The sixth month of the year, Elul, is my birthday month which usually translates to the Gregorian calendar as occurring in September. As the months of the Jewish/Hebrew calendar are strongly associated with their mazalot (constellations), so Elul is associated with the mazal of Betulah (Virgo). Perhaps it is already well established that the sigil of Virgo ♍ looks somewhat like a closed fist, so I thought I’d illustrate the association with the attached image I’m titling “Virgo Power.” . . . → Continue reading: Virgo Power
This here meme I rolled this evening was inspired by a meme created by Steg sometime more than a decade ago and shared on the icanhascheezburger.com website. The timestamp on the image I saved dates to hoary 2012, but I have a feeling I saw it earlier than that, perhaps in 2010 or even in more eldritch years. . . . → Continue reading: We Rabbis Don’t Make Golems for the Money — We Do It Because It’s Awesome
I located an apotropaic amulet containing a prophylactic historiola of Eliyahu vs. Lilith, long lost whose transcription by Richard Gottheil was first published by James Montgomery in 1913, Now, finally, the transcription can be corrected against the actual manuscript held in the collection of Columbia University library. . . . → Continue reading: Locating James Alan Montgomery and Richard Gotheil’s lost Amulet No. 42
An escutcheon (shield herald) for the landscape and lore of my imagination. . . . → Continue reading: Escutcheon for a Sanctuary of the Jewish Imagination in the Land Beyond the River Sambatyon
Last night, I finished a year long project begun after Simḥat Torah in 2018, presenting the Masoretic Hebrew text of the parashot (weekly Torah readings) with English translation in a range of colors according to the way the narrative layers are parsed through the Supplementary hypothesis as read by Dr. Tzemah Yoreh, published in his Kernel to Canon series of books (2013-2017) and on his website, the Sources of Biblical Narrative. The version of the Masoretic text used is Dr. Seth Avi Kadish’s Miqra al pi ha-mesorah published at Hebrew Wikisource. . . . → Continue reading: The Masoretic Text of the Pentateuch, color-coded according to its narrative layers as delineated by the Supplementary Hypothesis of Tzemaḥ Yoreh
A helpful astrological reference explaining how the gloss of Zodiacal periods on the calendar is witness to the position of the Earth a couple thousand years ago and there’s been a certain degree of calendrical drift since then. . . . → Continue reading: The Current Zodiac as Corrected for the Axial Precession of the Equinoxes
I would like to add to what many people are saying about the vacuous offering of “thoughts and prayers” after deliberate, predictable, and avoidable tragedies, without, I hope, sounding contrarian. Immersed as I’ve been for the last decade in prayer literature directing the Open Siddur Project, I want to say something in general about prayers, . . . → Continue reading: Further thoughts on prayer as media and praxis
Rabbi Schwartz asked prospective participants in his “Kenissa: Community of Meaning Network” to respond to his chapter, and in particular how our initiatives are aligned with one (or more) of the four propositions he offers to heading off the crises facing the American Jewish community, and in what ways they advance an area of Jewish life or practice outside of those propositions. Here was my response as founding director of the Open Siddur Project and co-founder of Open-source Judaism. . . . → Continue reading: Open-source Judaism and Charting the Course of the American Future, an essay for Kenissa: Community of Meaning Network
In 2007, Dr. Yigal Bin-Nun wrote a provocative article in Haaretz הארץ on the origins of the Moroccan Jewish post-Passover festival of Mimouna. In the article, Bin-Nun speculates that Mimouna was a Judaized festival originally derived from local customs celebrating gods of Fortune. I wish to present an alternate thesis which provides more of the Jewish context for Mimouna within the mytho-historical arc of the Exodus narrative. . . . → Continue reading: On the Meaning of Mimouna
In advance of this year’s Hazon Food Conference I’ve prepared a source sheet packet containing text arranged to elucidate what I’ve called the Mythic Arc of Predatory Desire in Jewish Legend. . . . → Continue reading: The Mythic Arc of Predatory Desire in Jewish Legend: primary sources on the origin and end of predation
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