Just read an article which quotes three talmudic dictums about Jerusalem.

No trash was allowed within the city confines and had to be taken out of the city proper.

It was illegal to operate a kiln to craft ceramic vessels since the smell and vapor would ruin the beautiful air in Jerusalem.

It was illegal to rent apartments in Jerusalem during the the three major holidays as all apartments became hefker for whomever visited for that time period.

Does anybody have the sources for this in the Talmud?

And God Saw Literature, That It Was Good
(for complete essay: http://www.tnr.com/article/and-god-saw-literature-it-was-good )
…The necessity of the Bible, if it is to be seen solely as poetry and story, may flatten in the same way. All sacred books contain the wise or stirring pleasures of narrative: the Bhagavad-Gita tells stories, the Taoist scriptures of Chuang-Tse tell stories, the Zoroastrian Zenavesta tells stories, the Koran tells stories, Confucius and Mencius tell stories, the Buddha tells stories; African and American Indian sacred tales abound. The earth is flooded with stories, hymns, and parables regarded as holy in their origins. The literary approach can deflate them all. Flannery O'Connor, an intransigent believer, said of the Christian mysteries that if they were not true, "then the hell with them." A skilled teller of tales, she insisted on a distinction between imagination of the kind that she herself could wield and what she took to be divine revelation. And it may be that if all the world's scriptures had long ago been flattened into literature, and packed side by side, despite their dissimilarities and divergences, into a single bookshelf–much as Madame Bovary, say, can stand in civil proximity to Crime and Punishment, and Joyce cheek by jowl with Proust–all our habitations and histories might have been far more pacific. Novels and stories do not war with one another; neither, pace Harold Bloom, do they always engage in supersessionism (at least not of the jihadist variety).

But stories, though they influence and enlarge us, do not deliver Commandments. The Bible cannot be pumped up from literary prestige to divine prerogative through arguing from the power of human imagination, even when that power is "kindled" by positing measureless structures of transcendent dominion. What, then, are unbelieving readers of the Five Books left with? Unless they happen to be moral philosophers who will deduce law and right conduct from reason, it is stories they are left with, and–for non-philosophers–isn't that enough?

On their face, the Patriarchal Tales, like all literature that endures, touch on everything recognizable in ordinary human life: crises between parents and children, between siblings, between husbands and wives; hunger and migration, jealousy and reconciliation, sudden ascent and sudden subjugation, great love and great hatred. Universally felt, they are family annals in a family album. The Joseph narrative is doubtless the most moving story of all: here stands Joseph, Pharaoh's mighty viceroy, interrogating the humbly petitioning brothers who in the past flung him into a pit and sold him to traders on their way to Egypt. Catching sight of Benjamin, the tender younger son of their mother Rachel, "Joseph hurried out, for his feelings for his brother overwhelmed him and he wanted to weep, and he went into the chamber and wept there. And he bathed his face and came out and held himself in check and said, 'Serve bread.'"

In this enclosed fraternal scene, God is not needed, and seems not to be present. So far, the drama of Joseph appears to resemble the stories we call literature; and yet it does not, because Joseph will not permit God to be exiled out of his world. When, bowing before Pharaoh's deputy, the brothers plead for forgiveness, Joseph is again swept into weeping, and invokes not only God, but God's design: "And Joseph said, 'Fear not, for am I instead of God? While you meant evil for me, God meant it for good.'" And further: "Do not be pained and do not be incensed with yourselves that you sold me down here, because for sustenance God has sent me before you … to make you a remnant on earth and to preserve life, for you to be a great surviving group. And so, it is not you who sent me here but God." A few verses on, Joseph dies, at one hundred ten, and is embalmed according to Egyptian custom. And now, portentously, the Book of Genesis ends: "He was put in a coffin in Egypt."

That coffin signifies more than a human story. It is God's story: Egypt will become a coffin for the Hebrews until God redeems them. God in the Hebrew Bible is Causality, and Causality, unlike Joseph or Benjamin, cannot be a character in a tale–an assertion that has been broadly contradicted, or at least qualified, in formulations by both Harold Bloom and Jack Miles. In his winning and ingenious book God: A Biography, Miles is moved to ask, "How did all this feel to God?" and sets out to see Him as a "character who 'comes to life' in a work of literary art." Miles's God has an indelible, even a familiar, human personality, not unlike the mercurial protagonist of an epic, or an opera, or a labyrinth of motives by Henry James. And while it may be possible to transmute aspects of Scripture into literature by means of the fictive imagination– certainly Thomas Mann succeeded in turning the Joseph chronicle into a massive and masterly novel–finally Scripture itself rebels against it. Mann's fiction can claim no greater authority than writerly genius.

