No More Slaves Resource Guide
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Modern Slavery Curriculum Project
Modern Slavery Curriculum Project Rabbi Debra Orenstein, Project Founder & Chair Rabbi Erin Hirsh, Project Manager & Editor March 1, 2015 – 10 Adar 5775 In memory of Rabbi Jehiel Orenstein USE GUIDELINES: These materials are freely available for non-commercial reproduction and use, with attribution, in schools, camps, homes, synagogues, civic group meetings and similar settings. For other uses, please contact the project founder or managing editor. Contact information is below. STAY IN TOUCH: To receive updates from the project team, please email: Rabbi Debra Orenstein [email protected] or Rabbi Erin Hirsh [email protected]. To receive updates from the group Free the Slaves, email [email protected]. PROVIDE FEEDBACK: Please take a short online survey about how you utilized these materials and how useful they were for you. Your feedback will help the team strengthen the curriculum over time. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2NVY2BN 2 Table of Contents Description of Project Page 3 - 4 A Note about Numbers Page 5 Lessons Listed by Age Group Lessons for Children Page 6 Lessons for Teenagers Page 7 Lessons for College Students and Adults Page 8 Index of Jewish Texts Page 9 - 16 Curriculum Writer Biographies Page 17 - 21 LESSONS FOR CHILDREN Page 22 LESSONS FOR TEENAGERS Page 58 LESSONS FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS & ADULTS Page 139 Modern Slavery Curriculum Project - Visit: https://www.freetheslaves.net/judaism 3 Description of the Modern Slavery Curriculum Project Why is this night not different from all other nights? Because there are still slaves. Even as we sit around our seder tables, singing Avadim Hayinu (Once We Were Slaves), tens of millions of slaves are still working and suffering all around the world. -
"So Help Me God" and Kissing the Book in the Presidential Oath of Office
William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal Volume 20 (2011-2012) Issue 3 Article 5 March 2012 Kiss the Book...You're President...: "So Help Me God" and Kissing the Book in the Presidential Oath of Office Frederick B. Jonassen Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj Part of the Constitutional Law Commons Repository Citation Frederick B. Jonassen, Kiss the Book...You're President...: "So Help Me God" and Kissing the Book in the Presidential Oath of Office, 20 Wm. & Mary Bill Rts. J. 853 (2012), https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj/vol20/iss3/5 Copyright c 2012 by the authors. This article is brought to you by the William & Mary Law School Scholarship Repository. https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/wmborj KISS THE BOOK . YOU’RE PRESIDENT . : “SO HELP ME GOD” AND KISSING THE BOOK IN THE PRESIDENTIAL OATH OF OFFICE Frederick B. Jonassen* INTRODUCTION .................................................854 I. THE LEGAL SIGNIFICANCE OF “SO HELP ME GOD” AS HISTORICAL PRECEDENT IN THE PRESIDENT’S INAUGURATION ...................859 A. Washington’s “So Help Me God” in the Supreme Court ..........861 B. Newdow v. Roberts.......................................864 II. THE CASE AGAINST “SO HELP ME GOD”..........................870 A. The Washington Irving Recollection ..........................872 B. The Freeman Source ......................................874 C. Two Conjectural Arguments for “So Help Me God” Discredited ...879 D. One More Conjecture .....................................881 III. THE EVIDENCE THAT WASHINGTON KISSED THE BIBLE ..............885 A. First-Hand Accounts of the Biblical Kiss ......................885 B. The Subsequent Tradition ..................................890 1. Andrew Johnson......................................892 2. Ulysses S. Grant......................................892 3. Rutherford B. Hayes...................................893 4. James A. -
Shalom: Peace, Not Just Peace of Mind Parashat Ki Tetze Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg, Beth Am 9.6.14 ~ 11 Elul 5774
