Tag Archives: Bible

(AI TRANSLATION) Toldot Ya’akov Yosef (Reader’s Digest)

Posted on January 2, 2026 by zjb

I generated an UNFINISHED AI-translation of the Toldot Ya’akov Yosef, which I am sharing here. It is heavily annotated. The paragraph organization that I sought to impose on the copy from Sefaria is very rough and represents my own attempt … Continue reading →

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(נתיב ההפקרה) Tisha B’Av (2025)

Posted on August 4, 2025 by zjb

Tisha B’Av directs the religious imagination deep into its own pain. This fearsome day looks straight ahead, neither to the right nor to the left. In the book of Lamentations, read on the fast day, the suffering that the collective … Continue reading →

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(Maharal of Prague) Tiferet Yisrael (AI Translation)

Posted on June 1, 2025 by zjb

From the age of the Renaissance, the sci-fi Torah of the Maharal is a auratic object, strange and alien, from a distant place. Here’s a complete AI translation of the Maharal of Prague’s Tiferet Yisrael, a table of contents. The translation … Continue reading →

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Black Hebrew Prophets (Gothic)

Posted on May 8, 2025 by zjb

David, Moses, Noah, Abraham (ca.1408–10) are painted darkly with tempera on wood and gold ground. By Lorenzo Monaco (Piero di Giovanni), each has their own identifying emblem. At the newly installed European galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art tells us … Continue reading →

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(Cossack Baroque) Abraham Wore A Snake Skin Torah (Me’or Einayim)

Posted on March 28, 2025 by zjb

Our sages say that there have been “two thousand years of Torah.” RaSHI says that these began in the days of Abraham. But if Torah has existed since Abraham’s time, what did Israel receive [at Sinai]? Yes, there was Torah … Continue reading →

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(Purim) Amalek (Martin Buber)

Posted on March 12, 2025 by zjb

Religious truth, in contradistinction to philosophical truth, is not a maxim but a way, not a thesis but a process. That God is merciful is an abstract statement; to penetrate the religious truth that lies beyond it, we must not … Continue reading →

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(Reader’s Digest) ME’OR ‘EINAYIM (Theology of Mind and Cossack Baroque)

Posted on January 10, 2025 by zjb

What follows in this post after a quick introduction is a digest of my reading notes to Me’or ‘Einayim (Light of the Eyes) (1763 -1797). Translated into English with erudite care by Arthur Green, this early Hasidic text is a … Continue reading →

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(Trump) Covenant of Pieces (2024)

Posted on November 9, 2024 by zjb

Kudos to Jeremy Kolmanofsky for connecting the dots between the re-election of Donald Trump election this week and this week’s parsha read in the synagogue as part of the yearly cycle of ritual reading. In Genesis 15, God takes Abram … Continue reading →

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(Isaiah) Place of Consolation (7 Weeks)

Posted on August 20, 2024 by zjb

(Isaiah) What is Consolation (7 Weeks) In the prophetic imagination, consolation is a super violent and theopolitical counter-reality. Other-worldly without being otherworldly is the liturgical view drawn from the 7 haftaroth of consolation recited in the synagogue on Shabbat between … Continue reading →

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(Against Divine Violence) 9 Av (Lamentations)

Posted on August 13, 2024 by zjb

Read on the fast day of Tisha B’Av, the lament in the book of Lamentations (in Hebrew Eicha or Alas, named after the first word of the text) is a rebuke. But who is the object of recrimination? Only on … Continue reading →

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