Just here is the nub and the rub of it: if the God of the Bible is not "real, " then–in creative-writing-course argot–the Bible's stories won't and don't work. For the faithless skeptic or rationalist confronting Scripture (a category of modernity that includes, I suppose, most of us), there is nothing more robust to lean on than suspension of disbelief, the selfsame device one brings to Jane Austen. Mr. Darcy and Mr. Knightley, salvational creations both, are not real; we believe in them anyway. Causality deserves better. Causality escapes the mere "comes to life" of character.

It is the directness and the consummate clarity of Robert Alter's rendering that forces this conclusion. The translator's richly developed notes and reflections are informed by scholarship, wit, and intuition; without the intrusions of didacticism, they educate. But the antique words, on their own power, and even in a latter-day language, draw us elsewhere, to that indeterminate place where God is not a literary premise but a persuasive certainty–whether or not we are willing to go there.

i was in brooklyn college in 1992, in the spring, after pesach… i was in the stacks section looking for old american Jewish literature review articles about chaim potok. (out of suny albany, this publication had some nice stuff, one with a title "the crucifixion of chaim potok" about "my name is asher lev", including a rebuttal by potok in the next or same issue. i am paraphrasing here, it being some years ago…this name kept on popping up in these fancy periodicals which at first i completely ignored. then it kept on coming up, and the titles appeared to be straight up my alley. so finally one day i took out "the pagan rabbi and other stories" and headed for the overpass on bedford avenue sitting down on the cement table-seats , seats which nobody ever used and have since been torn down.it was a sunny day. i began at noon and remained there until i could no longer read…. i don't remember even going to the bathroom. i was that transfixed. and it has never really left me. the next book i read was "the messiah of stockholm", a fictional account of an auschwitz survivor turned book reviewer for a stockholm newspaper who believes his dad to be bruno schultz, and of rumors swirling that schultz' mythical lost manuscript, "the messiah", which had thought to be written by him and destroyed along with schultz in the holocaust, that this very document had popped up in stockholm.but besides for brilliant  plot and her sheer b'kius in  jewish texts, from the talmud to history to hallacha to yiddish, and her command of many languages, and the fact that she hapens to be a frum woman who puts up the chulent every friday afternoon for her family, all of this, peaked shall i say, my interest.I wish to do a series here on Ozick, her essays and perhaps excerpts from her fiction, both short stories and novels.She is of the Lithuanian persuasion. she is considered to be one of the top living american writers by the international literary establishment… she is right wing on Israel… but very explorative and open about everything in her fiction. this is hardly what some term "charedi fiction".

I read this in an issue of Beis Moshiach (Hebrew). I misplaced that edition so can't relay the date. (Translation, mine)

"

Before I went back to Israel my father's business partner Charlie (Yechezkel Roth) came to bid me farewell. A Jew who was one of the first students of Tomechi Temimim, which the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe had established in America; this person had descended from the path of Torah over the years, and our talk continued until I told him about my studies in Yoga. Our talk continued and suddenly I found myself opening up to him the concerns of my heart. I told him with great vivaciousness of the torah of Yoga which I learnt and on the ways of meditation. All my attempts to tell him of the exaltedness of Yoga he contradicted and in place explained that in Judaism there was the concept of meditation and that it is featured in the book, the Tanya".

I didn’t pay heed to his words and I received them in a mixed manner. I was then a young bochur, and listening to what an older person was telling you, I shed with, ""the world is for the young"…

Towards the end of our discussion, I told him that I dream of going to India, to study where yoga was founded. At this point, he lost his composure and screamed "instead of going to India, where there many diseases, it would be better for you if you went to Kfar Chabad"

The article goes on to say that Bentzion Cohen went to study at University in Israel and went, at the suggestion of charlie roth, to visit his friend, the mashpia, Zushe Posner.

When Shlomo Chaim Kesselman went into yechidus and asked for bentzion Cohen’s resolution to think chassidus before davening, the rebbe stood up and exclaimed, "bentzion cohen meditates on chassidus before davenimg?! shlomo chaim would repeat this story at many farbrengens.

Bentzion Cohen resides in Kfar Chabad with his wife and children.

- The Ba'al Shemtov

Motty Borger's father speaks out.http://www.chofetzchaimusa.org/requestfromshmuelborger.mp3

hat tip to Vicki Polin

______

Shmuel borger - in costume or au naturale?

Likewise, the assumption that parents are predisposed to love their children unconditionally and protect them from harm is not universally true. I remember one patient, a man in his mid-20s, who came to me for depression and rock-bottom self-esteem.

It didn’t take long to find out why. He had recently come out as gay to his devoutly religious parents, who responded by disowning him. It gets worse: at a subsequent family dinner, his father took him aside and told him it would have been better if he, rather than his younger brother, had died in a car accident several years earlier.

Though terribly hurt and angry, this young man still hoped he could get his parents to accept his sexuality and asked me to meet with the three of them.

The session did not go well. The parents insisted that his “lifestyle” was a grave sin, incompatible with their deeply held religious beliefs. When I tried to explain that the scientific consensus was that he had no more choice about his sexual orientation than the color of his eyes, they were unmoved. They simply could not accept him as he was.

