Dr. Israel Drazin is the author of fifteen books, including a series of five volumes on the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible, which he co-authors with Dr. Stanley M. Wagner, and a series of four books on the twelfth century philosopher Moses Maimonides, the latest being Maimonides: Reason Above All, published by Gefen Publishing House, www.gefenpublishing.com. The Orthodox Union (OU) publishes daily samples of the Targum books on www.ouradio.org.
Targum Onkelos is the rabbinically endorsed Aramaic translation of the Five Books of Moses. Publishers have recognized its historical and theological importance since the invention of the printing press and have honored Onkelos by placing it on the inside center spot adjacent to the biblical Hebrew text. Many Jews know that it exists. They know that it is for the most part a literal translation of the Torah. But most Jews do not know that there are two other full-length Targums as well as fragments of currently non-existing Targums; Targum means "translation" and is used today primarily for translations composed in Aramaic. The other two complete Targums are Targum Neophyti and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. What are these Targums and when were they composed?
Rabbi Dr. Nathan Lopes Cardozo, a prominent author and lecturer, heads the David Cardozo Academy in Jerusalem, cardozoschool.org
How embarrassing for man
to be the greatest miracle on earth
and not to understand it!
How embarrassing for man
to live in the shadow of greatness
and to ignore it,
to be a contemporary of God
and not to sense it.
Religion depends upon what man does
with his ultimate embarrassment.
Dr. Biton is Associate Professor of Law at Sha'arei Mishpatim Law
College in Israel. She holds a Ph.D. from The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem and was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard Law School,
where her studies were supported by a fellowship from the International
Sephardic Education Foundation (ISEF). Dr. Biton is the co-founder of
Tmura, The Israeli Anti-Discrimination Legal Center, where she is
actively involved in combining anti-discrimination law and tort law for
the advancement of disenfranchised groups, offering pro-bono legal
assistance to victims of discrimination. Dr. Biton is also an active
member of the ISEF Alumni and Friends Organization, which supports
ISEF's mission to expand access to higher education for Israel's
disadvantaged and immigrant population groups.
Dr. Israel Drazin is the author of fifteen books, including a series of five volumes on the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible, which he co-authors with Dr. Stanley M. Wagner, and a series of four books on the twelfth century philosopher Moses Maimonides, the latest being Maimonides: Reason Above All, published by Gefen Publishing House, www.gefenpublishing.com. The Orthodox Union (OU) publishes daily samples of the Targum books on www.ouradio.org.
Are evangelicals interested in supporting the State of Israel because they are convinced that this support will help them convert more Jews to Christianity?
Orthodox Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin of Israel, the founder of the first orthodox Jewish center in Israel for religious dialogue with Christians in 2008, and Dr. John D. Garr, board chairman and CEO of Hebraic Heritage Christian Center, assembled a total of seventeen Jewish and evangelical scholars in Atlanta, Georgia for a two day colloquium to discuss this question and other interfaith issues. The results were excellent and a follow-up session is planned. I was one of the attendees and the following are my impressions.
Dr. Maurice Wohlgelernter taught as Professor of English first at Yeshiva College, and thereafter at Baruch College, CUNY. He also served as Visiting Professor at New York University, New York Institute of Technology,, City College and Bar Ilan University. He was simultaneously active, during those years, as a practicing rabbi. This article, which appears in issue 7 of Conversations--the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals--was dedicated to the memory of Dr. Bernard Lander, Founder and President of Touro College.
I always believed in Dizzy, that old Jew. He saw into the future.
Winston Churchill
( A review essay on Benjamin Disraeli, by Adam Kirsch. New York: Schocken, 2008.)
Shalom uvrakha. I hope you have been having a good summer.
We recently returned from a 3 week stay in Jerusalem. I spent a lot of time
meeting with like-minded individuals and organizational leaders, in
order to foster cooperative relationships between our Institute and
Israeli modern Orthodoxy. Below is a report on activities we have
already undertaken, and that we are expanding in the coming years.
Jennifer Lewis has a PhD in teacher education and mathematics
education from the University of Michigan, where she teaches classes
and conducts research in mathematics education. She also works in
Jewish education through her affiliation with the Mandel Foundation.
Before that, Jenny taught public school for ten years. She is married
to Marc Bernstein and together they have four children. This article appears in issue 7 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
New ideas about the teaching and learning of mathematics present challenges for Orthodox schools. In part, these ideas about the teaching and learning of mathematics are challenging to any schools: teachers lack content knowledge in the subject because they have had insufficient opportunities to learn themselves; teachers are strained pedagogically to teach a subject that they learned differently as students; ambitious aims for subject matter learning compete with a whole host of educational issues that need no enumeration here. For Orthodox schools, new understandings about cognition and learning are particularly fraught.
Esther Lapian is a teacher and teacher educator in the field of Bible
studies and the teaching of Jewish texts. She works extensively in
Israel and abroad as a consultant to Jewish educational organizations
from every religious sector. She recently opened a private educational
consulting service called Paces, aimed at "walking parents through the
paces" of educational challenges presented by the Israeli school
system.She made Aliyah from the United States in 1987. This article
originally appeared in Hebrew, in De'ot, the magazine of Ne'emanei
Torah vaAvodah, no. 42, May 2009, and has been translated into English
by Sarah Nadav. This article appears in issue 7 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
During the past several years as an educator in the fields of Tanakh and Jewish studies, I have come across a prevalent and disturbing phenomenon: most of the religiously observant student teachers whom I have met are not at all interested in teaching in the mamlakhti-dati school system (the religious public school system in Israel). When the time comes for them to decide on a professional placement, they apply to secular schools, or to the new model of specialized dati-hiloni schools (religious/secular schools), or to pluralistic religious schools.
Dr. Marc B. Shapiro holds the Weinberg Chair in Judaic Studies at theUniversity of Scranton. His most recent book is Studies in Maimonidesand His Interpreters. This article appears in issue 7 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
Orthodox Jews like to claim that they adhere to an unchanging tradition of laws and beliefs. Based on this understanding, it becomes possible to decide who "is in" and who "is out;" that is, who is part of the Orthodox camp and who must be placed in a different denomination. The term "Orthodox" itself, which is not part of traditional Jewish vocabulary but actually comes from the Christian lexicon, was adopted in order to distinguish different types of Jews. Yet what exactly defines so-called Orthodoxy is not so easy to pin down.
Orthodox Jews like to claim that they adhere to an unchanging tradition of laws and beliefs. Based on this understanding, it becomes possible to decide who "is in" and who "is out;" that is, who is part of the Orthodox camp and who must be placed in a different denomination. The term "Orthodox" itself, which is not part of traditional Jewish vocabulary but actually comes from the Christian lexicon, was adopted in order to distinguish different types of Jews. Yet what exactly defines so-called Orthodoxy is not so easy to pin down.
