Posts Tagged Text Study

Who’s Ready to Tweet #Torah Next Year?

Posted by Rachel Broder in Jewish Innovation on June 17, 2011

First and foremost: if you tweeted #Torah with us for Shavuot, thank you infinite times!  Over here at JPS, I thoroughly enjoyed tweeting the Book of Ruth.  Similarly, I enjoyed watching others tweet and re-tweet various parshas or lines.  It felt quite wonderful to know that a group of us were focused on Torah for an entire day of tweeting- not pop culture or political turmoil, but Torah.  While the rest of the Twitter world focused on Anothony Weiner, we celebrated the receiving of the Torah by sharing it in 140-character-slices.  So now what?

Admittedly, we did not manage to get #Torah trending in the top ten.  I could blame Anthony Weiner, but instead I’ll venture to guess that many more people expressed interest in tweeting than actually tweeted along with us.  So how is it that we can spread the word more successfully next year?  I think that it could prove significant to engage students and congregants who would not usually use Twitter.  I myself am not an avid user of Twitter, honestly only tweeting for JPS and not a personal account, but I really got a kick out of tweeting something of significance.

For Bloomsday (the literary holiday that celebrates the day on which James Joyce’s Ulysses takes place, chosen because it was the day Joyce first stepped out with his life companion, Norah Barnacle), some Twitter users tweeted all of Ulysses (whoa, way intense).  As a student and lover of literature, this tweeting of Ulysses is totally rad to me and almost makes me want a personal Twitter account to join the fun.  So how do I move from an onlooker to a participant?

11ysses.wordpress.com/

I would like to figure out how to get students and lovers of Torah from the “that’s-so-groovy” stage, to the “I-am-creating-a-Twitter-account-so-I-can-join-this” stage.  So I ask myself: what would it take for me to create a Twitter account to tweet Ulysses?  Probably a group of my equally nerdy friends creating accounts for the same reason.  Based on the above Ulysses analogy, I charge those of you who tweeted Torah this year to talk it up and encourage your fellow lovers of Torah to join you next year!   I would also greatly appreciate any suggestions you may have as to how we can attract more participants in next year’s tweeting of #Torah!

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Help us Tweet #Torah to the Top!

Posted by Rachel Broder in Jewish Innovation on May 31, 2011

In exactly one week (June 7th), we at JPS (along with CCAR Press and Davka.org) will aim to tweet #Torah to the top ten of Twitter for Shavuot.  In order to do so, we need as many people to join us as possible.  JPS has created a #Torah Twitter tool that breaks text into Twitter-sized portions (140 character pieces), so it is really simple for others (YOU!) to join us on our journey to tweet #Torah to the top!  Here’s how it will work: You select your favorite public domain Torah text (sign up for your free copy of the 1917 JPS Tanakh!), paste the text you wish to share into our tool, and then tweet away!  You can use your preferred Twitter tool to schedule automatic tweets throughout the day or overnight.  The hashtag #Torah will automatically be added to each of your tweets, making it even easier to join the movement.

So why should you join us in tweeting #Torah to the top?  MyJewishLearning.com puts out a daily e-newsletter called “Jewniverse,” and in yesterday’s edition they wrote: “The project’s immediate goal is to make “Torah” one of Twitter’s most-talked-about topics. But the larger goal is to remind us how inspirational the Torah can be–even if you’re reading it 140 characters at a time.”  Even if you’re not a regular user of Twitter, the opportunity to fuse Torah and technology is extremely exciting.  Tweeting the Torah not only displays the Torah’s relevancy in modern society, but also gives followers an opportunity to take in the text in smaller chunks.

Shavuot, a holiday marking the joyous occasion of the receiving of the Torah, is celebrated with Torah study and dairy consumption.  Why not make Shavuot a little sweeter this year by sharing Torah text with your Twitter friends?  Whether you tweet Ruth or a portion you find particularly meaningful, please join us as we tweet #Torah to the top on June 7th!

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Mark Your Calendar For The Global Day Of Jewish Learning!