Shalom: Peace, Not Just Peace of Mind Parashat Ki Tetze Rabbi Daniel Cotzin Burg, Beth Am 9.6.14 ~ 11 Elul 5774 This week I spent a day in Washington with thought-leaders, rabbis and policy analysts. We were speaking about Israel, America’s relationship with the Jewish state and the current deeply troubling state of affairs in the Middle East. The most surprising and powerful presentation of the day was that of Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, a founder and spiritual leader of Hamas. Given the events of this summer, it was particularly poignant to hear the heartfelt and courageous words of this young author and former Israeli asset (as he sat on the dais across from his Shin Bet handler). To even begin to conceive of such heroism, we almost have to transport ourselves into a different time – say Germany of the 1940s, when precious few righteous individuals resisted and acted against the scourge of Nazism. We might visit Rwanda or Cambodia, Darfur or America’s antebellum south. There are far too many examples in human history of pervasive, systematic violence and too few stories of those who made the hardest choices to turn against their fathers, brothers and their communities and attempt to salvage their dignity and humanity. Or perhaps we should roll the Torah back from its current location near the end, to a story near the very beginning whose hero, a simple man named Noah, is tzadik tamim haya b’dorotav, “a righteous man, blameless in his generation” (Gen. 6:9). I would argue it’s virtually impossible for us, most or all of us in this room, to know what it is like to live among the truly malevolent and depraved – a society so bad God sees no recourse but to erase it and start over. -
DIVINATION SYSTEMS Written by Nicole Yalsovac Additional Sections Contributed by Sean Michael Smith and Christine Breese, D.D
DIVINATION SYSTEMS Written by Nicole Yalsovac Additional sections contributed by Sean Michael Smith and Christine Breese, D.D. Ph.D. Introduction Nichole Yalsovac Prophetic revelation, or Divination, dates back to the earliest known times of human existence. The oldest of all Chinese texts, the I Ching, is a divination system older than recorded history. James Legge says in his translation of I Ching: Book Of Changes (1996), “The desire to seek answers and to predict the future is as old as civilization itself.” Mankind has always had a desire to know what the future holds. Evidence shows that methods of divination, also known as fortune telling, were used by the ancient Egyptians, Chinese, Babylonians and the Sumerians (who resided in what is now Iraq) as early as six‐thousand years ago. Divination was originally a device of royalty and has often been an essential part of religion and medicine. Significant leaders and royalty often employed priests, doctors, soothsayers and astrologers as advisers and consultants on what the future held. Every civilization has held a belief in at least some type of divination. The point of divination in the ancient world was to ascertain the will of the gods. In fact, divination is so called because it is assumed to be a gift of the divine, a gift from the gods. This gift of obtaining knowledge of the unknown uses a wide range of tools and an enormous variety of techniques, as we will see in this course. No matter which method is used, the most imperative aspect is the interpretation and presentation of what is seen. -
(Kita Zayin) Curriculum Updated: July 24, 2014
7th Grade (Kita Zayin) Curriculum Updated: July 24, 2014 7th Grade (Kita Zayin) Curriculum Rabbi Marcelo Kormis 30 Sessions Notes to Parents: This curriculum contains the knowledge, skills and attitude Jewish students are expected to learn. It provides the learning objectives that students are expected to meet; the units and lessons that teachers teach; the books, materials, technology and readings used in a course; and the assessments methods used to evaluate student learning. Some units have a large amount of material that on a given year may be modified in consideration of the Jewish calendar, lost school days due to weather (snow days), and give greater flexibility to the teacher to accommodate students’ pre-existing level of knowledge and skills. Page 1 of 16 7th Grade (Kita Zayin) Curriculum Updated: July 24, 2014 Part 1 Musaguim – A Vocabulary of Jewish Life 22 Sessions The 7th grade curriculum will focus on basic musaguim of Jewish life. These musaguim cover