BD"E - Horav Meier Weinberg zt"l

 

 

https://zkstream.com/ytv/  ---- LIVESTREAM LEVAYA

 Rav Meier ZT”L one morning came over to me in the Bais Medrash Koton and said “we need to brush up on hilchos Shabbos”. For the next two years at 8 AM we learned through the entire hilchos Shabbos/Orech Chaim. When I brought him a gift, he told me ” I should give you a gift, I learned more from you than you from me”. That in essence was the greatness of Rav Meier, there was no “Ich”; a personal loss for me, the yeshiva, and Klal Yisroel. A giant of a man! Yehi Zichro Baruch

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When Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz added nekudot to the Talmud text, it took herculean effort, as it was done manually. Now, using artificial intelligence, you can take a new text that has never been seen by the computer, and without any manual intervention all the nekudot can be inserted.

 

For all who missed a yeshiva education and are learning to read Hebrew

https://korenpub.com/ Ask for the "nekudot" edition.

*

RB: Give us an example of a sefer you did this with.

PK: We’ve done it on hundreds of sefarim, but I’ll choose one that’s particularly interesting—Avkat Rokhel, the teshuvot of the Beit Yosef. The version of Avkat Rokhel that’s available was originally printed circa 1865. The Rashi typeface is hard to read, the words are close together, and like many classic rabbinic texts, Avkat Rokhel has very long paragraphs with minimal punctuation. We scanned the sefer and converted it into digital form. The OCR was very accurate. We then inserted nekudot, and after that, we used AI methods to automatically add punctuation.

 

Artificial Intelligence: The Newest Revolution in Torah Study?

 

Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin recently had a conversation with Professor Moshe Koppel at OU headquarters in downtown Manhattan on how digital technology, specifically artificial intelligence, is being applied to Torah study with new and unprecedented techniques, ultimately changing the way we approach and relate to Jewish texts.

Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin: Let’s start with the basics. What exactly does the term “artificial intelligence” mean? When I think of artificial intelligence, I think about 2001: A Space Odyssey or about robots coming to life and taking over Earth. But AI also makes me think of Gmail and how it’s able to fill in missing words and predict how my sentences are going to end.

Prof. Moshe Koppel: In the early days of computers, back in the fifties, the kinds of things computers were designed to do on a regular basis were boring tasks, such as sorting, alphabetizing or searching for something in a file. That was the bread and butter of what computers did.

In 1956, there was a scientific conference at Dartmouth College that is widely regarded as the founding of artificial intelligence. The idea was to try to get computers to do the kind of things people do, such as game playing. Scientists wanted to know—can you get a computer to be a chess champion?

RB: What would make it more difficult for a computer to master a game than to alphabetize or search for a piece of information?

PK: It’s not fundamentally different. But if you think about it, there are lots of obvious methods for sequencing, classifying or searching for things. The trick is just to do it efficiently.

However, to get a computer to play chess effectively, you need to really think through the various steps to figure out what you’re trying to optimize and how to optimize it from among so many possibilities. It’s not obvious what the right technique is.

In 1959, Arthur Samuels, a pioneer in AI, published a paper demonstrating how computers can learn from past mistakes; the vehicle he used to prove it was a game of checkers. Over time scientists were able to get computers to play chess, which is a much more complicated game. In 1996, IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue defeated world champion chess player Garry Kasparov.

There are many different areas in which AI can revolutionize Torah study and, in fact, already has.

RB: I was a kid during Deep Blue. But bring it back to the foundational question, which is: is all of this artificial intelligence?

PK: The truth of the matter is that if you ask somebody where the line is between what we call artificial intelligence and what we simply call computer programming, there’s no big red line between them. In a colloquial sense, if you can get computers to do the kind of tasks people do as well as or better than people do them, that’s called artificial intelligence.

RB: During the last few months, we’ve been hearing about Open AI’s groundbreaking ChatGPT, a program that generates amazing responses to any prompt. Some have prompted the chatbox to write a sermon for the parashah in the writing style of this or that rabbi, for example, and it actually came up with derashot that were new and innovative.

PK: Yes. You could ask ChatGPT for something on the parashah written in the form of rap and it will deliver.

RB: Exactly. So something like ChatGPT raises the following question: how do you see AI revolutionizing the world of Torah study?

PK: That’s a great question. There are many different areas in which AI can revolutionize Torah study and, in fact, already has. Looking toward the future, one can imagine all kinds of virtual reality content for learning korbanot, something I hear is already happening. But, of course, we can do much more than that.

RB: Right. But let’s focus on what we are doing presently to make Torah texts more accessible, things like very advanced text processing.

PK: At Dicta—The Israel Center for Text Analysis, a research institute devoted to developing tools for computational analysis of Jewish texts, we recently came out with a new app called Dicta Maivin (“Dictation Expert”).

Here’s how it works: Take any sefer. On your phone, go to illuminate.dicta.org.il, and take a picture of any page. Using our own version of OCR (optical character recognition), specifically adapted to the fonts typical of rabbinic works, Dicta Maivin will convert the text into digital form. We have the capability of taking a photo of a rabbinic text printed in the nineteenth century in cramped, difficult-to-read Rashi script and converting it into text that is legible and easier to understand. Dicta can also insert nikud (vowelization) into a text; it’s hard for some people to read a sefer that doesn’t have nekudot since many words are ambiguous.

When Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz added nekudot to the Talmud text, it took herculean effort, as it was done manually. Now, using artificial intelligence, you can take a new text that has never been seen by the computer, and without any manual intervention all the nekudot can be inserted.

RB: Give us an example of a sefer you did this with.

PK: We’ve done it on hundreds of sefarim, but I’ll choose one that’s particularly interesting—Avkat Rokhel, the teshuvot of the Beit Yosef. The version of Avkat Rokhel that’s available was originally printed circa 1865. The Rashi typeface is hard to read, the words are close together, and like many classic rabbinic texts, Avkat Rokhel has very long paragraphs with minimal punctuation. We scanned the sefer and converted it into digital form. The OCR was very accurate. We then inserted nekudot, and after that, we used AI methods to automatically add punctuation.

RB: In addition to nekudot and punctuation, there is the challenge of abbreviations. Acronyms are all over rabbinic literature, and some of them are very obscure.

