Gil

Selling Hamets: The Basics

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AFAIK the best way to fulfill the precept of not owning any leavened bread foodstuffs during Pesah, is to get rid of it all before Pesah.

If that’s not feasible for you – due to the financial loss it would incur, for example – it is also possible to sell it, in a halakhically-valid sale, to a gentile friend.

This works by a) selling the leavened bread foodstuffs to a gentile on credit with a 7 (or 8) day term for repayment, with the leavened bread foodstuffs as collateral for the loan and b) leasing the area in which the leavened bread foodstuffs are stored to a gentile with a 7 (or 8) day term for initial payment, and reverting it to original ownership upon default.

When this is done correctly, neither the leavened bread foodstuffs nor their location are in your possession for the duration of Pesah, and upon finishing the holiday you either receive the same leavened bread foodstuffs and don’t have a new part-time tenant, or you get their monetary equivalent and are now a part-time landlord. 🤷

If you would like help arranging for your own sale of leavened bread foodstuffs in anticipation of Pesah, feel free to message me.

You will need:

1) a gentile you trust

2) an extra house key

3) an area of your house (can be a shelving unit) that can be clearly demarcated and preferably closed/covered

4) a price list for your leavened bread foodstuffs

The Easy Pesah Cleaning Guide

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Someone could not translate their OU-approved easy Pesah cleaning guide from a well-known rabbi, so I figured I’d do a public service and share with you the Gil-approved easy Pesah cleaning guide from, uh, me:

1) Remove all leavened bread foodstuffs from your house

2) Remove all crumbs of leavened bread foodstuffs from all the rooms in your house where anyone might have brought leavened bread foodstuffs over the past year

3) Heat all absorbant non-earthenware cookware and dinnerware to the same temperature at which they might have absorbed particles of leavened bread foodstuffs

4) Enjoy Pesah

Anti-Zionism and Me

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I used to hold space for anti-Zionism. Not any longer. The reaction since Oct 7 has clarified for me where anti-Zionists actually stand. I don’t begrudge Jewish anti-Zionists their right to an interpretation or a conscience but miss me with all that misguided rhetoric and propaganda.

We can thoroughly criticize our own state without directly enabling and supporting (latent, unwitting) anti-Semites.

(Of course, our great-grandparents never even had the opportunity to criticize their own state, because they were still forced to live under the hegemony of foreign imperialism and settler-colonialism.)

Also, this is everyone’s reminder that – beyond the Israelite and Jewish communities that had never left the land despite Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic occupation – organized Jewish resettlement of the land of Israel began not in 1948 but in 1558 with the resettlement of Tiberias under the leadership of Doña Gracia, in the wake of Europe’s latest demonstration of how welcome Jewish people really were among their various nations.

The Roots of the Maimonidean Project

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R. Yitshaq alFasi disputed the Geonim and began the task of summarizing the practical law of the Talmud, making it accessible outside of the Geonic academies. Instead of establishing a dynasty like the Geonim did before him, he appointed his disciple Yoseph ibn Megas to lead the academy after him.

R. Yoseph ibn Megas ruled that after the sealing of the Talmud, all legal authorities were equal and the Geonim of his day held no authority solely by virtue of their office. In the academy of Lucena he taught the way of the Talmud to his disciples from Cordoba Maimun the judge and Maimun’s young son, Moshe.

R. Moshe b. Maimun disputed the Geonim and upheld his master’s ruling that after the Talmud, all authorities are equal. He continued his grand-master’s project of summarizing the practical law of the Talmud for public consumption, opting for the more accessible encyclopedia model becoming popular in his era and the common lingua hebraica of the Jewish people.

Rambam’s work shook the rabbinic world and changed the path of rabbinic Judaism, but he was just following in his teachers’ footsteps.

Palestinian Voters in a Jewish State

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Morning thoughts:

Sometimes solutions present themselves when you consider problems from alternate angles.

Scared of how millions of Palestinians will vote, given the chance?

Make sure your democracy is constitutional with a robust institutionalized system of checks and balances (that include the military), in which its democratic nature is preserved against populist hijacking – and make sure your citizens are educated with a modern curriculum that celebrates civics instead of martyrdom, and agree to choose the ballot over the bullet.

