Too Good to Miss #5

This past Shabbat, spending the Thanksgiving holiday with my grandsons in Baltimore, I read Rabbi Lawrence Kushner’s latest book, a novel entitled Kabbalah: A Love Story. On page ix, Rabbi Kushner acknowledged the advice and teaching of friends, including one Phil Miller. In all honestly, modesty and humility, I cannot recall anything I ever said to Rabbi Kushner so memorable as to warrant his thanks!

At first I found the book overwritten and filled with the clichés of novels nowadays, especially references in contemporary cultural icons, such as Starbucks coffee and the neon sign in front of (the now out-of-business) Tower Records. It was not an easy beginning for me, but, then, the Zohar does not begin easily either. One must wade through dense verbiage that conceals as much as it dresses up its complex concepts.

The pedant in me rankled at the introduction of a Zohar printed on blue paper in Livorno (Leghorn), Italy in 1647 by a printer named Mendoza. Hebrew printing did not begin there until 1659, and by a gentleman named Gabbai, with one Abraham ben Raphael Medola starting a second and more permanent press in 1740. Moreover, blue paper was used in Kapust, Koretz, and other East European towns in the Pale of Settlement in the first decade of the 19th century!

In addition, the surface plot and its cast characters seemed predictable and worthy of Hollywood … but within a short time such incongruity and triteness were reduced to cavils by the sweep of the book’s lesson.

Rabbi Kushner has taken a complex theosophic concept and couched it in wonderful, transparent language.

But the one who closes the book and think that the lesson is over has missed the book’s point!

I close, reminding you to keep in mind Psalm 92, verses. 6-7.

here we go again

Weekly Journal Review #9

Educational Leadership. Vol. 64, no. 3, November 2006.
Focusing on the impact of NCLB (n Child Left Behind) on assessment, teacher training & qualifications, language skills and testing.

Jewish Currents: A Progressive Secular Bimonthly. November/December 2006.
Includes an annual round-up of Jewish fiction, articles on Israeli media and public opinion, American Yiddish poetry, art, poetry & book reviews.

Phi Delta Kappan: The Professional Journal for Education. Vol. 88, no. 3 November 2006.
Features articles on high-poverty schools, fees for activities, and patriotism and education; also a special section on Indian education in Montana.

Religious Studies Review. Vol. 32, no. 3. July 2006.
Special issue on Japanese religions, and notes on recent publications in theology, philosophy, gender studies, and ritual & worship.

Vetus Testamentum: A Quarterly published by the International Organization for the Study of the Old Testament. Vol. LVI, no. 3, 2006.
Articles in English, French & German, on the topics from Psalms, Ezra, Chronicles, Joshua and Judges.

Yad Vashem Magazine. Vol. 43, Fall 2006.
Focusing on facing the future of Holocaust remembrance.

Happy Thanksgiving!
yaffa

Follow-Up from Last Week's Posting-A Most Memorable Reference Question

This blog entry comes as a follow-up to my posting of last week.

To date there has been only one comment posted, anonymously, that somehow the rebbe HAD heard of the Book of Enoch. Well, I attended a Roman Catholic university in the early 1960s when the Legion of Decency still rated movies for Roman Catholics, and the priests I encountered knew all about the proscribed films even though they had not seen them. So it would not surprise me if the rebbe knew what the Book of Enoch was.

I did receive two or three lovely personal e-mails from persons at the College-Institute.

I also took the liberty of posting the blog to Hasafran, the electronic newsletter of the Association of Jewish Libraries. While the reaction from members was immediate, no one saw fit to enter a comment, but rather they too sent me personal messages.

There were seven altogether. Six of them told me how wonderful the story was, and how inspiring. One colleague waxed so elegiac on my being a role model of professionalism that my ears burned. And, by the way, six of the seven comments came from individuals one would categorize as “Traditional,” if not Orthodox.

Yet all was not rosy. One colleague, Orthodox, librarian at a major day-school, and an individual of stature within the Association of Jewish Libraries, took me to task for censoring information. (She made an excellent point, that there are no evil texts, only the evil use people put them to.) Censorship is a “hot button” in librarianship, and even suggesting someone is censorious is something not taken lightly.