PK: True, kaf-hei-gimmel could either be k’hai gavna (Aramaic for “in such a case”) or it could be kohen gadol. In many cases, abbreviations or even words are ambiguous. Should daled-beit-reish be vocalized as davar, dever or dabeir?

RB: Exactly. Those are great examples.

PK: You need to be able to distinguish between them. Now we have this very advanced AI system that’s able to figure out the intended meaning of the abbreviation based on context.

RB: So all of this is making the text easier, more accessible and more approachable. Torah scholars no longer have to decipher the nekudot or the punctuation, or ambiguous words and abbreviations. I wonder, however, if scholars are welcoming all of this, since I don’t think they want to be replaced.

PK: You’re making a valid point. But there’s something for scholars here too. Let’s say you are learning Chiddushei HaRamban, and Ramban quotes a Sifra or a Sifri, or a gemara or a midrash. If you’ve run the sefer through Dicta Maivin, every time the text cites an earlier source, an automatically generated footnote will provide the original source. For example, it might say: see the gemara in Pesachim on page x. The app basically recreates a scientific edition of rabbinic texts. At the swipe of an icon you can open abbreviations and see footnotes identifying sources and subsequent quotations of the text. For example, there are later commentators who quote the Ramban. If I’m learning a line in the Ramban and I want to know every single Acharon who quoted this particular Ramban, I can now easily access that information. You can also see the different ways the Ramban has been quoted. Maybe Rabbi Moshe Feinstein quoted it one way in a responsum, while the Minchat Yitzchak quoted it slightly differently. You can actually compare all the different versions with the differences highlighted. Notes and paraphrases of later sources can be systematically identified, and digitized manuscripts can be compared. All of this is surely of interest to scholars.

RB: Your description of Dicta Maivin reminds me of the Shazam app, where you play a few seconds of a song and it’ll tell you what song you’re listening to, what album it’s on, who composed it, et cetera. This is Shazam for Torah.

Do you think a time will come in our lifetime when the role of the posek, the halachic decisor, is going to be replaced? Already now, I don’t need to call the rav of my shul to find out what berachah to make on a bowl of corn flakes.

But there are halachic questions involving contingencies. For example, if I want to know if my knife is still kosher, there are a lot of follow-up questions involved in such a question. What did I slice with it? What was I washing it with? How hot was the water? et cetera. Do you think AI will be capable of being taught the guidelines of halachah so that it can pasken she’eilot?

PK: I would divide the world of she’eilot into two parts. It’s really a continuum, but let’s talk about two parts. One is straightforward questions, like what berachah do I say on a bowl of corn flakes, or can I put a teabag into a kli sheini on Shabbat.

RB: That is similar to alphabetizing. Those answers are already out there. A computer simply makes it easier to find them.

PK: Exactly. However, with the existing technology and search engines, such as Sefaria, the Bar-Ilan Responsa Project or Otzar HaHochma, you would not be able to get the answer even to the most simple halachic question. That’s because a keyword like “teabag” or “kli sheini” will generate 1,000 responses and you would have to spend hours sorting through them, which is not very helpful.

But it’s clear that not only in our lifetime but in short order, we are going to be able to find answers to these basic questions. Anyone who’s played around with ChatGPT and seen how astonishing it is knows that you could probably put in some very simple she’eilot and get a fairly reasonable answer.

We have the capability of taking a photo of a rabbinic text printed in the nineteenth century in cramped, difficult-to-read Rashi script and converting it into text that is legible and easier to understand.

I should warn you that while ChatGPT is really good at giving clear and coherent answers, it’s not very good at reliably giving accurate answers. And that’s something we should be concerned about. You would not want to trust ChatGPT with anything really important, whether it’s halachah or anything else that’s really important to your life. ChatGPT is an astonishing parlor trick, in the sense that it could explain game theory’s Nash equilibrium with a more or less reasonable Wikipedia-like answer. What’s remarkable about it is that it’s a text generator, not a text copier. The paragraphs it gives you don’t actually exist anywhere; it has actually created them.

But while it’s an amazing thing, you wouldn’t want to rely on everything it says as being absolutely true. But it’s clear that in a few years, we’ll be able to ask the kind of straightforward she’eilot about which there are no heated arguments among rabbanim. You’ll put in a question such as, “Can I pour the hot water into the cold water on Shabbat?” and it’ll provide a good answer. But the fact of the matter is that such she’eilot were never what rabbanim were for. What you really need rabbanim for are the second kind of questions, where the rav needs to see the person in front of him and understand the situation.

RB: It’s what I’d call sha’at ha’dechak issues, pressing circumstances with life situations. And there’s a difference depending on the questioner. Is the questioner a millionaire or somebody who’s broke and the response might affect his ability to send his kids to yeshivah?

PK: Right. A she’eilah could involve serious concerns such as one’s health, or even be a life-and-death issue. Less serious she’eilot also require a posek who could understand the bigger picture; sometimes it could just be a matter of “it would be very expensive for me to have to do this.” At times, marital conflict might be a factor. For example, a spouse has become less frum or more frum than the other spouse and the couple needs to resolve the issues between them. It’s a matter of shalom bayit. They need to know that maybe they could use a particular kula [halachic leniency] in order to save their marriage. You would not want ChatGPT answering that question.

RB: Do you think there’s going to be a future where AI will be able to factor in these human elements or be able to explore people’s facial expressions?

PK: Yes, for sure. But that will take time and require appropriate caution.

It’s important to add a somewhat obvious thought: it’s crucial for those who pasken she’eilot to have a very broad and deep knowledge of halachah even if the actual material is easily accessible at the click of an icon on their smartphone. A rav often needs to pasken on the basis of intuition because he’s not going to find every individualized question he’s faced with in the Shulchan Aruch or the Mishnah Berurah or the Iggerot Moshe. The only way to develop a strong intuition is through internalizing a tremendous amount of information.

RB: People have this sense—and I certainly have it—they don’t want to be replaced. I want to always feel like I am able to contribute to Torah. I think a part of Torah is the human interpretation, the human partnership with the Torat Hashem. As the gemara in Kiddushin (32b) begins, “u’veTorato yehegeh yomam va’laylah—in his (that is, each person’s) Torah I will meditate day and night,” expounding on the verse in Tehillim 1:2.

