Dvinsk and Druya

Oy to Druya!

DNC Photoblog

Kerry's Mascot

9 of Av

 

In the Temple 

From Temple Mount to Gaza

 

AP Feed Album

Jacob Richman Album

55 mile Human Chain 

Liftoff

Launch

Shir Hadash

Forward Newspaper Online Reports that Naomi Shemer's, "Jerusalem of Gold," has been included in the Conservative movement's first-ever prayer book for the fast day of Tisha B'Av.

Eternal Battle of Good Versus Evil

  A quicktime Rockfish movie you got to see.

From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto

From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto. Issac Cardozo, a study in 17th century marranism and Jewish apologetics by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi. On Page 478:

With the hindsight that only time allows, the historian today can see in Sabbatian movement an eruption of pent-up Jewish forces, seeking, however blindly and impulsively, a radical "messianic" restructuring and reevaluation of the fundamental patters of Jewish existence. At the time, however, it is doubtful whether even the participants in the movement could have detached themselves sufficiently from the literal messianic framework in order to sense the deeper currents of which it was an expression. For those who stood aloof, and for those many others who were disillusioned, it was not difficult to conceive after 1666 that what had occurred had been merely an aberration, painful to be sure, but temporary. The Jewish tradition which Cardozo encountered still offered itself to view as organic whole, and continued to be lived as such by the mass of Jews. The Jewish community was still in every respect a corporate entity as a "Republic". Antisemitism still expressed itself within it's medieval frame of reference... But in all three respects that world was to change drastically in the course of the next century.

Footnote: Fernando (Issac) Cardozo and his younger brother Miguel (Abraham) escaped privileged life in Madrid Court and returned to the fully observant life. Fernando and Miguel settled in Venice where Jews where not prohibited from religious practice. Issac eventually because a physician to the Jewish community of Verona while his younger brother Abraham became a physician to the Bey in Tripoli on the recommendation of the Duke of Tuscany. Abraham Cardozo was a passionate believer in Shabbtai Zevi while his older brother remained a skeptic. There are selected letters between the two brothers in Amsterdam archives. Two years after the revelation of Shabbtai Zevi in 1668 the brothers broke all contacts. Abraham was fateful to Shabbtai after his conversion to Islam. Brought up as a catholic in Madrid he argued in Zevi�s defence in kabalsitic terms. While Isaac continued his work on the monumental Jewish opus "Excelincias".