Tag Archives: ritual

High Holidays (Sefas Emes)

Posted on October 6, 2022 by zjb

[sukka in very bright light, generated at DALL-E] The commentaries in the Sefas Emes to the High Holidays comprise different component parts in a single composition. They are the last major word of the fifth and final volume of the … Continue reading →

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Sefat Emet (Leviticus + Shavuot)

Posted on June 9, 2022 by zjb

[Am updating my long Sefat Emet digest with a digest of Leviticus + Shavuot] [You can see the whole digest here, still in progress, from Genesis and Hanukah]] After Exodus, the Sefas Emes on Leviticus dives more deeply into the … Continue reading →

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The Hasidic Seder Plate is an Objet de Fantasie

Posted on April 19, 2022 by zjb

I’ll post more later from Batsheva Goldman-Ida’s Hasidic Art and Kabbalah, but I want to share these three pictures in particular for the Passover holiday. In part, I’m choosing these three photographs because they are themselves rather remarkable. The photographs by … Continue reading →

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Pharisees (Matthew)

Posted on February 23, 2022 by zjb

Cutting through the imprecation, there are at least eight things that Matthew says about the Pharisees that are maybe or probably true. –They observe Shabbat punctiliously; they do not pick grain in the fields or practice healing or exorcism on … Continue reading →

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Light Object Held in Place (Helen Pashgian)

Posted on December 23, 2021 by zjb

I especially liked the two large lenses at the recent show by Helen Pashgian, an early member of the 1960s Light and Space Movement. Instead of the more diffuse light effect in the Light Art of Turrell and others, the … Continue reading →

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Sefat Emet (A Rough Digest)

Posted on December 17, 2021 by zjb

This blogpost tracking Hasidic thought in the commentary to the Torah, the Sefas Emes (Sefat Emet) (english: Language of Truth) is going to be a running project that I will update and complete, volume by volume, more or less in … Continue reading →

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Bourgeois Passover (Domestic Judaism)

Posted on March 26, 2021 by zjb

Setting aside all that theo-political stuff, all the high-minded talk and ideas that lend themselves to the public performance and moral didacticism, the social form of the actual Passover seder is intimate; a small scale familial rite, familiar and inward-looking … Continue reading →

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(The Capitol Building) So Much American Civil Religion & The Problem of Evil

Posted on February 24, 2021 by zjb

There before or very eyes, for most of us on television or online, was the reappearance of American Civil Religion. It was there in the wake churned at the Trump Insurrection at the Capitol, the inauguration of President Biden, and … Continue reading →

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(Rich Crimson Purple) The Color of Power in the Bible (אַרְגָּמָן)

Posted on February 1, 2021 by zjb

The Hebrew Bible is full of vital color, no more prominently than in the description of the Mishkan, or Tabernacle dwelling, in the book of Exodus.  Some of that color might look like these textile remains described here at Haaretz. … Continue reading →

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(Jews Love Hanukah) Sensible Excess (Maimonides)

Posted on December 14, 2020 by zjb

Jews love Hanukah, but not because of the story. The story itself has 2 sides. The one relates to Jews and Syrian-Greeks (and between Jews and Jews) (or Judeans if you prefer). The other relates to God and the Hanukah … Continue reading →

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