I’m wondering what advice you would give to an emerging talmid chacham who sees where things are headed and is concerned that his massive breadth of knowledge is going to be easily replaceable. What skills should he invest in that will be least likely to be replaced by a computer?

PK: The answer is, as I said, developing healthy intuition. You need to understand what’s going on behind the halachah. What are its underlying principles? What moral ideas are there?

More importantly, you need to understand people. A real talmid chacham doesn’t treat someone who’s down on his luck, doesn’t have parnassah, and has shalom bayit problems the same as a person who is wealthy and has minimal stress. A true posek understands what each person needs. He can’t make up halachot, but there’s a certain amount of leeway. He needs to know: where is there room for flexibility and where do you have to be rigid? What does this particular person sitting in front of me need to be able to flourish and live a healthy Torah life? What some other person needs might be very different.

A rav often needs to pasken on the basis of intuition because he’s not going to find every individualized question he’s faced with in the Shulchan Aruch or the Mishnah Berurah or the Iggerot Moshe.

RB: Have you had anyone reach out to you saying, “I don’t like what you’re doing here,” or push back saying, “We’ve got to draw a line”? There’s so much work being done in AI safety to make sure that we’re not literally replaced by computers. So I’m curious, have there been people in the Torah world who are, so to speak, concerned about the safety of AI Torah?

PK: Interestingly enough, that hasn’t been the case. I’m not one to shy away from controversy, but the fact of the matter is that Dicta cooperates with Orthodox Jews across the specturm. We work with with a lot of Chareidi groups, as well as with Sefaria and other organizations, and we really haven’t gotten any push back at all. So far, nobody has told us they’re frightened by what we’re doing because for the most part, we’re just providing a service to people.

RB: Give me one moment in your career where you saw a computer do something and you gasped and said, “Wow, I didn’t think I’d see this in my lifetime.”

PK: Well, that happened some months ago with ChatGPT. I put some questions into ChatGPT, and I was shocked. It’s jaw-dropping. You can literally say: tell me the halachot of bishul on Shabbat and do it in limerick. And it does it.

RB: What’s next for AI? What do you predict the world will look like in twenty-five years from now?

PK: Well, first of all, we’re going to be facing the kinds of halachic questions that we really haven’t thought about a lot. Consider the halachic area of grama, an indirect action on Shabbat. Technological inventions like those by the Zomet Institute in Israel use grama as the basis for allowing certain things that people need for medical or other reasons, such as motorized wheelchairs.

In the future, you are going to think that you would like your driverless car to pull up in front of your house and take you somewhere, and it will do that. You’ll have cars coming exactly when you want them to come and taking you anywhere.

What we’re accustomed to now is that if you want to get a certain consequence, like you want to get yourself in your car from here to there, you need to perform an action. As far as we know, what is forbidden on Shabbat are those actions. You can’t drive your car because of the combustion engine. But what happens when you can get the consequences—such as getting from here to there in your car—just through your thoughts or by preprogramming something before Shabbat?

To put that more broadly, what you’re really doing is separating actions from consequences of actions. You’ll be able to get the consequence without the action. Will that be forbidden on Shabbat as well because we’re trying to avoid those consequences? Or is it just purely a technical matter, that is, if you’re not performing the actual action, then it’s perfectly okay?

RB: Final question: on a personal level, do you like learning digitally?

PK: No. I never learn from a computer. I open up an old-fashioned Gemara and just learn straight from the Gemara.

RB: Professor Koppel, thank you so much for your time.

https://jewishaction.com/cover-story/artificial-intelligence-the-newest-revolution-in-torah-study/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=March%202023_Spring%20issue_Pre-Pesach%20(1)&utm_content=&spMailingID=34835331&spUserID=Mzc0Njg4NTUwNDk0S0&spJobID=2383382670&spReportId=MjM4MzM4MjY3MAS2

The exposure of leading Fox media figures, whom many in our community trust as sources of the truth, as money-driven, manipulative liars, presents an opportunity for self-reflection....

 

Overpaid Lying Rats on Fox

Fox News Lies Revealed: An Opportunity for the Orthodox Community

 Guest post  --- an anonymous member of the Orthodox community

 

Last month, we learned of deliberate, financially motivated lying by such major Fox News personalities as Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Rupert Murdoch himself. Internal Fox News text messages and emails, disclosed in a filing in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against Fox, prove that Carlson et al were perfectly aware that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and that on-air guests like Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani were nothing but (in their words) “crazy” liars spinning absurd tales about voter fraud.

But, Fox chose to lie about the election. Afraid of losing viewers like us to Newsmax, they decided to keep their own rational, fact-based opinions to themselves and put a great deal of effort into spreading the “stolen election” lie. They did this because they are greedy opportunists who value their wealth and status in the media world more than the survival of the United States as a country in which the government represents the will of the people.

In case you haven’t heard about this, you can read about it in the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal, which still has enough journalistic integrity to report a story that is unflattering in the extreme. Keep in mind that Fox is the messaging leader in the world of politically conservative media. What we hear on the conservative talk radio is usually based on Fox headline programming.

The exposure of leading Fox media figures, whom many in our community trust as sources of the truth, as money-driven, manipulative liars, presents an opportunity for self-reflection. Let’s take a look at the assumptions and beliefs that should be up for reevaluation based on the disclosure of this systematic abuse of the truth in exchange for money and power:

• The stolen election lie itself—The claim that Trump won the election, but had the election stolen from him by dark, “sinister” forces on the left, is not a low-impact lie. People were killed and maimed at the January 6 attack on the Capitol because of this lie. Vice President Mike Pence faced assassination at the hands of a mob whose fury was fueled by this lie. Election officials received death threats because of this lie. The lie has also shaken the foundations of the American political system. It wrongly calls all elections into question and furthers the deeply corrupt idea, held by many Republicans, that, “It only counts if we win.”

