel

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

7:45 am - 2:00 pm

About the Topic

Join us as we consider:

Food for body: What is the reason for kosher foods? Since Jesus was a Jew, why don’t Christians keep kosher? 

Food for mind: How do our respective religions encourage intellectual development? 

Food for spirit: Christians have the Eucharist, the wine and bread, symbolizing unity. Jews celebrate at sacred moments with candles, wine, and bread. How are we different and similar? 

Healing the world: Both Jews and Christians advocate for social justice. For Jews, Tzedakah means charity and justice, and Tikkun Olam, healing the world, is a mandate. Catholics have the Corporal Works of Mercy. Protestants are active in advocacy for the poor and disenfranchised. How do we differ in our approaches, and what are the similarities? 

Responsibility: We gather to recognize the hungry and hurting in our world, and how people of good will can come together to heal others and ourselves. How do we treat the least among us? Would we respond differently if we knew the poor were angels or royalty in disguise? 

About the Speakers

Rabbi Min Kantrowitz is the Director of Shutafim: New Mexico Jewish Community Connections.

A program of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, Shutafim assists small, isolated Jewish communities across the state. She also has an active private teaching and spiritual support practice.

Previously, she served as Director of the Jewish Community Chaplaincy Program of Jewish Family Services of New Mexico for almost nine years before the closure of the agency.

She is the author of Counting the Omer: A Kabbalistic Meditation Guide, which provides a meditative path through the 49 days between the exodus celebrated during Passover, and the giving of the Torah on Shavu’ot.

Rabbi Kantrowitz received a prestigious Rabbis Without Borders Fellowship in 2012-2013. She was ordained by the Academy for Jewish Religion in California in 2004. She has been a featured speaker for the Jewish-Christian Dialogue on two previous occasions.  

Dr Mary Elizabeth Moore is Dean of the School of Theology and Professor of Theology and Education, Boston University.

Her passion is to journey with others to cultivate deeper faith and a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world. She feels privileged to work toward those ends with colleagues at Boston University and around the world, especially in the practices of knowing the Holy, building justice, resisting violence, and caring for the earth.

Her most recent books include: Teaching as a Sacramental Act; Ministering with the Earth; and Teaching from the Heart; plus three edited volumes, Children, Youth, and Spirituality in a Troubling World; Practical Theology and Hermeneutics; and A Living Tradition: Critical Recovery of the Wesleyan Heritage.

She has engaged in interreligious relationship-building in local, professional, and academic settings and is presently working on a project to develop interreligious approaches to practical theology. Mary Elizabeth is married to Allen, and they have five wonderful children and eight fabulous grandchildren.

About the Moderator

Kathy Freeze, a member of Aquinas Newman Center in Albuquerque, is the Parish and Faith Community Outreach Liaison for Catholic Charities.

Her responsibilities include sharing the mission and vision of Catholic Charities for the purposes of nurturing faith, proclaiming justice, serving people, and building community.

Kathy, a graduate of the JustFaith program, worked in parish life for 10 years and has taught and coordinated numerous social justice forums, classes, and outreach programs on topics including dignity of life, hunger, homelessness, advocacy, immigration, and poverty.

A graduate of St.  Mary’s University in San Antonio, TX, Kathy is an avid volleyball player. She is the proud mother of two young adults, Brenna and Dani, and has been married for 24 wonderful years to her husband Geoff.

About the Special Guest

The Colloquium will feature a special presentation by Carlos Navarro, Grassroots Anti-Hunger Advocate and Journalist.

Carlos was a driving force behind Hunger 101, a recent meeting - The Beginning of the Conversation - about hunger in New Mexico.

He serves as the Chair of the Advocacy Strategy Committee and volunteer state coordinator for Bread New Mexico, and is the author of most of the posts on the Bread New Mexico Blog.

Registration: $40 community / $20 students
Includes breakfast, lunch, and refreshments
For more information, please contact
Pam Fraser-Walters (505) 291-8115 pamfraserw@aol.com
or Gail Rubin Gail@AGoodGoodbye.com

A Page (or Two) of Talmud: Part 3

The Learning Continues: Here is another review and continuation of the Talmud class that Abq Jew led at this year's very successful A Taste of Honey (see The Talmud @ A Taste of Honey and A Page (or Two) of Talmud: Part 2).

Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem

Last week, we talked about the new Koren Talmud Bavli and the Reference Guide to the Talmud. This week we'll discuss

What The Talmud Is

So - what is the Talmud? Wikipedia explains:

The Talmud (Hebrew: תַּלְמוּד talmūd "instruction, learning", from a root lmd "teach, study") is a central text of Rabbinic Judaism. It is also traditionally referred to as Shas (ש״ס), a Hebrew abbreviation of shisha sedarim, the "six orders". The Talmud has two components.

• The first part is the Mishnah (Hebrew: משנה, c. 200 CE), the written compendium of Judaism's Oral Torah (Torah meaning "Instruction", "Teaching" in Hebrew). 

• The second part is the Gemara (c. 500 CE), an elucidation of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Hebrew Bible. 

The terms Talmud and Gemara are often used interchangeably, though strictly speaking that is not accurate. 

The whole Talmud consists of 63 tractates, and in standard print is over 6,200 pages long. It is written in Tannaitic Hebrew and Aramaic.  

The Talmud contains the teachings and opinions of thousands of rabbis on a variety of subjects, including Halakha (law), Jewish ethics, philosophy, customs, history, lore and many other topics.  