Posted by Rachel Feltman in Jewish Books, Jewish Knowledge on October 27, 2010

Remember what I said about the lack of distracting holidays between September and the end of November? I’ve been proven wrong, and I’m not talking about Halloween (or the day after, though I do encourage you to grab that candy while it’s cheap).

November 7th is the Global Day of Jewish Learning. The day is intended to celebrate the culmination of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s translating of the Talmud, an undertaking that has taken five decades. Based on Rabbi Steinsaltz’s driving belief…that the texts belong to anyone who wishes to study them… the Global Day of Jewish Learning will encourage people around the world to come together and study.

If you want to know more about why and how the completion of a translation is supposed to be celebrated, Rabbi Steinsaltz explains the concept of a Siyyum beautifully. As he explains on the Global Day website, the idea of the siyyum is an acknowledgement of completion, but also a promise of eventual return to the texts that have been translated.
Because of the groundbreaking nature of this work on the Talmud, which was the first to make the text truly accessible to everyone, and not just master scholars, its celebration will be focused on community learning. My favorite thing about the Global Day concept is that it really is meant for everyone. Anyone interested is encouraged to go to one of the many events being held across the world, and there are ways to participate online, too! Answer some of the “Big Questions” being discussed, or ask your own on the Global Day website.

Check out the website if you’re interested in attending an event, hosting one, or just finding out more details. I’ll be joining in online…hope to see you there!

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Three Weeks Round-Up

Posted by Rachel Feltman in Link Roundup on July 1, 2010

Destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem, by Francesco Hayez

Bein ha-Metzarim, also called The Three Weeks, began on Tuesday. This period, which is meant to be observed as one of mourning, begins with Shiv’ah Asar B’Tammuz, also known as the 17th of Tammuz, and culminateswith Tisha B’Av. Tisha B’Av is the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. While it primarily commemorates the destruction of  both the First Temple and Second Temple in Jerusalem (which occurred 656 years apart on the same day of the Jewish calendar), it has become a day on which we reflect upon any and all calamities that have befallen the Jewish people throughout history.

Here are some resources for finding out more about Bein ha-Metzarim:

  1. Tablet Magazine has posted a thorough, easy to read FAQ on the Three Weeks.
  2. Wikipedia might not be a source you want to cite in your next research paper, but they do have a great article on the The Three Weeks (which of course links you to many related topics).
  3. Last but not least, last year we wrote a blog post on the JPS Blog with tons of information on Tisha B’Av.

Unlike some other holidays and fasts, The Three Weeks and Tisha B’Av aren’t often observed by more secular members of the Jewish community. Even if you don’t plan on making any changes to your routine in the next few weeks, you can still keep the spirit in mind. Take some time to learn about the events we’re meant to mourn this month. If nothing else, you’ll gain a new appreciation for the resilience and strength of spirit of the Jewish people.

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Making the Cut

Posted by admin in JPS Books on June 30, 2010

This month has been an exciting one for JPS! When Jewcy’s Big Jewcy list and New York Jewish Week’s 36 Under 36 list were announced, we were excited to find that three JPS authors had been recognized. Congratulations to JT Waldman, Danya Ruttenberg, and Josh Lambert. Here’s a little background on each of them:

JT Waldman- Jewish Week, “36 Under 36”:

JT Waldman is a comic book illustrator and interaction designer. His first graphic novel, Megillat Esther, drew from archeological, rabbinic and pop cultural sources to create a bold retelling of the biblical story of Esther. Illustrations from the book are currently being featured as part of the Reinventing Ritual exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and the Drawing on Tradition: The Book of Esther exhibit at the Yeshiva University Museum. He also contributed to From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books. JT later went on to design the Tagged Tanakh, an interactive site that allows users to add their own commentary to the JPS Tanakh. He is currently working on his next graphic novel with Harvey Pekar.