• The implications of the revelations—If these Fox personalities can lie about the election, an ehrlich person might want to know what else they have lied about. If you believe that climate change is a hoax, that the QAnon conspiracy is real, that COVID was a Chinese conspiracy, that vaccines are deadly, that Hillary Clinton is a murdering pedophile, that Mexican gangs are taking over America, that Latino immigrants are job-stealing rapists… and on and on… this would be a good time to ask, “Is it possible that I was being lied to about these things, too?” Because, we probably were, and if we continue to repeat these stories, we’re complicit in the sheker—and again, these are claims that are leading to murder and mayhem that’s increasingly antisemitic. After all, the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre was a direct result of immigration lies told in right wing media. It was just one of many deadly antisemitic plots fomented by lies linking Jews to immigration in conservative media, i.e., the “Great Replacement Theory” espoused by Tucker Carlson and others.

• What this revelation says about us—As we repeat conservative media talking points at kiddush club as if they were the emes min Ha Shamayim, this would be a great time to take a look in the mirror and ask ourselves if this is what HKBH really wants from us. Now that we know that the “stop the steal” story was nothing but a lie perpetrated by non-Jews who don’t care about us, perhaps consider stopping—or at least thinking—before we open our mouths the next time we hear a story that’s too good to be true. If we don’t, then accept the fact that we’ve been played as fools. We’ve been fed a lie that’s profitable for Fox. If we repeated it, they took advantage of us by getting us to do their dishonest bidding.

The opportunity presents itself. Consider acting on it. Our rights and freedoms, including the ability to practice religion free from harassment, free speech, and our very safety—along with the future of the United States—might depend on it.

A Happy & Healthy Passover To All * Shootouts in the city are common, and bodies are often removed from the crime scene and disposed of in order to hide evidence of the cartels’ gruesome crimes*

 

 COMPLIMENTARY PLOT FOR EVERY $100,000 CHECK THAT CLEARS THE BANK

 

2023 Passover Programs in Mexico

https://www.passoverlistings.com/passover-programs-mexico/

2 Americans Kidnapped in Mexico Found Alive, 2 Found Dead - No Shmura Matza Found

Four American citizens were attacked by a group of armed men in the border city of Matamoros, Mexico over the weekend and abducted. Two of them have been found alive.

MEXICO CITY—Two of the four U.S. citizens that were kidnapped over the weekend shortly after crossing the Texas border into Mexico have been found dead. The remaining two Americans have been found alive, one of them with serious injuries.

“We haven’t stopped looking for them since Friday, and today, about 35 minutes ago we could confirm that two of them are deceased, one injured and one found alive,” Tamaulipas Governor Américo Villarreal said in a phone call to Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador during his morning press conference on Tuesday.

The Americans crossed over to the border city of Matamoros in the state of Tamaulipas on Friday, apparently so one of them could get a medical procedure, according to reporting by CNN. But shortly after arriving, gunmen unloaded a hail of bullets on their vehicle. 

The group were from the Lake City region in South Carolina in a white mini-van. They were identified as Latavia "Tay" Washington McGee, 33, Shaeed Woodard, Zindell Brown and their friend Eric James, according to CNN. 

Video Shows Americans Shot and Kidnapped in Mexico Border City

Investigators believe the Americans were targeted by the Gulf Cartel, one of the two criminal groups fighting to control the region, who likely mistook the Americans for a rival gang, a U.S. official familiar with the ongoing investigation told CNN.

The Americans have no criminal history, according to the official.

Video of the aftermath of the attack, which took place in broad daylight, spread quickly on social media and showed a terrifying scene. Armed men forced a woman into the back of a white pick up truck. The other three Americans, who were injured, were then dragged by the men and loaded into the back of the same truck.

The city of Matamoros is currently ground zero of an ongoing war between rival factions of the Gulf Cartel. Shootouts in the city are common, and bodies are often removed from the crime scene and disposed of in order to hide evidence of the cartels’ gruesome crimes.

 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/z3mb34/2-americans-kidnapped-in-mexico-found-alive-2-found-dead?utm_source=email&utm_medium=editorial&utm_content=news&utm_campaign=230307

Purim Sameach

 

Rashbam’s commentary is famous for its brevity and commitment to the plain meaning of the text, to pshat - I found myself particularly struggling with the illustrations in their depiction of how the king chose his new queen, a process that in the text of the Megillah was almost certainly not fully consensual, if it was consensual at all.

 

This Graphic Novel is a Bible Commentary. But What Kind?

 

(Pshuto Shel Mikra Understood Correctly) (PM)

The recent "ban" of the seforim "pshuto shel mikra" says much about the fear of not being able to explain away with drash the historical truth about the events as described.

I want to start this review by warning you that I am going to do something very unfair, which is that I am going to review a new graphic novel version of Megillat Esther—a book that was clearly designed for children—as though it were written for adults.

There are two reasons for this. The first is that I can, because nobody knows what a kids book is supposed to look like. Maurice Sendak famously said that he was only a children’s book author because other people told him he was. Shel Silverstein chose author photos for his books that seem intentionally designed to terrify children into wondering whether they were actually reading a murder mystery. And graphic novels, despite being descended from comics, have always had a dark streak; the two most important entries in the genre are Spiegelman’s Maus and Eisner’s A Contract with God.

The second reason is that we’re at a moment in Jewish history when illustrated sefarim like this deserve to be treated as more than a spoonful of sugar. As I have argued indirectly on this website and directly on my own, the only reason that text has been the sole vessel for sacred ideas is that text was the only thing a displaced people could reliably transmit. This just isn’t true anymore: Digital data storage can hold text, audio, or video with equal ease, and printers don’t care if the output is words or images. In an era where pictures are more than just a luxury, we need to start taking them seriously. Specifically, we need to start taking them seriously as a form of commentary.

But what kind of commentary? As I paged through Jordan Gorfinkel and Yael Nathan’s masterful illustrations, I kept coming back to this question. Not Nahmanides, certainly; a Nahmanidean graphic novel would likely have overlaid the actual story of Esther with a multitude of aggadic and mystical allusions, perhaps to the point where the original story was no longer visible (JT Waldman’s Megillat Esther is much closer to this style.) Nor was this an Ibn Ezra-style effort to extract both historical and philological accuracy from the text; indeed, I didn’t get the sense that the artists got particularly hung up on making sure that their depictions of Aḥashverosh’s palace or the characters’ vestments were particularly accurate.