the different aspects and levels of Jewish life. They can be divided into 4 concentric circles: inner circle – the day of a Jew, middle circle – the week of a Jew, middle outer circle – the year of a Jew, outer circle – the life of a Jew. The purpose of this course is to teach students about the different components of a Jewish day, the centrality of the Shabbat, the holidays and the stages of the life cycle. Focus will be placed on the Jewish traditions, rituals, ceremonies, and celebrations of each concept. Lifecycle events Jewish year Week - Shabbat Day Page 2 of 16 7th Grade (Kita Zayin) Curriculum Updated: July 24, 2014 Unit 1: The day of a Jew: 6 sessions, 45 minute each. -
A Daily Bread Date: 5 Tamuz 5781 (June 15, 2021) Torah Portion: Chukat Topic: Amalek, Part 1
בייה A Daily Bread Date: 5 Tamuz 5781 (June 15, 2021) Torah Portion: Chukat Topic: Amalek, Part 1 It is written (Num. 21:1), “And the sovereign of Arad, the Kena’anite, who dwelt in the South, heard that Yisra’ĕl was coming on the way to Atharim, and he fought against Yisra’ĕl and took some of them captive.” The king of Amalek disguised his people as the Kena’anites who lived in the southern part of the Land of Yisrael. He heard that the Clouds of Glory had disappeared and attacked them at Refidim (Exo. 17:8) and wanted to attack Yisrael again when they came close to Amalekite territory and tried to enter the Land of Yisrael through Edom by the route the spies had taken (Num. 13:22). Even prior to this when they saw the Ark of Covenant, which preceded the Yisraelites by a three-day journey’s distance (Num. 10:33), but they were deterred by the presence of the Clouds of Glory. Now, however, they interpreted the removal of Hashem’s “honor guard” to mean that He now permitted other nations to attack. Nonetheless, they knew the Yisraelites still possessed their power of prayer, so, in order to render their prayers ineffectual, the Amalekites disguised themselves as Kena’anites, hoping the Yisraelites would pray to Hashem to deliver them from the wrong enemies. Thus the king of Amalek “waged war against Yisrael and took a captive from them.” Although this was only a woman the Yisraelites had captured from Amalek in their earlier encounter with them (Exo. -
Calendar of Torah and Haftarah Readings 5776 – 5778 2015 – 2018
Calendar of Torah and Haftarah Readings 5776 – 5778 2015 – 2018 Calendar of Torah and Haftarah Readings 5776-5778 CONTENTS NOTES ....................................................................................................1 DATES OF FESTIVALS .............................................................................2 CALENDAR OF TORAH AND HAFTARAH READINGS 5776-5778 ............3 GLOSSARY ........................................................................................... 29 PERSONAL NOTES ............................................................................... 31 Published by: The Movement for Reform Judaism Sternberg Centre for Judaism 80 East End Road London N3 2SY [email protected] www.reformjudaism.org.uk Copyright © 2015 Movement for Reform Judaism (Version 2) Calendar of Torah and Haftarah Readings 5776-5778 Notes: The Calendar of Torah readings follows a triennial cycle whereby in the first year of the cycle the reading is selected from the first part of the parashah, in the second year from the middle, and in the third year from the last part. Alternative selections are offered each shabbat: a shorter reading (around twenty verses) and a longer one (around thirty verses). The readings are a guide and congregations may choose to read more or less from within that part of the parashah. On certain special shabbatot, a special second (or exceptionally, third) scroll reading is read in addition to the week’s portion. Haftarah readings are chosen to parallel key elements in the section of the Torah being read and therefore vary from one year in the triennial cycle to the next. Some of the suggested haftarot are from taken from k’tuvim (Writings) rather than n’vi’ivm (Prophets). When this is the case the appropriate, adapted blessings can be found on page 245 of the MRJ siddur, Seder Ha-t’fillot. This calendar follows the Biblical definition of the length of festivals. -