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg- Jewish Week, “36 Under 36”:

Danya Ruttenberg is the co-editor of three volumes in the Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices series published by JPS: Sex and Intimacy; War and National Security; Social Justice (2010). Her other works include Surprised By God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion (Beacon Press, 2008), nominated for the 2010 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, The Passionate Torah: Sex and Judaism (NYU Press, 2009) and Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism (Seal Press, 2001). She is also a contributing editor to Lilith and to the academic journal Women and Judaism and is on the editorial board of Jewschool.com.

Josh Lambert- Jewcy, Big Jewcy:

Josh Lambert is Dorot Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University, and the author of American Jewish Fiction: A JPS Guide. He led the redesign and re-launch of JBooks.com, an online book review magazine, in 2003 and served as its editor until 2004. He now contributes book reviews and essays to The Forward, the San Francisco Chronicle, the two national daily newspapers in Canada (the National Post and Globe and Mail), and The Jerusalem Post, and serves as a Contributing Editor to Tablet Magazine.

In other exciting news, on Sunday July 4th, Debra Band, author/illustrator of I Will Wake the Dawn: Illuminated Psalms and Song of Songs: The Honeybee in the Garden, will have illuminations from I Will Wake the Dawn featured on the PBS television program Religion and Ethics Weekly. To find local broadcast listings, visit http://www.pbs.org/religion and check back at the PBS site after the weekend for more information on Debra and for downloads of the program itself.

Addendum: Seven JPS authors were named to Newsweek’s 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America! The list includes:

-Jill Finkelstein

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Online Jewish Ethics Resources

Posted by admin in Jewish Knowledge, Link Roundup on June 15, 2010

Last month, we launched Jewishchoices.org, a new interactive community dedicated to open discussion of the ethical issues facing all of us in the Jewish community – and in the world at large. The website sprang from the content in our Jewish Choices, Jewish Voices book series.  The site allows users to participate in forums and in live chat opportunities, and to read blog posts from contributors to our ethics books and other interested readers, as they regularly discuss today’s hot topics.

Turns out, Jewishchoices.org is one of a growing number of online resources where you can go to discuss Jewish ethics. Check out some of these noteworthy sites, and keep coming back to Jewishchoices.org to participate in our evolving community!

1.  Jspot.org: Sponsored by Jewish Funds for Justice, Jspot.org is an online hub for netroots action. In addition to providing educational resources, the site’s blog includes a wide variety of Jewish perspectives on contemporary issues of social and economic justice.

2. Jewish Values Online: At Jewish Values Online, a panel of Conservative, Orthodox and Reform rabbis offers their perspectives on your questions about Jewish ethics. The site includes a database of existing questions, but also allows you to submit your own.

3. Repair the World: Repair the World is an organization that works to encourage Jews to participate and find meaning in service opportunities. Besides the blog, a great feature on the site is the Knowledgebase, which provides information about Jewish perspectives regarding critical issues, biographies on Jewish social justice heroes, and links further reading.

4. Pursue: Pursue is a project of American Jewish World Service and AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps that engage Jews in their 20s and 30s in social justice activities by integrating their Jewish and social justice values. The site includes a blog that covers different issues and how we can help.

Check out these sites and share in the conversation! If you know of any other Jewish ethics sites worth mentioning, let us know in the comment section.

-Jill Finkelstein

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Lost, But Not Forgotten

Posted by admin in JPS Books on May 5, 2010

Biblical Archaeology Review

Last week, the New York Times reported that the ancient city of Aleppo, Syria had just laid out plans for a major historical restoration. Coincidentally, Aleppo is the setting of our latest book due out this week: Crown of Aleppo: The Mystery of the Oldest Hebrew Bible Codex by Hayim Tawil and Bernard Schneider. The book tells the incredible story of the Aleppo Codex, the most authoritative and accurate traditional Masoretic texts of the Bible. Because of its importance, it became known as the Crown of Aleppo. It traveled through Jerusalem and Cairo before finding a home at the Great Synagogue of Aleppo, Syria, where it remained until the synagogue was burned down in 1947. The Crown was believed to be lost forever, but it was discovered that most of it survived when it was smuggled into Israel in 1958 and later brought to its current home at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem.