Instead, Gorfinkel and Nathan’s work is something like Rashbam inflected with bits of Rashi. Rashbam’s commentary is famous for its brevity and commitment to the plain meaning of the text, to pshat. Rashi, meanwhile, felt much more comfortable drawing in rabbinic source material, so that the reader might see the Bible as the rabbis saw it. In addition, his experience with the Crusades led him to view the source text through the lens of Jewish persecution. This graphic novel’s commitments are clearly to the plain meaning of the text, but it interrupts this occasionally to offer an idea that goes beyond it, especially those ideas that involve Jewish vulnerability.

Let me give an example. As many children know, Haman does not appear in the story of Esther until the beginning of the third chapter. In the first chapter, however, King Aḥashverosh is advised to severely punish his then-queen Vashti by one Memukhan, who the rabbis identified as Haman by another name. Gorfinkel and Nathan clearly liked this idea, and so the last time we see Memukhan he is putting on a new hat that looks very much like a hamantaschen. When Haman arrives in chapter 3, he is depicted with the same hat—but Memukhan’s flowing beard and facial hair have been replaced by an instantly recognizable toothbrush mustache. An elegant insertion of and solution to a textual problem, and not the edition’s only overt reference to the Holocaust.

Something similar takes place in the depiction of Aḥashverosh’s well-adorned palace, which the rabbis understood to have been festooned with artifacts stolen from the Temple. There, behind the king’s throne, we see the famous menorah perched haphazardly in a Scrooge-McDuck-style pile of gold. The king himself wears the high priest’s breastplate as just another bit of glitz.

Allusions to moments of Jewish violence are interspersed in the text, as well. The Megillah’s brief mention that Haman is an Agagite (Esther 3:1)—suggesting that he descends from the king of the Amalekites—leads the artists to create a one-panel synopsis of the Amalekite attack on the Israelites as described in Exodus 17. Haman’s depiction of the Jews as a people “who do not obey the king’s own laws” (Esther 3:8) is accompanied by caricatures of long-nosed figures counting their money. Most prominently, the image of Haman’s ten hanged children is mirrored with a depiction of twelve dead Nazis, presumably a reference to the Nuremberg tribunal and Julius Streicher’s declaration “Dies ist mein Purimfest 1946!” seconds before he was hanged. These moments of explicit connection between the past and the future are present throughout the book, and given that they also appear in Gorfinkel’s graphic novel Haggadah it is fair to understand them as a hallmark of the artist.

This is all to say that the book is good; just ask my daughter, who hasn’t yet learned to read and yet has told herself the story of Purim countless times this past week with the aid of its images. Even if this isn’t a book for kids, it is certainly a book that kids are going to like. This leads me to my chief criticism of the edition, which is that it highlights all the ways that Purim cannot be all the things we want it to be at the same time.

Take that image of the menorah, for example. When the Megillah is read aloud, the reader typically acknowledges the sadness behind the verse by momentarily dropping from Esther’s upbeat cantillation to the mournful tones of the book of Lamentations. This book by Gorfinkel and Nathan doesn’t really allow for that kind of complexity; its sad moments don’t feel all that sad. The same is true for the multiple hangings that take place throughout the book, which are depicted as literally bloodless; more often than not, the hanged figures only appear in silhouette. (By contrast, in an edition of the Megillah that my own publishing house released this year, some of the cards are literally speckled with “blood”—but we weren’t making something quite so focused on children.) Jewish violence against gentiles is depicted as a Hanukkah-style military contest—armed men pitted against armed men—whereas the story of Esther has the Jews at large, and not just soldiers, acting under a literal license to kill. I found myself particularly struggling with the illustrations in their depiction of how the king chose his new queen, a process that in the text of the Megillah was almost certainly not fully consensual, if it was consensual at all. In all of these instances, I found that the illustrators’ choices only amplified my bafflement at how a holiday with a story like this could be the most kid-centric.

I don’t think this is the illustrators’ fault. As with all Bible commentaries, sometimes the questions raised are more interesting than the answers given; in fact, great questions with unsatisfying answers are one of the primary engines for Torah study. The era of graphical commentaries is only just beginning; the Megillah itself will doubtless be illustrated over and over again, and each attempt will try to say something new.

It is my hope that future editions of the Megillah will attempt to grapple with the tensions unresolved by their predecessors, perhaps helping us solve visually what those of us stuck in the texts have struggled with for so long, using the nuance of imagery to communicate things that are too tricky for mere words, much as the rabbis used aggadah to say things that Halakhah could not. Children raised on books like this are going to look for something more as they grow. What will we give them next?

 

04:17

To what extent is the criticism against Peshuto shel Mikra valid? How can we trust haskamos?

PSHUTO SHEL MIKRA BEGINS AT 4:17.

https://thelehrhaus.com/holidays/this-graphic-novel-is-a-bible-commentary-but-what-kind/?utm_source=Lehrhaus+Readers&utm_campaign=cee1b2e299-Lehrhaus+Latest+152_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5effc5ad09-cee1b2e299-19243567&mc_cid=cee1b2e299&mc_eid=a570c54e7f

Scientists Discover Israeli Knesset Politicians Lived 50 Million Years Ago - More Proof That This Is Our Land - No Palestinians Date Back That Far

 

Israeli zoologists find new family of snakes dating back 50 million years

 

A new snake family named Micrelapidae that includes only three species – two in East Africa and one in Israel – has as identified by an international team including Israeli zoologists.

The Micrelaps Snakes

The Gantze Micrelaps Mishpocho - Micrelaps is a genus of rear-fanged venomous snakes

Wildlife species are disappearing rapidly around the world but rarely is a new one discovered. A new snake family named Micrelapidae that includes only three species –– has as identified by an international team including Israeli zoologists.

The study, conducted by researchers from Finland, the US, Belgium, Madagascar, Hong Kong and Israel, has just been published in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution under the title “Ultraconserved elements-based phylogenomic systematics of the snake superfamily Elapoidea, with the description of a new Afro-Asian family.” 

Prof. Shai Meiri of the School of Zoology at Tel Aviv University (TAU), the Wise Faculty of Life Sciences and the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History Museum took part in an extensive study that identified the new family of snakes. According to the researchers, small snakes –usually with black and yellow rings – diverged from the rest of the evolutionary tree of snakes about 50 million years ago.