The Bible Code: “Teaching Them [Wrong] Things” Richard A
JETS 43/4 (December 2000) 619–636 THE BIBLE CODE: “TEACHING THEM [WRONG] THINGS” RICHARD A. TAYLOR* I. INTRODUCTION Michael Drosnin, author of the 1997 New York Times best-selling book entitled The Bible Code, tells of ˘ying to Israel on 1 September 1994 in order to convey to then Israeli prime minister Rabin an urgent and sober warning. Drosnin had learned that the only time the name Yitzhak Rabin appeared in the Bible code it intersected the words “assassin that will assassinate.” Drosnin had therefore concluded that the life of the Prime Minister was in grave danger. But he also thought that if immediate action were taken this imminent catastrophe could perhaps be avoided. When he arrived in Israel, Drosnin met with Israeli poet Chaim Guri, a close friend of the prime min- ister, who in turn conveyed Drosnin’s message to Rabin. Drosnin urged that the Bible code message concerning Rabin be taken seriously, especially in light of the fact that the same Bible code had also accurately announced the prior assassinations of Anwar Sadat, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Abraham Lincoln, and Mahatma Gandi. Drosnin’s mission, however, did not meet with success. Less than a year later, on 4 November 1995, Yitzhak Rabin was unexpectedly killed by a Jewish assassin.1 * Richard A. Taylor is professor of Old Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, 3909 Swiss Avenue, Dallas, TX 75204. Editor’s Note: The theme of the ˜ftieth-anniversary conference of the Evangelical Theological Society where this paper was ˜rst presented was “teaching them all things” (Matt 28:20). -
Tanya Sources.Pdf
The Way to the Tree of Life Jewish practice entails fulfilling many laws. Our diet is limited, our days to work are defined, and every aspect of life has governing directives. Is observance of all the laws easy? Is a perfectly righteous life close to our heart and near to our limbs? A righteous life seems to be an impossible goal! However, in the Torah, our great teacher Moshe, Moses, declared that perfect fulfillment of all religious law is very near and easy for each of us. Every word of the Torah rings true in every generation. Lesson one explores how the Tanya resolved these questions. It will shine a light on the infinite strength that is latent in each Jewish soul. When that unending holy desire emerges, observance becomes easy. Lesson One: The Infinite Strength of the Jewish Soul The title page of the Tanya states: A Collection of Teachings ספר PART ONE לקוטי אמרים חלק ראשון Titled הנקרא בשם The Book of the Beinonim ספר של בינונים Compiled from sacred books and Heavenly מלוקט מפי ספרים ומפי סופרים קדושי עליון נ״ע teachers, whose souls are in paradise; based מיוסד על פסוק כי קרוב אליך הדבר מאד בפיך ובלבבך לעשותו upon the verse, “For this matter is very near to לבאר היטב איך הוא קרוב מאד בדרך ארוכה וקצרה ”;you, it is in your mouth and heart to fulfill it בעזה״י and explaining clearly how, in both a long and short way, it is exceedingly near, with the aid of the Holy One, blessed be He. "1 of "393 The Way to the Tree of Life From the outset of his work therefore Rav Shneur Zalman made plain that the Tanya is a guide for those he called “beinonim.” Beinonim, derived from the Hebrew bein, which means “between,” are individuals who are in the middle, neither paragons of virtue, tzadikim, nor sinners, rishoim. -
1.1 Van Der Horst
[JGRChJ 1 (2000) 9-17] ANCIENT JEWISH BIBLIOMANCY Pieter W. van der Horst University of Utrecht, The Netherlands The Jewish people did not have sacred books until long into their national history. It was only in the sixth century BCE, during and after the Babylonian exile, that the Torah was given its present shape and began gradually to gain canonical status. This bestowing of canonical status went hand in hand with the attribution of holiness. The increasing centrality of the Torah in Judaism in the post-exilic period (after 538 BCE), certainly after and due to the reforms by Ezra (5th–4th cent.), led to a heightened sense of holiness of the Torah. In the Hebrew Bible, the Torah itself is not yet adorned with the epithet ‘holy’. One sees this starting to happen only in the Hellenistic period. In the second half of the second century BCE Pseudo-Aristeas, the author of the pseudonymous work on the origin of the Septuagint, is the first to call the Torah ‘holy’ and ‘divine’ (a{gno", qei'o").1 Thus, he reports that the Ptolemaic king of Egypt prostrates himself in adoration seven times in front of the first Torah scroll in Greek and speaks of the oracles of God, for which he thanks him (§177).2 Also, such widely different writings as Jubilees, 4 1. See Letter of Aristeas 3, 5, 31, 45. 2. For this and the following, see O. Wischmeyer, ‘Das Heilige Buch im Judentum des Zweiten Tempels’, ZNW 86 (1995), pp. 218-42. For the typology of the holy book in antiquity in general, see e.g. -