The Crown of Aleppo is not the only historical text that was thought to be lost. The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of about 850 manuscripts, categorized as biblical, apocryphal, or sectarian, dating back to 250 B.C.E. through 68 C.E. They were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in Qumran, located on Dead Sea’s northwestern shores. Many scholars believe that the scrolls were written by a sect of Jews called the Essenes, who settled in the Judean Desert and disappeared after the Romans destroyed their settlements in 68 C.E. The Dead Sea Scrolls are now displayed in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum located in Jerusalem.

A couple years ago, Geraldine Brooks published the award-winning People of the Book, a fictional history of a real text, the Sarajevo Haggadah. The Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the oldest Sephardic Haggadahs, was written in Barcelona around 1350. After the Spanish Expulsion in 1492 it was brought to Sarajevo. The Haggadah reappeared in 1894, when was sold to the National Museum in Sarajevo. Notes written in the margins of the book have given historians clues about the book’s travels during the 300 years the book was missing.  During World War II, the Haggadah was hidden from the Nazis by the museum’s librarian who smuggled it out of Sarajevo and brought it to a Muslim cleric to hide. Then, in the 1990s, the Haggadah disappeared again during the Bosnian civil war, when the museum was broken into. It was rediscovered in 1995 and has been on permanent display in the museum since 2002 thanks to the help of the United Nations and the Jewish community of Bosnia.

These texts have been crucial in our knowledge of Jewish history. In many ways they are like the Jewish people. They have overcome war and destruction, yet they still stand strong today as a source of inspiration for us and for future generations.

For more information on the Crown of Aleppo: http://www.aleppocodex.org/

To read an article about author Dr. Hayim Tawil: http://spider.mc.yu.edu/news/articles/article.cfm?id=102020

-Jill Finkelstein

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A JPS Take On LimmudPhilly

Posted by Carol in Jewish Knowledge on March 16, 2010

Last weekend was my first LimmudPhilly, but not my last. I’m hooked on this kind of learning fest experience.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/limmudphilly

Over 600 gathered at the Gershman Y and University of the Arts in Philadelphia for an evening and a day of conversation, learning, music, dance, and crafts, and eating, of course.  It began with the most exhilarating havdalah service I’ve ever attended: “Kosher Gospel” with pianist and singer Josh Nelson. And it ended with one of the most thought-provoking discussions I can remember on the Jewish concept of God. In between I found out why the Dead Sea Scrolls still matter (even though I knew they do, as I work on the JPS Lost Bible project); got a preview of the new National Museum of American Jewish History, opening this fall in Philadelphia; and listened to the Golem Psalms, a choral cantata based on the 16th century legend of the Golem of Prague.

But the session that most impressed me was the one on the changing nature of Jewish identity and community, because it confirmed what I see all around me: So many young Jews are looking beyond traditional ways of experiencing Judaism. They’re a diverse group who define themselves through self-expression, not through affiliation with one of the movements. They’re intellectually active, and they create social networks around their Jewish interests. In other words, the Limmud experience.

To find out more about Limmd programs around the US and world, go to www.limmudinternational.org

-Carol Hupping, Interim Director

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The Complete JPS Audio Bible is Finally Here!

Posted by admin in Jewish Innovation on March 9, 2010

The JPS Tanakh is considered the authoritative translation of the Jewish Bible and is certainly the most widely read English edition.  That said, we’ve always known we wanted to make our Bible available to everyone, in any format that a person would want to use. Thus came the idea for an audio version and the Jewish Braille Institute (JBI) was the clear partner for collaboration. After 12 months of recording the 2,000 pages of the Tanakh into 60 hours of audio using 13 narrators, the Audio Bible is finally here! Last October we gave readers a sneak peek with our free weekly Torah portion (widget-version below), but now readers have the option to purchase the entire TANAKH, only the Torah, The Five Megilloth and Jonah, or any of the other 36 books of the Bible.

The JPS Tanakh: The Jewish Bible, audio version even makes it easy for you to bring the text wherever you go, and whenever you want. Offered in both MP3 and iTunes download formats you can listen on your iPod or MP3 Player on the road or anywhere on the go.