What do we know about Micrelapidae, the new snake family?

Micrelaps is a genus of rear-fanged venomous snakes in the family Atractaspididae. The genus is native to Africa and the Middle East. It has a small head that doesn’t look different from the neck, and its body is round with a short tail. 

“Today we tend to assume that most large groups of animals, such as families, are already known to science, but sometimes we still encounter surprises, and this is what happened with Micrelapid snakes,” said Meiri. “For years, they were considered members of the largest snake family, the Colubridae, but multiple DNA tests conducted over the last decade contradicted this classification. Since then, snake researchers around the world have tried to discover which family these snakes do belong to – to no avail. In this study, we joined the scientific effort.”

The researchers used micro-CT technology – high-resolution magnetic imaging – to examine the snake’s structure, focusing specifically on the skull. They also applied methods of deep genomic sequencing, examining about 4,500 ultra-conserved elements – regions in the genome that take millions of years to exhibit any change. “In addition to the DNA of Micrelaps, we sampled DNA from various snake groups to which they might have belonged. In this way we discovered in Micrelaps some unique genomic elements, which were not found in any of the other groups,” Meiri added. 

The researchers said their findings indicate since Micrelaps diverged from the rest of the evolutionary tree of snakes about 50 million years ago.

Apparently, this is a very small family, including only three species: Two in Kenya and Tanzania and one in Israel and nearby regions. This geographic dispersion suggests that these snakes probably originated in Africa, and then, at some point in their history, some of them made their way north through the Great Rift Valley. 

 

https://www.jpost.com/environment-and-climate-change/article-733159?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&

Leifer, 56, an Israeli mother of eight children, faces 29 charges related to sexual abuse, including rape, indecent assault and sexual penetration of a child aged 16 or 17 in her care or supervision.

 

Malka Leifer protested her innocence in tears as she was stood down, County Court trial hears

A court sketch of former school principal Malfa Leifer, who has pleaded not guilty to 29 sex abuse charges.

Key points:

• One former staff member detailed how Mrs Leifer protested her innocence at a board meeting in the wake of the allegations
• The court heard how the school took "measures" such as putting a window in the door of the principal's office after accusations of sexual abuse came to light
• Mrs Leifer, who has denied the abuse took place, was described by defence lawyers as a "particularly hard-working teacher"

Warning: This story contains details of allegations of sexual abuse.

Mrs Leifer, 56, has pleaded not guilty to abusing three sisters while she was principal of the ultra-Orthodox Adass Israel Jewish School in Melbourne's south-east.

Esther Spigelman, a former department head at the school, told the County Court trial she attended a board meeting when Mrs Leifer was stood down.

During cross examination, Ms Spigelman agreed Mrs Leifer was in tears at the meeting.

"Did she say 'I did nothing wrong'?" defence lawyer Ian Hill asked, "and what was happening was unfair?".

Ms Spigelman answered "yes" to both questions.

Prosecutors allege Mrs Leifer, now 56, abused the sisters in staff offices, on camps and at her home.

Sisters Dassi Erlich, Nicole Meyer and Elly Sapper allege the offences occurred while they were students of the Adass Israel School, and when they worked there as junior religious studies teachers.

During the trial, prosecutors claimed the sisters had little understanding about sex when the alleged offences occurred, due to their strict religious upbringing.

On Monday, Ms Erlich's ex-husband said she initially spoke of Ms Leifer "in glowing terms" and considered her a trusted confidante.

He said Ms Erlich's attitude towards Ms Leifer changed in 2008, when she made disclosures about Ms Leifer to a counsellor in Israel.

Staff describe how Mrs Leifer closely mentored student teachers

Three years later the campus underwent renovations, Adass Israel School's executive head Jennifer Measey told the court.

She said a window was installed in the door of the principal's office and two walls were knocked down, meaning part of the office could be combined with a classroom.

Ms Measey said the door handles were changed, and large cloth dividers were removed from some rooms.

"We took a lot of measures," Ms Measey said.

During her tenure as principal, Ms Measey said Mrs Leifer's duties included looking after "the welfare and education of the girls" at the school.

"She would make sure any materials given to the students were appropriate, according to the ethos and philosophy of the school," Ms Measey told the court.

Another staff member, Sharon Bromberg, said sex education was not taught at the school, and agreed a "typical family" from the Adass Israel community would not have access to things like televisions or newspapers.

Ms Bromberg said Mrs Leifer's role meant she closely mentored student teachers, meeting them at her home and in private in her office, sometimes on Sundays.

Ms Bromberg said Mrs Leifer was a busy mother of eight children, and agreed with defence lawyer Ian Hill that she was a "particularly hard-working teacher".

When asked by Mr Hill whether Ms Leifer "led by example", Ms Bromberg took a deep sigh and paused.

"I'm not 100 per cent comfortable with that phrase," she said.

The trial continues.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-02-28/malka-leifer-trial-sexual-abuse-trial-protesting-innocence/102031686

"Perhaps at the same time, you can blame us (the LGBTQ+ community) for the cost of living and inflation?” Why not add Arye Deri, Internet, terrorism, skinny jeans, non-kosher cellphones?

LGBTQ+ community to blame for earthquakes, prominent Donkey rabbi claims

 

Rabbi Amar said that the earthquakes that have struck Israel are a direct result of the rise in LGBTQ+ rights in Israel.

 

Sephardic Chief Horse Tail of Jerusalem, Shlomo Amar

Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem and former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel Shlomo Amar said that recent earthquakes in Israel are a direct result of the rise in rights and freedoms for LBGTQ+ people during his weekly lesson.

Using a passage from the Talmud to demonstrate his claim, Rabbi Amar made the case that the earthquakes that have struck Israel in the aftermath of the devastating earthquakes in Turkey and Syria can be attributed to the rise in gay marriages in Israel.

"It's not me interpreting, it's the language of the Gemara" he said, quoting from the Talmudic passage: "God said you are shocking your people for something that is not yours."

