Amos dedicated the bulk of his prophecy to railing against the well-heeled, calling them “cows of Bashan”: “They drink [straight] from the wine bowls, And anoint themselves with the choicest oils— But they are not concerned about the food/ruin (shever) of Joseph” (Amos 6:6). And yet, in Amos’s climactic prophecy, he shifts his focus to…
Firefighters saved a 100-year-old Torah from a house fire on Arcadia Court in Boca Raton, Fla. on Tuesday. The firefighters extinguished the blaze and went back into the home to get the Torah at the owners’ request. In a video posted by the local CBS News affiliate, a woman, presumably a resident of the home,…
Updated 3:30 p.m. Images of Torah scrolls yanked open, ripped apart, and strewn across the sanctuary at Nessah Synagogue in Beverly Hills last Shabbat has left a knot in the collective gut of the Los Angeles Jewish community and American Jewry more broadly, which is still reeling from a murderous attack at a Jersey City…
Torah scrolls damaged in a fire that destroyed a Minnesota synagogue were burned again when the garage in which they were being stored caught ablaze. The remnants of the Torahs, which were irreparably burned in September after the 120-year-old Adas Israel Congregation in Duluth caught fire, were being stored in a local garage before they…
The 1,000-year-old Hebrew Bible that went on public view for the first time last week would not exist at all, or have survived this long, without the obsessive efforts of two obscure Jewish groups: the Masoretes and the Karaites. The Masoretes were a mysterious group of scholar-scribes, who starting in the Sixth Century worked to…
A couple hundred bucks can get you a variety of things on Goodwill’s online store: Tory Burch boots; a metal detector; a Burberry duffle; a collection of Furbies. Oh, and a Torah. Until Tuesday, you could bid for a scroll — sacred, if tattered — at ShopGoodwill.com. First listed at $200, bidders quickly pushed the…
Every Sukkot, families with sukkahs invite the spirits of the seven biblical matriarchs and patriarchs into their tent. These guests – or ushpizin – cut impressive figures. While we earthly chosen spend our time schmoozing outdoors, kvetching and noshing and pontificating on all manner of mundane things, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel…
The Bible may be the most-recognized book in the world, but its origins remain obscure. We can’t say with certainty who wrote much of it, when the bulk of it was composed or even where. But we now have a handy primer to the most significant theories about those questions in John Barton’s “The History…
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