The Orthodox way to observe Christmas. And I don’t mean Eastern Orthodox. I mean, Jewish Orthodox.
Of course, this is a direct hit against the Orthodox claim that once a custom is established, it remains a custom even when the reason for observing it has long vanished. Except among the ultraOrthodox, the custom of Nittel Nacht has completely disappeared. I never heard of it until I was well into adulthood.
A Chabad rabbi tells us what he really think.
Like the best Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis, Manis Friedman has won the hearts of many unaffiliated Jews with his charismatic talks about love and God; it was Friedman who helped lead Bob Dylan into a relationship with Chabad.
But Friedman, who today travels the country as a Chabad speaker, showed a less warm and cuddly side when he was asked how he thinks Jews should treat their Arab neighbors.
“The only way to fight a moral war is the Jewish way: Destroy their holy sites. Kill men, women and children (and cattle),” Friedman wrote in response to the question posed by Moment Magazine for its “Ask the Rabbis” feature.
Friedman argued that if Israel followed this wisdom, there would be “no civilian casualties, no children in the line of fire, no false sense of righteousness, in fact, no war.”
Backtracking by the rabbi and Chabad heaquarters at the link. Given Chabad’s political history in Israel, this is fairly consistent: and his claim that what he meant was that by being savagely tough, other people would be loath to attack the Jews is not a flight of fancy; but outside of the Settler movement, rabbis don’t normally say this sort of thing.
(I’ve encountered the Shmarya Rosenberg whom the article cites on the Internet; let’s just say that he has several axes to grind when it comes to Chabad.)
Despite Vatican requests, including in advance of the Pope’s visit to the room tomorrow, Israel remains reluctant to hand it over.
Israel’s approach seems more pragmatic than sentimental. The Tourism Minister, Stas Misezhnikov, who heads an inter-ministerial committee for the Pope’s visit, said it would be a mistake to hand over the Last Supper site to the Vatican without a significant reward. He is hoping for assistance from the Vatican in bringing millions of Catholic tourists to Israel but first apparently requires clear signs that the Vatican is on board.
“If we were certain that this great gift to the Christian world would bring us millions of Christian tourists we might think about it. But since that isn’t going to happen, we have no reason to give away presents,” Mr Misezhnikov told Army Radio. In subsequent remarks, Mr Misezhnikov softened his tone, saying he was studying the issue.
What makes this piquant is that the Cenacle, as it is called, is almost certainly not the place where the Last Supper was held. The current form is a medieval Christian building (details from Wiki here) which includes some walls of a syngogue dating from the Second Temple era, and which survived the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Roman, which might have been used by Jewish Christians of the First Century CE, and which was turned into a Byzantine church. Jesus, Judas and the Twelve have no real connection to the current building, which was built by the Crusaders.
Of course, we Jews are not to be outdone. If Jesus ate on the second floor, then David is buried on the first floor; the lower level is a Jewish holy place, traditionally the tomb of King David, although the tradition that it was his grave only began in the twelfth century CE, and the current tomb was part of the Crusader building effort (details from Wiki here).
And if the site is the real Tomb of David, then it’s almost impossible for Jesus and his companions to have eaten there, because of the ritual purity implications that would follow from the place being a gravesite.
But only in Jerusalem can you have two different religions having their own shrines in the same building–and both shrines are demonstrably imposters.