"As a gay man, Rabbi Amar, and as someone who was sent on behalf of this channel to Turkey to cover the earthquakes, it's good to know that in your opinion, I and my community members are responsible for this disaster," Koel said. "Perhaps at the same time, you can blame us (the LGBTQ+ community) for the cost of living and inflation?”

horse's ass - Urban Dictionary - Also see: idiot

n: An oblivious idiot who generally says and does things that draw laughter at him, for being such an unbelievable moron.

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-732914?_ga=2.5976945.333338930.1677420285-1705651145.1641705897&

"Non-Profit" Cancer...Publicly accessible tax documents show Eckstein’s total compensation in 2018 was more than $700,000, and that his daughter Yael Eckstein, who then served as executive vice president, earned more than $400,000. In 2019, the year the elder Eckstein died, his total compensation jumped to roughly $3 million...

 

Criticism of prominent rabbi’s salary may have been erased from the internet due to fraud, investigation claims

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein and his daughter Yael 

 

(JTA) — Did someone associated with the late Rabbi Yehiel Eckstein’s nonprofit pay a company to remove criticism of his and his daughter’s salaries from the internet?

That’s the question being raised by a recent Washington Post investigation into the allegedly fraudulent activities of a firm that launders clients’ online reputations.

The large organization Eckstein founded, the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, raises funds from evangelical Christians and other donors for impoverished Jews. It also facilitates Jewish emigration to Israel, including from Ukraine. Eckstein founded the group in 1983, and died in 2019. 

But the issue of his compensation came up last week in a Washington Post expose about a company that allegedly makes baseless claims to protect the reputations of public figures. The Post reviewed nearly 50,000 records of the company, Eliminalia, documenting its activities on behalf of almost 1,500 clients over six years. Some paid more than $200,000 for the company’s services. 

In the Eckstein case, Eliminalia is accused of demanding that the publishing platform WordPress erase two blog posts criticizing Yechiel and Yael Eckstein’s salaries as excessive, on the fraudulent basis that the posts were plagiarized from other sources.

The blog posts were written by Geri Ungurean, whom the Post identifies as a 71-year-old retiree in Maryland, and who also appears to identify as a “Jewish Christian.” Both posts, published in 2015 and 2018, were titled “Why Christians should Not Give Money to Rabbi Eckstein of IFCJ.” 

Publicly accessible tax documents show Eckstein’s total compensation in 2018 was more than $700,000, and that his daughter Yael Eckstein, who then served as executive vice president, earned more than $400,000. In 2019, the year the elder Eckstein died, his total compensation jumped to roughly $3 million, which an IFCJ spokesperson, Shavit Greenberg, said was due to a death benefit paid out to his widow. The nonprofit’s revenue in both years exceeded $100 million. A Haaretz article published in 2017 also questioned the size of Yechiel Eckstein’s salary. 

The top salaries of Jewish nonprofit executives and their employees has long been a topic of discussion and concern among Jewish groups. In 2017, the Forward counted 18 CEOs who were earning more than half a million dollars. The introduction to the survey said that since the Forward’s previous survey of CEO compensation, “the gender gap at Jewish non-profits has only widened and a few non-profit executives are receiving extraordinary payouts.” This year, a survey of Jewish nonprofit employees by Leading Edge, which focuses on workplace culture at Jewish groups, found that fewer than half of respondents said their “salary is fair relative to similar roles at my organization.”

In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Greenberg said the organization “has never engaged Eliminalia or any firm that engages in unethical practices.” She said that IFCJ asked the Post to send documentation of the payment to Eliminalia but did not receive it.

Greenberg’s statement added that the organization could not say whether Yehiel Eckstein paid for the service himself — though it did not rule that possibility out. If Eckstein did have a role in hiring Eliminalia, it would have been well before the company’s alleged activity on his behalf took place: The Post article made clear that Eliminalia was hired on the Ecksteins’ behalf in 2020, more than a year after the elder Eckstein died.

“If there is a record of Rabbi Eckstein making such payment over five years ago, it was a personal decision made completely independent of The Fellowship,” Greenberg said. “Rabbi passed in 2019 and is the only one able to comment on the alleged payment to Eliminalia.”

Asked about the discrepancy in dates, Greenberg wrote via email, “The Fellowship nor our current president has ever engaged with Eliminalia and had never heard of the company until the article.”

The Post wrote the expose with the assistance of Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based consortium of investigative journalists. Forbidden Stories had obtained internal documents detailing Eliminalia’s methods. Eliminalia did not respond to the Post’s requests for comment, citing “business secrecy.”

Eliminalia’s techniques, according to the Post, include burying negative stories in search results by supplanting them with positive ones from fake news sites — a practice that media watchdogs see as unethical, but not illegal. What is illegal is another practice: making false claims to web hosts that content on their sites has been previously published by other outlets, and is therefore copyright protected and should be erased.

That, according to the Post, is how Eliminalia approached WordPress about Ungurean’s blog in 2020. Two companies claimed copyright of Ungurean’s 2015 and 2018 blog entries. According to the Post article, those companies show no sign of existing other than to make those claims.

Eliminalia was paid roughly $6,400 for the action, the Post reported. Ungurean shared emails with the Post from Automattic, WordPress’s parent company, that said the company ignored the requests, finding them suspect.

Nonetheless, the 2015 post disappeared. The 2018 post is still online. Automattic told Ungurean that someone using her log-in erased the 2015 post in January 2022. Ungurean told the Post she did not erase her content and believes her account was hacked.

The Post compared two searches on Yahoo for “Yael Eckstein salary,” one in October 2020 and one from last month. On the 2020 search, the 2018 blog post by Ungurean shows up fifth; last month’s search did not turn up the blog post in its first 100 entries. Among the top posts, however, is an advertisement entitled “Yael Eckstein: Salary, Spending and the Non-Profit Double Standard,” in which the younger Eckstein posits that non-profit executives should get salaries commensurate with the for-profit sector.

Kanievsky in 2013 made headlines when he ruled against men wearing skinny pants or jeans, warning at the time that those who intentionally wear such garments will face ex-communication.

 

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky’s pants taken off (auction site)

 

Pants on Fire - "I the undersigned do testify that the black trousers size 64 from the Shai Shaul company ripped at the bottom were worn by my grandfather... R. Chaim Kanievsky OBM for a long period and my eyes were privileged to see him dressed in them"

SIZE 64 HOLY PANTS - NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH "SKINNY PANTS"

Prime Judaica had planned to put authenticated item of clothing under hammer; one (IDIOT) collector tells New York Post he planned to buy item and rent it out to devout Jews who might want to get married wearing the rabbi’s clothes.