Make sure what makes the state Jewish – essentially, historically, timelessly, truly Jewish – is not reducible to expressions of mere ethnocentrism or jingoism, that can (and maybe דווקא should) be threatened by the very proposition of either a modern society embracing the separation of synagogue and state on the one hand, or a shared ethical monotheistic society with the daughters of the Hebrew Bible, Christians and Muslims, on the other.

But I digress.

I don’t see two (or three or four or a million) states as a viable option, for all the reasons. I see a chance for us to make it through this together in one, Israeli/Palestinian, state of all its citizens.

When you really think about it – it’s not as bad as the movie in your head. 😉

Ten Maimonidean Propositions

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1) At Sinai, the people of Israel voluntarily contracted a bilateral covenant with the Creator, mediated by Moses, in which they agreed to follow the precepts instructed to them via Moses.

2) The aforementioned covenant includes a provision for dealing with questions that arise regarding the formulation or practical implementation of its precepts, especially in regards to their more ambiguous aspects that have yet to be officially regulated: consult the highest court and follow their decisions.

3) From the time of Moses until the closing of the Talmud, there was always a high court charged with determining the national calendar and with defining, formulating, and regulating the precepts of the national covenant, although the guises the high court took often changed with the epochs: an assembly of seventy elders, a council of prophets, a great congress, a Sanhedrin, a national academy’s court.

4) A record of the decisions of the high courts is found in the content of the classical rabbinic corpus – the Tosephta, the Siphra and the Siphré, and the two Talmudim – and ends with the last high court to historically serve the entire people of Israel, that of Rabina and R Ashé.

5) After the last high court of Israel disbanded, there is no entity with institutional authority to determine the national calendar; to define, formulate, or regulate the precepts of the national covenant; or to make any laws that are binding on the entire nation.

6) Nevertheless, many other institutions and individuals have, over the centuries, claimed the prerogatives of the highest court, making alternate claims to legal and social authority and even promulgating rulings, laws, and customs at odds with the recorded decisions of that court.

7) Trained in the jurisprudential tradition of the Talmudic academies and comprehensively educated in the classical rabbinic corpus, Rambam undertook the task of constructing an encyclopedic textbook of the actual laws of Israel, the Mishneh Torah (“restatement of the law”), composed in the familiar Hebrew language common to all communities of Israel, that would provide everyone without access to the classical rabbinic corpus with an understanding of what the national covenant requires of them, personally and collectively.

8) Although widely accepted throughout the Middle East and North Africa as part of the new standard in Jewish education and jurisprudence, the Mishneh Torah was also heavily criticized by detractors who objected to both Rambam’s style (in that he presented settled law while only obliquely referencing his sources) and his decisions (challenging his fidelity to the Talmudic record); however, there simultaneously emerged a scholarly defense of Rambam’s work throughout the ages that culminated in R Yoseph Qafeh’s exhaustive commentary to the Mishneh Torah, in which he provided all of Rambam’s sources and successfully rebutted all challenges to Rambam’s decisions vis a vis the Talmudic record.

9) The Mishneh Torah was the work of one brilliant, highly educated, but ultimately human scholar capable of error, and was accordingly subject to constant revision throughout the author’s lifetime (and inescapably contains idiosyncrasies and ambiguities of language and meaning); furthermore, the ever-growing socio-economic gap between the historical world of the cases Rambam discusses and our own modern world, additionally complicates any reading with the aim of practicing what is read.

10) Nevertheless, the final edition of the Mishneh Torah – when read together with the Hebrew Bible – remains the best guide to the laws of the covenant of Israel as understood and decided by the highest courts of Israel throughout history; and the intervening years since its publication have produced an abundance of commentaries, ancillary literature, and actual practice to provide necessary context and elucidation in interpreting Rambam’s decisions.

Who is Indigenous?

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Who is indigenous?

The people of Israel speak the language of this Land, follow the calendar of this Land, retell the myths and stories of this Land, tend and protect this Land, and have considered this Land their ancestral home for 3200+ years.

Most of their descendants were heavily colonized by the empires that came to this Land.

Some of their descendants were exiled from this Land but kept their language, calendar, and religion.