She and I exchanged several e-mails in which she spelled out her feelings, which I certainly cannot fault. For her, perhaps the only thing that redeemed my not answering the young man’s initial question was the fact that he was a minor.

I will say that had the young man asked me about the Sefer ha-Aggadah, I think I would have had no problem in explaining who Bialik and Ravnitzky were and what the agenda behind the book was. This is very different from what he did ask.

Moreover if an adult had asked the same question about the Book of Enoch, then I might have asked if the person knew what the Sefarim Hitsoniyyim were. And if s/he said yes, then I would proceed from there.

Another person, also Orthodox, a professor at another institution, and a gentleman whom I have known for perhaps thirty years, and hold in the highest esteem, wrote to me that he found the story “heartwarming, but ultimately depressing.” I asked him what he meant. He wrote back that he saw yet another example of a young inquiring mind in the Orthodox world being squelched.

I begged to differ with him. After all, I had no expectation of the young man calling me back. Yet his rebbe told him to. Moreover, his rebbe told him to thank me and to tell me that the rebbe said I was a mensch. This, for me, bespoke a good deal about the rebbe. While the rebbe did not give me permission to tell the young man about the Book of Enoch, perhaps this rebbe took the young man aside and sold him privately about the Apocrypha, as well as Rabbi Akiba’s admonition on Mishnah Sanhedrin !0:1.

I adduced another example. One gentleman, now a professor of Ancient Near Eastern Studies at a major American university, had been a student at the Telshe Yeshiva in Cleveland more than 60 years ago. One of his teachers, recognizing the student’s brilliance, gave him permission to read the Humash with the commentary of Samuel Leib Gordon (1896-1933). By today’s secular standards, this commentary is rather “tame stuff,” yet for a yeshiva bahur 60 years ago, it was close to heresy.

There was a snap inspection in the dormitory and a volume of ShaLaG was found in this student’s locker. He would have been expelled from the yeshiva, but his teacher came forward and said that he had given the student permission to read the offending book.

Granted, this occurred three generations ago, and most likely might not happen today. But thirty years ago, and in my situation? I can only hope…

Oh, I nearly forgot - One professor at the College (a committed Reform Jew) asked why I simply did not answer the young man’s question. I would like to think the intention was other than to challenge and possibly destroy the young man’s beliefs.

As I said to this person and to my two Orthodox interlocutors, “I may be ‘Hote’ [het-tet-alef], but I am not Mahati.” If I sin, it is my business. But I will not be a willing party to someone else’s falling prey to sin

Finally what sort of obligation do I have, in my profession and as a Jew, not to censor, but yet to protect?

One of the first things I learned in Hebrew School over fifty years ago was the statement: Kol Yisrael ‘arevin zeh be-zeh.” Jews are responsible for one another.

It has not ceased to be a guiding principle.

Not found in the library?

An old joke:

Question: How many librarians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Answer: I don’t know, but I can look it up!

Over the past several years, it’s been my job, my challenge, and occasionally my passion to “look it up.” I love playing detective: tracking down elusive facts and citations; finding everything ever written on an obscure topic; and knowing the hidden places where knowledge is lurking in the library and the world of electronic resources.

So, when we started planning my son’s Bar Mitzvah, I was confident that I could find everything that I needed. A quick search of the catalog under the subject “bar mitzvah” led me to the BM 707 section of the stacks. I found rows of books about the history and customs of the ceremony. Need to plan a party? I found the checklists. Need to select a mitzvah project? I found some guidelines. Need to keep it spiritual and meaningful? We have it on the shelves! Need to figure out how the baby I held yesterday suddenly turned 13? I can’t find a thing! Need an outline for a speech expressing how much this child has brought to my life? Not be found.