The Tiberian Pronunciation Tradition of Biblical Hebrew, Volume I
Cambridge Semitic Languages and Cultures The Tiberian Pronunciation Khan Tradition of Biblical Hebrew (Vol. I) The Tiberian Pronunciation Geoffrey Khan Tradition of Biblical Hebrew The form of Biblical Hebrew that is presented in printed edi� ons, with vocaliza� on and Tradition of Biblical Hebrew Vol. I accent signs, has its origin in medieval manuscripts of the Bible. The vocaliza� on and Volume I accent signs are nota� on systems that were created in Tiberias in the early Islamic period The Tiberian Pronunciation The by scholars known as the Tiberian Masoretes, but the oral tradi� on they represent has roots in an� quity. The gramma� cal textbooks and reference grammars of Biblical Hebrew in use today are heirs to centuries of tradi� on of gramma� cal works on Biblical Hebrew in GEOFFREY KHAN Europe. The paradox is that this European tradi� on of Biblical Hebrew grammar did not have direct access to the way the Tiberian Masoretes were pronouncing Biblical Hebrew. In the last few decades, research of manuscript sources from the medieval Middle East has made it possible to reconstruct with considerable accuracy the pronuncia� on of the Tiberian Masoretes, which has come to be known as the ‘Tiberian pronuncia� on tradi� on’. This book presents the current state of knowledge of the Tiberian pronuncia� on tradi� on of Biblical Hebrew and a full edi� on of one of the key medieval sources, Hidāyat al-Qāriʾ ‘The Guide for the Reader’, by ʾAbū al-Faraj Hārūn. It is hoped that the book will help to break the mould of current gramma� cal descrip� ons of Biblical Hebrew and form a bridge between modern tradi� ons of grammar and the school of the Masoretes of Tiberias. -
Is There an Authentic Triennial Cycle of Torah Readings? RABBI LIONEL E
Is there an Authentic Triennial Cycle of Torah Readings? RABBI LIONEL E. MOSES This paper is an appendix to the paper "Annual and Triennial Systems For Reading The Torah" by Rabbi Elliot Dorff, and was approved together with it on April 29, 1987 by a vote of seven in favor, four opposed, and two abstaining. Members voting in favor: Rabbis Isidoro Aizenberg, Ben Zion Bergman, Elliot N. Dorff, Richard L. Eisenberg, Mayer E. Rabinowitz, Seymour Siegel and Gordon Tucker. Members voting in opposition: Rabbis David H. Lincoln, Lionel E. Moses, Joel Roth and Steven Saltzman. Members abstaining: Rabbis David M. Feldman and George Pollak. Abstract In light of questions addressed to the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards from as early as 1961 and the preliminary answers given to these queries by the committee (Section I), this paper endeavors to review the sources (Section II), both talmudic and post-talmudic (Section Ila) and manuscript lists of sedarim (Section lib) to set the triennial cycle in its historical perspective. Section III of the paper establishes a list of seven halakhic parameters, based on Mishnah and Tosefta,for the reading of the Torah. The parameters are limited to these two authentically Palestinian sources because all data for a triennial cycle is Palestinian in origin and predates even the earliest post-Geonic law codices. It would thus be unfair, to say nothing of impossible, to try to fit a Palestinian triennial reading cycle to halakhic parameters which were both later in origin and developed outside its geographical sphere of influence. Finally in Section IV, six questions are asked regarding the institution of a triennial cycle in our day and in a short postscript, several desiderata are listed in order to put such a cycle into practice today.