 

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky

 

An auction house that planned to offer a pair of torn pants that belonged to a late venerated ultra-Orthodox rabbi has taken the item off its website.

The pants once belonged to Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, an Israeli Haredi leader considered by his followers as the leading Jewish authority of his generation. Kanievsky died last year at age 94, and the pants were to go up for auction on March 1 at the Prime Judaica auction house with a starting bid of $3,200.

However, the New York Post reported on Saturday the item was removed ten minutes after it requested information about the lot on Friday.

Prime Judaica did not provide information about why it had apparently changed its plan to auction off the pants, according to the report, which cited unnamed experts as claiming that under some Orthodox interpretations the clothes Kanievksy wore while studying Torah could be considered holy.

Israel Clapman, a Jewish art dealer, told the Post “there’s definitely money to be made.”

Clapman explained he was interested in buying the pants and then renting them out to devout Jews who might want to get married wearing the rabbi’s clothes.

“We demand they put pants back on,” he said in an apparent jest.

Abe Kugielsky, director at auction house J. Greenstein & Company, who specializes in Judaica, criticized the planned auction.

“I understand if it’s his hat, his tzitzit, or tallis or tefillin, but pants I find to be very repulsive,” he said referring to various religious items the rabbi used. “Imagine if they auctioned off the pope’s sock.”

The pants had been listed in Hebrew as “Holy pants from the Prince of Torah, our leader Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky.”

Included on the auction house page was a letter written and signed by Gedalyahu Konigsberg, who identifies himself as a grandson of, and former aide to, Kanievsky.

“I, the undersigned, testify that these black pants… of the Shai Shaul company, with a rip on the bottom, were worn by my elder, the esteemed Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, of blessed righteous memory, for a long period of time,” reads the letter signed by Konigsberg. “I merited to see him wearing this with my own eyes.”

On the website of an online retailer, Shai Shaul pants run from roughly $13.50 to $16.25.

Though the page offering Kanievsky’s pants is no longer available on the auction house website, an archived version was still available on the internet.

Letters and legal rulings written by Kanievsky have gone to auction for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars, and started going up for sale during his lifetime.

Kanievsky in 2013 made headlines when he ruled against men wearing skinny pants or jeans, warning at the time that those who intentionally wear such garments will face ex-communication.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/rabbi-chaim-kanievskys-pants-taken-off-auction-site/

Forbidden Idol Worship & Insanity To The Extreme! A Disgusting Display of Dead Man Worship!

 

Torn pants of late haredi Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky will be auctioned starting at $3,200

 

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky seen at his home in  Bnei Brak, Israel

 

 

(JTA) — A pair of pants coming up for auction are being described as “holy” — and not just because they’re a little torn. 

Rather, the pants once belonged to the late Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, an Israeli haredi Orthodox leader considered by his followers to be the leading Jewish authority of his generation. Kanievsky died last year at age 94, and now anyone can be the owner of his trousers – provided they can afford them. The starting bid is $3,200. 

The bidding at the Prime Judaica auction house, in the heavily haredi New Jersey city of Lakewood, begins March 1. The item is listed in Hebrew as “Holy pants from the Prince of Torah, our leader Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky.”

Included on the auction house page is a letter written and signed by Gedalyahu Konigsberg, who identifies himself as a grandson of, and former aide to, Chaim Kanievsky.

“I, the undersigned, testify that these black pants… of the Shai Shaul company, with a rip on the bottom, were worn by my elder, the esteemed Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, of blessed righteous memory, for a long period of time,” reads the letter signed by Konigsberg. “I merited to see him wearing this with my own eyes.”

On the website of an online retailer, Shai Shaul pants run from roughly $13.50 to $16.25.

Letters and legal rulings written by Kanievsky have gone to auction for hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars, and started going up for sale during his lifetime. 

"A yeshiva built with stolen money, will not remain" (האבן א קיים) - Moreinu Rav Yaakov Kamenetzky ZT"L - Winter 1978 - Miami Beach, Florida

 Yeshiva Torah Temima Sold To Satmar

א ישיבה געבויט מיט געגנבעט געלט, וועט נישט האבן א קיים

 WIKI - The yeshiva made headlines when one of its teachers and assistant principal,^[9] Joel (Yehuda) Kolko, was charged in 2006 with sexually abusing two first-graders and forcing an adult former student to touch him during a visit to the school. Six former students also filed suit against the yeshiva, alleging the school administrators knew about Kolko’s molestation of students for decades, but sought to cover it up and intimidate students who spoke out. Kolko later pleaded guilty to two lesser counts of child endangerment and was sentenced to three years' probation,^[10] later left the school,^[11] and died in November 2020. The suit also alleged that school principal Lipa Margulies waged a "a campaign of intimidation, concealment and misrepresentations designed to prevent victims from filing lawsuits."^[12] Four of the lawsuits were dismissed for being filed beyond the then five year statute of limitations. In October, 2016 it was reported that the school had reached a $2.1 million settlement on the two remaining cases.^[13] In August, 2019 Baruch Sandhaus filed a lawsuit under the Child Victims Act (NYS Kings County Supreme Court Index #518057/2019)^[14] against Yeshiva Torah Temimah, Kolko and Yoel Falk,^[15] alleging that Kolko^[16] and Falk^[17] sexually abused him around 1980 with the knowledge of the yeshiva and Margulies. In December 2019, an additional lawsuit was filed under the Child Victims Act against the school and Margulies (NYS Kings County Supreme Court Index #526789/2019) by a "John Doe" plaintiff alleging that Kolko sexually abused him in 1994 while he was a student at the yeshiva. 

"On the Rabbi's Knee". NYMag.com. 

Yeshiva Torah Vodaath Versus Lipa Margulies!

The Criminal History of Lipa Margulies and Yeshiva Torah Temima:

 READ THE TRUTH:

http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2010/04/yeshiva-torah-vodaath-versus-lipa.html

Part Two:

http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2010/05/yeshiva-torah-vodaath-versus-lipa.html