I wander up and down the stacks. I stroke the baby name books I had poured through, although I had already known that he would be named after my grandfather, a man of great kindness and integrity. I finger the Bibles remembering that we had ‘sponsored’ my son’s name in the Torah scroll that was written for our congregation and hoping that he would keep coming back to the Torah. I pass the literature section and smile, thinking of the delightful rhyming stories I read to him as a baby and the fantasy adventure books he brings to me now to share. I pass the cookbooks and think not only of the massive baking we’ve done in the past few weeks, but all the years of covering the kitchen and ourselves in a layer of flour as we baked mandelbroit or challah.

I wander up and down the stacks thinking about my son and family and think, “Perhaps I have found a speech here.”

The Weekly Review of Journals #8
being a Libra that strives for harmony & balance (or, as some of you who know me and are less gentle would put it: "can't make up her mind"...) - i decided to transition from the group email distribution mode to the blog by doing both for a while. so here is today's "weekly review of journals" that has quicly become one of the top ten emails marked as [bulk] by your ever vigilant firewalls:

Weekly Journal Review #8


Congress Monthly: A Publication of the American Jewish Congress. Vol. 73, no. 4. July/August 2006.
Articles about the war between Israel & the Hezbollah; a response to the Pope’s comments about Islam; the text of the US-Israel Energy Cooperation Act, and book reviews.

Humanistic Judaism: “A voice for Jews who value their Jewish identity and who seek alternatives to conventional Judaism.” Vol. XXXIV, no. III. Summer 2006.
HJ Forum on: Digging the Truth: Archaeology and the Bible. Articles on Lillith and on challenges facing Jews in urban settings.

Liberty: A Magazine of Religious Freedom. Vol. 101, no. 6. November/December 2006.
Published by the North American Division of the Seventh Day Adventist Church.
Includes articles on the Bible wars and the political utility of Religious Pluralism.

Nashim: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies & Gender Issues. Fall 5767/2006. No. 12.
Issue focusing on women’s health, reproduction and body politics. Also in this issue, an article on women’s Torah reading.

Pastoral Psychology. Vol. 55, no. 1. September 2006.
Includes articles on religiosity and spirituality; a Korean feminist perspective on God representations; coming out stories framed as faith narratives.

Points East: A Publication of the Sino-Judaic Institute. Vol. 21, no. 3. November 2003.
Features an article about the blossoming of Jewish Studies in China. Information about print and on line publications on the current condition and the study of Jews & Judaism in China.

And remember to think fondly of the veterans in your life today.

Happy Veterans Day

yaffa

A Most Memorable Reference Question

A Most Memorable Reference Question

Having been a librarian for near to forty years I have learned that most librarians who assist patrons with their reference questions have at least one or two memorable stories they enjoy sharing. Some are funny, some are poignant. They are the librarians’ “war stories.”

The incident I am about to relate occurred around 1976, when HUC-JIR was still on West 68^th Street. One Monday morning I answered the telephone and was greeted by the voice of a young man who spoke English with a mild Yiddish inflection at machine-gun speed. He did not offer his name but asked point-blank,” What can you tell me about the Sayfer Khenikh?

It took me a moment to realize he was referring to the apocryphal Book of Enoch, known in Hebrew as Sefer Hanokh.

Now while the Book of Enoch was historically a “Jewish book” and at one time was held to be holy by some Jews, as evidenced by its citation in the Christian Bible (Jude 1:14-15) and by fragments found at Qumran, it is virtually unknown to Jews today outside of scholarly circles. Moreover, it is largely unknown today to mainstream or even Evangelical Christians in the United States. So I was curious as to how this young man came across it and why he was calling me.

I asked how he knew about this book, and he said that the previous Shabbos he came across a marvelous book at the home of an acquaintance called the Sayfer Agudeh. It took me a moment to decipher that he was referring to the classic Sefer ha-Agadah, complied by Ravnitzky and Bialik, hardly something a student in a Haredi yeshivah would read!

He said the book contained many Medroshim he had never heard before, and that he was especially enthralled by some attributed to the Book of Enoch, and he wanted to know more about it.