(Are they not indigenous?)

Some of their descendants were allowed to stay on this Land but were forced to adopt their colonizers’ language, calendar, religion, and politics.

(Are they not indigenous?)

Today I met a Native American woman of the Eastern Keresan in what is today called New Mexico, a student of her people’s traditions and an activist on their behalf – who speaks English (while studying Keres), uses the Gregorian calendar (and observes her traditional calendar), and believes in Christianity (as compatible with what she’s been taught of her people’s beliefs).

(Is she not indigenous?)

Hmmm…

The Revolution of Hebrew Philosophy

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When you think about it, part of the cultural revolution that occurred in Judea during the second commonwealth was the movement to institutionalize the authority of the sages in matters of law and life.

That was a radical break from the aristocratic authority of the priests they accepted previously and a rejection of the imperialistic authority of the historical strongmen others accepted around them.

The Hebrew philosophers – the lovers of wisdom – became the people’s guides to the good and holy life, not just picking up the mantle of the Hebrew prophets but (in the manner of the true philosophers) democratizing it and making it accessible to all who would come and listen.

What is a Maimonidean Minyan?

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Some have suggested that what makes a minyan “Maimonidean” is the rigorous exemplification of Maimonides’ halakhic ideals and prescriptions (such as praying with the sunrise).

Others have suggested it is faithful replication of the socio-cultural conditions of the medieval Mediterranean (including the social roles and expectations typical of the period).

On the other hand, we (read: anyone who can get down with the following ideas) would like to suggest that – beyond simply adopting the shorter נוסח התפילות that Rambam recorded in his Mishneh Torah – what makes a minyan “Maimonidean” includes these points:

– Organization around the primary principles of social horizontality (intrinsic non-hierarchy) and fundamental equality before the law (for more on these concepts in Talmudic Judaism, see the work of R. Dr. José Faur z”l), resulting in communal institutions that are meritocratic rather than “aristocratic” and consensus-seeking rather than elitist, and collective loyalty to the system of the Torah as the greatest guarantor of our religious freedoms.

– Qualified adoption of the Mishneh Torah (not as a blind fundamentalist system but as understood in his responsa and by the best of our sages) as a common code in establishing communal norms and the parameters of communal legitimacy, a system meant to be implemented in the real world outside of the ivory tower; based on the understanding that the Mishneh Torah represents the fruits of the research of the greatest scholar in rabbinic history, into the system of settled laws that are actually considered binding upon Jewish communities after the Talmud, and not merely recommended or precedented.

– Recreation of the philosophical atmosphere of Jewish al-Andalus, the socio-intellectual environment that produced Rambam and that he continued in his writings and in his approach to communal leadership; recognizing that achieving positive engagement between philosophy, science, and tradition is no less necessary today than it was in Rambam’s day.

There is more to be said on each of the above points and it can also be argued that this list of core principles is far from exhaustive; the community must develop its vision, together.

But I hope the above serves to clarify some of the basic ideas of what makes a minyan “Maimonidean” in the year 5784, and what we’re trying to achieve with Qongregation Sha’are Shalom

A Short Meditation on International Law and Policy

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The UN is a spectre in Israeli society and a byword among Israelis.

For its part, the UN has maintained a persistent and consistent critique/condemnation of all Israeli policies vis-a-vis Palestinians. On the receiving side, the common perception among Israelis is that the UN is a shield for organizations and even entire states that have declared themselves our mortal enemies.

The truth is somewhere in between. Some of the UN’s criticism of the Israeli state is legitimate, some of Israeli society’s response is legitimate. Much of both is reductive bluster misrepresenting the facts of history and recent events (recent from any vantage point in time, in fact).

But I think that one undeniable outcome of the UN’s endless, obsessive, and condemnatory rhetorical focus on the Israeli state, has been a general weakening of the Israeli public’s trust in international institutions.

In another reality, we might have avoided this war entirely by successfully petitioning for the extradition of Hamas’s leadership at all levels to stand trial for war crimes and by uniting the international community against Iran’s funding of genocidal organizations that train to commit war crimes.

If that alternate reality sounds as ludicrous to you as it does to me – ask yourself why that route wasn’t taken to begin with.