The Talmud is the basis for all codes of Jewish law and is much quoted in rabbinic literature.

The Mishnah is the first part of the Talmud. And Wikipedia tells us:

The Mishnah or Mishna (Hebrew: מִשְׁנָה, "repetition") ... is the first major written redaction of the Jewish oral traditions called the "Oral Torah". It is also the first major work of Rabbinic literature.

The Mishnah was redacted circa 200–220 CE by Rabbi Yehudah haNasi when, according to the Talmud, the persecution of the Jews and the passage of time raised the possibility that the details of the oral traditions dating from Pharisaic times (536 BCE – 70 CE) would be forgotten.  

The Mishnah consists of six orders (sedarim, singular seder סדר), each containing 7–12 tractates (masechtot, singular masechet מסכת; lit. "web"), 63 in total, and further subdivided into chapters and paragraphs or verses. 

It is the Gemara - the Talmud's second component - that makes the Talmud what it is:

The Gemara is a record of the discussions of the Mishnah that took place in the academies and study halls of Babylonia and Israel during the first centuries of the Common Era.

To break it down even further:

The Gemara includes both legal discussions and ... stories. The Gemara's stories are about legal matters and about ... everything else in the world.

Here is what the Talmud is not:

The Talmud is not a book of laws. 

If you only want to find out the end result - what the Jewish law is for any particular topic or question or issue - you should consult Maimonides' Mishneh Torah or Joseph Karo's Shulchan Aruch or (lehavdil) Isaac Klein's A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice or Martin S Cohen's The Observant Life.

But if the journey is the reward - you must learn Talmud!

Note to Prospective Talmud Students

Abq Jew is currently learning Shekalim. 

If you would like to learn along - please contact Abq Jew!

Support Abq Jew! Buy your Koren Talmud here!

Shabbat Shalom, Albuquerque!

Good Shabbos, New Mexico!

הדרן עליך תלמוד בּבלי קורן ירושׁלים

ABQ Jewish Film Fest: Jews and Baseball

Celebrating the Jewish Experience Through Film: The ABQ Jewish Film Fest is proud to present:

Jews and Baseball:
An American Love Story

Sunday March 9 ~ 3:00 pm

African American PAC
310 San Pedro Dr NE, Albuquerque 87108

Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story explores the connection between Jewish Americans and baseball, our nation’s most iconic institution. More than a film about sports, it is a story of immigration, assimilation, bigotry, heroism, the passing on of traditions, and the shattering of stereotypes

“You should be an attorney or a doctor, but not a ballplayer,” one former major leaguer remembers, describing the prejudices that he and other Jewish athletes faced. But despite the stereotypes, and in the face of hostility from fans and even violence from opposing players, there have been standout Jewish players in every decade from the 1860s to the present. Jews and Baseball is the first major documentary to tell their stories.

Purchase tickets here. View a clip here.

ABQ Jewish Film Fest: The Gatekeepers

Celebrating the Jewish Experience Through Film: The ABQ Jewish Film Fest is proud to present:

The Gatekeepers

Sunday March 9 ~ 1:00 pm

African American PAC
310 San Pedro Dr NE, Albuquerque 87108

For the first time ever, six former heads of Israel’s domestic secret service agency, the Shin Bet, share their insights and reflect publicly on their actions and decisions.

Since the Six Day War in 1967, Israel has failed to transform its crushing military victory into a lasting peace. Throughout that entire period, these heads of the Shin Bet stood at the center of Israel's decision-making process in all matters pertaining to security. They worked closely with every Israeli prime minister, and their assessments and insights had—and continue to have—a profound impact on Israeli policy.

The Gatekeepers (2013 Academy Award Nominee for Best Documentary) offers an exclusive account of the sum of their successes and failures. In the process it sheds light on the controversy surrounding the Occupation in the aftermath of the Six Day War.

The film website offers this synopsis:

It seems inevitable that Israel’s security forces play an inordinate role in the national discourse. Two of these forces—the Army and the Mossad—are already the stuff of legend. Ever since the Six Day War, however, the internal security force known as the Shin Bet has come to dominate the discussion among Israel’s policy makers. Israel’s crushing victory over its neighbors in 1967 left it in control of a vast, hostile population living under Occupation. Dealing with that population—in times of calm and times of violent uprising—was the Shin Bet’s responsibility.

The Gatekeepers tells the story of the Shin Bet, perhaps the most active and certainly the most secretive of Israel’s security forces, and it tells it from the perspectives of its leaders who, more than anyone, received the trust of the country’s political elites. In a series of candid interviews, they talk openly about the major events that marked their tenures. At their most intimate, six former heads of the Shin Bet muse publicly about the morality of torture and terrorism, arrests and assassinations. The citizens they swore to protect may have been safer as a result of their actions, but was the country any closer to peace?

In a style reminiscent of The Fog of War, their confessions are illustrated with archival footage and chilling computer animations based on photographs taken at the events. These offer a window into the moral dilemmas they faced as they unfolded. The audience is left pondering whether they or their governments would have responded any differently

If Israel lies at the heart of the global War on Terror, the Gatekeepers’ confessions challenge the conventional wisdom of how that war should be waged, whether in Gaza or Guantanamo, Palestine or Pakistan. Theirs is the ultimate cautionary tale of what happens to people and nations alike when they try to answer violence with violence.

Read The New York Times review here. Purchase tickets here. View a clip here.