To celebrate the release of this landmark project, we are offering a special introductory offer – purchase the download of our audio version of the complete JPS Tanakh or Torah and we will send you our Torah eBook FREE of charge!

We could keep going on about how excited we are about this audio Bible, but our Interim Director, Carol Hupping, sums it up best in this recent Q & A session.

Q: How did the Jewish Braille Institute (JBI) and The Jewish Publication Society (JPS) come to partner on the JPS Tanakh: The Jewish Bible, audio version?

A: JPS had wanted an audio version of its Bible for years, but we knew that producing it would be very expensive. We’re talking about 2,000 book pages, about 60 hours of listening time. We had gotten a bid from a commercial audio book producer, but it was much more than we could afford. Then we recalled conversations we’d had with JBI a few years back about publishing a large-print Bible and remembered that they also produced audio books. We asked if they would be interested in collaborating on the project. Indeed they were.

Q: How does this project fit into the new direction JPS is taking?

A: For the last 120 years, JPS has been primarily a publisher of print books. But that’s changing now, because the Internet and handheld devices like smart phones and ebook readers have changed the way people access and use information, and the way many people read books. So, in addition to print, we’re now offering ebooks and also audio, starting with this audio version of the JPS Tanakh, directly through our website and via many other distributors. We want to reach as many people, in as many ways, as possible.

Click here to read the rest of the interview with Carol, as well as a Q & A with JBI President and CEO Ellen Isler and several of the Audio Bible narrators [73K PDF]. Feel free to link to the complete Q&A or to excerpt from it, if you wish.

Also, for more information about the JPS Audio Bible go to http://jewishpub.org/books/audiobible/about-bible.php.

-Jill Finkelstein

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Reviving the Classics

Posted by Alx in Jewish Books, Jewish Innovation, Jewish Knowledge, JPS Books on January 28, 2010

We’re going back to basics! As a part of our spring 2010 collection, we have re-launched five of JPS’s classic books! These classic books are for readers of all ages, and we hope that by bringing them back to the shelves, readers will be reminded of some timeless ideas that are essential to Judaism.

Lessons learned in these classic books carry as much weight as ever, containing information that, believe it or not, may be directly applicable to our lives today.

Here is a list of JPS works revived in 2010:

  1. Judaism as a Civilization by Mordecai Kaplan

This book introduced a new way of looking at Judaism, and is considered the origin of the Reconstructionist Movement. Kaplan felt that all Jews – traditional and liberal, religious and secular – could play a part in this “reconstruction.”

2. Book of Tradition by Abraham ibn Daud (author) and Gerson D. Cohen (translator)

This epic on Jewish history from ancient times to the 12th century eulogized Spanish Jewry and reminded readers of a once-thriving culture. No one before had ever attempted to write such a broad history of Jewish civilization, and this unique book is one of the first examples of Jewish historiography

3. Genesis: The Beginning of Desire by Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Ph.D.

This epic breathes new life into the stories of Adam and Even, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob and Essau, Rachel, and Joseph. Zornberg brings biblical, midrashic, and literary sources together, illuminating the tensions that grip human beings as they search for an encounter God

4. The Life of Gluckel of Hameln  by Beth-Zion Abrahams

Gluckel of Hameln’s memoir is widely viewed as one of the earliest major works written by a Jewish woman and has become a classic. This JPS book is the only English translation of Gluckel’s story from the original Yiddish and is widely considered the most accurate and complete translation available

5. Modern Poems on the Bible  by David Curzon

This is a collection of imaginative and engaging contemporary responses to the Bible. Guided by the classic rabbinic genre of midrash conceived 1,500 years ago, Curzon chooses poems from Jewish and non-Jewish writers alike and places them besides the biblical passages that were their inspiration.

After all, Albert Einstein once said: “Somebody who reads only newspapers and at best the books of contemporary authors’ looks to me like an extremely nearsighted person who scorns eyeglasses.” We’ve certainly learned a lesson or two from Albert, so perhaps we should take his advice!

-Emily

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