He also said that he had called other Jewish libraries, but the librarians said they had nothing to tell him and that ours was the last library on his list.

I asked him if he was a student in a yeshiva and if he had a “rebbe” or “mashgiah ruhani.” He said yes to both.

I then instructed him to go to his “rebbe” or “mashgiah ruhani” and tell him that I would be willing to tell him (the young man) anything he wanted to know about the Sayfer Khenikh if and only if his “rebbe” or “mashgiah ruhani” gave me permission to do so.

He rang off, and I doubted if I would hear from him again.

The following Friday morning the telephone rang and it was the same young man calling back.

He said that he went to his “rebbe” and told him what he had asked me and what I had then instructed him to do, namely, ask the teacher or spiritual mentor’s permission for me to share what I knew about the Book of Enoch.

“My ’rebbe’ told me to do three things: to thank you, to tell you that he says that you are mensch, but, no, you may not tell me anything about the Sayfer Khenikh.”

He then wished me “A Gitn Shabbos” and hung up.

Tales from the Techie side

I recently attended the Internet Librarian convention in Monterey California. This gathering of about 1200 librarians, webmasters, and library technology people meets every year to share the latest electronic tools, gadgets and search strategies. I love to attend to pick up ideas for the library websites and for Internet searching.

This year, the “hot topics” were “mash-ups” and social networking. For the non-geeks among us, a “mash-up” is a webpage that takes information from two or more other sites and combines it together. For example, this site http://www.housingmaps.com/ takes the apartment listings from Craig’s List and maps the entries using Google maps. There were other examples that used library circulation data (like most popular books, or new books) and combined it with Amazon.com pictures or reviews.

Libraries are also getting involved in social network programs. They are setting up shop in MySpace and Facebook and other networks. They’re using Flickr to collect and share photographs. They’re podcasting (check out “The Book of Life” http://www.jewishbooks.blogspot.com/ ), videocasting, and integrating instant messaging into their reference services.

There were also a couple of sessions on hand-held/mobile issues. I’m curious how many of our students or faculty would be interested in searching the catalog from their hand-held units. If there is a demand, I can look into setting that up.

New ways for searching the Internet was another major topic. I’ll post some tips that I learned in another post.

Too Good to Miss # 4

In the Library – Too Good to Miss (No. 4)

Contrary to popular belief or mythology, neither do I read every book that arrives at the Library nor do I know every book in the Library. But every now and again a book passes over my desk that makes me sit up and take notice. In that case I might skim it. If the skimming grabs my attention then I might read it. And if I am deeply impressed by it, I will go out of my way to bend every ear possible, to alert everyone to check this book out, for it is too good to miss.

Mitch Chefitz, Rabbi of Temple Israel of Great Miami, is easily one of those alumni who made a deep impression on me during his student years. The insight and wit he brought to everything he touched easily made him stand out.

Back in the early 1970s, when New Age was only just beginning to emerge from Hippiedom, Mitch Chefitz was seriously interested in mysticism. But his interest was not the dry and academic approach of Scholem - No, he wanted to "experience" it first hand...

When I learned that Rabbi Chefitz was writing a Kabbalistic trilogy, I knew I had to look into it. So far only two volumes of the Kabbalah of Moshe Katan have appeared:

The Seventh Telling (published by St. Martin's in 2001) sets the stage. The Twenty-Third Hour (published by St. Martin's in 2002) continues the saga with a cautionary tale about a "succesful" rabbi whose life is ultimately hollow...

While I am wait for the next volume in the trilogy, he wrote another book, The Curse of Blessings: Sometimes the Right Stories Can Change Your Life (Running Brook Press, 2006), a collection of ten wonderful tales that will make you stop and ponder ...

OK, OK, I know a blog is supposed to be brief (or at least I was told so, based on reactions to my last posting!), so I will not write a long megillah but stop here!

I sincerely hope you will read all three of his wonderdful books, and let us hope that he finishes the trilogy bi-meherah vi-yamenu!

Phil Miller

PS To whet your appetite I suggest you visit his web site:

http://mitchellchefitz.com/