Web Roundup

I just read a beautiful post on Mishkaneer - Beyond the Old Zionism, about what it really means to be a "New Jew."

Jen Taylor Friedman is a soferet (female scribe), whose website I found from Netivat Sofrut. Jen Friedman writes megillot Esther (the scroll of Esther), as well as other documents.

Mordechai Pinchas, a sofer, writes about his writing of a newly composed scroll, the Megillat ha-Shoah. This Megillah was composed by Professor Avigdor Shinan, working on behalf of the Conservative movement in Israel. These are the contents:

The scroll contains six chapters that include a testimony from a survivor whose job in a death camp was to dispose of bodies while removing the victims' gold teeth, including those of his dead brother; an eyewitness account of life in the Warsaw Ghetto; and an eulogy for those who perished. Its final chapter also commemorates the survivors, including those who went on to build the State of Israel.

Velveteen Rabbi is discussing the numbering of the Ten Commandments and how they differ between Jews and Christians. She says:

But disenfranchisement of those who don't share this text, or the government's chosen version of the text, is only one problem. Another problem -- at least, for me as a Jew -- is the implication that these verses supercede the rest of the Torah. Jews don't generally call this bit of text the "Ten Commandments," because we don't want to imply that they're the Big Ten and all the other ones don't matter as much. (In Torah they're called aseret ha'dvarim/ten sayings, and from Rabbinic days onward we've used the name aseret ha-dibrot/ten utterances). We place our focus on the whole path of righteous behavior, and consider it inappropriate to elevate these ten statements above the other 603 mitzvot that Torah offers. So while it's true that I'm a member of a faith-community for whom (some versions of) these words have relevance, I wouldn't be comfortable seeing them displayed in public spaces even in the original lengthy Hebrew version.

And here's a good online article about Jewish blogs, written by Sarah Bronson.