I was stunned by their implacable hostility and convinced that they were a psychological menace to my patient. As such, I had to do something I have never contemplated before in treatment.

At the next session I suggested that for his psychological well-being he might consider, at least for now, forgoing a relationship with his parents.

I felt this was a drastic measure, akin to amputating a gangrenous limb to save a patient’s life. My patient could not escape all the negative feelings and thoughts about himself that he had internalized from his parents. But at least I could protect him from even more psychological harm.

Easier said than done. He accepted my suggestion with sad resignation, though he did make a few efforts to contact them over the next year. They never responded.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/health/20mind.html?_r=1&8dpc

hat tip to vicki polin

BREAKING: Judge Lashes Out At Orthodox Community In Sex-Abuse Case; Says It Protects Abusers, Not Victims

by Hella Winston
 Jewish Week - October 2, 2009

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a16886/News/New_York.html

At the sentencing Tuesday of a bar mitzvah tutor and social worker convicted of sexually molesting two boys in Brooklyn, a New York State Supreme Court Judge lashed out at the offender's Orthodox community for "a communal attitude that seems to impose greater opprobrium on the victims than the perpetrator."

With his stinging critique, Judge Guston Reichbach placed himself at the center of a fierce debate in the Orthodox community over how best to police the problem of pedophilia.

Speaking from the bench the day after Yom Kippur at the sentencing of Yona Weinberg, who received a 13-month jail term, Judge Reichbach said he found it "troubling" that the community "seeks to blame, indeed punish victims who seek justice from the … civil society," according to a

court transcript. He went on to add that the Orthodox community's religious courts are "inappropriate" and "incapable" of dealing with criminal matters.Making his comments before a courtroom packed with supporters of the 31-year-old Weinberg - among them, according to his defense attorney, school principals, two rabbis and civic leaders - the judge spoke of receiving more than 90 letters attesting to Weinberg's character and innocence. None of the letters, the judge noted, "displays any concern or any sympathy or even any acknowledgement for these young victims which, frankly, I find shameful."

Indeed, Judge Reichbach referred to one letter in particular, written by a Mrs. Mandel and expressing sadness "that Weinberg's love of humankind has turned against him," to be "the height of chutzpah." (it continues)

hat tip to vicki polin

i had long felt it in my bones - how could this  crooked, plotting, scheming, thieving people be the children of  Yoshor El. then when i was studying the story of Jacob wrestling the angel it hit me, so obvious as to be unnoticeable. all of Jacob's children, save Benjamin were born before he became Israel. Even Benjamin was most likely conceived beforehand but let's not dicker. i'm sure there's 1,001 pshotim but in actuality we are the children of Jacob.

For a while, i've preferred quietly bowing out to dramatic public announcements, not wanting to endlessly retire like an aging rock band. But now, a solid three years into the exciting creation and invitation of theis forum into being, i'm stepping down formally, from any inolvement with 7fatcow, unconvinced that it exists at all.

No bitterness. Dissapointment would imply expectations, and all my hopes and expectations for this blog where satisfied right away, constantly, along with all my concerns and suspicions, re: the inevitably difficult nature of True Expression and Engagement. That was understood from the beginning to be OK. Sometimes, when you talk with people, a lot of bullshit comes out as cushion for any insight and genuine heart-of-self that might be revealed, and that condition was understood from the beginning: along with the genius in our wider community of not-quite-ex/not-quite-ohs is a multitude of protective layer of ego and dogma; of noise and principle, of assumption and of flawed language, furious at the implication that it must be probed to be understood. That's OK, as much as any of the troublesome nature of our world is to be called OK, it's part of who we have been, and how we have expressed.

All that said, it's boring now, because maybe we've gone as far as any of us wanted to go. One of our founding members has moved beyond interest in the conversation here, as a funner life beckoned where the wit was expresseable and the company close enough that trying to blog in a noise filled room of cheesy links and ironically repressive vulgarity became uncompelling, especially once the Twitter and Facebook Status update was given unto us, to let the impulse sound more immediately, without need for context, or consensus. And so, the chance to say just a few things here was all he needed.

Another founding member has tried to give up so many times, and the clamor of each dramtic farewell, combined with the unelaborated links and occasional disavowels of entire identities for fear of Who May Be Listening, and Who May Be Judged along with him, often prevented the depth of his insight from being expressed. He erased all his posts, psuedonym after psudonym, and tried to convince somebody that he was somebody, and not actually somebody. And in that noise, his genius is silenced, and a certain unconfrontational decadence tried to grow around him; alas, woe unto those who think their sacrifices will provide security, money, or love.

And around that, behind that, so much genius was expressed.  Zoroastro/IslamoYid's and Atgate231's Scholarship, Class and Humor, Shitalpin's withering and ultimately humanist hot/cold sarcasm-masking-authenticity, Hashemsucksdick's marriage of post-religious concience and artistry, Mohammed's strange and shocking form of concience, Anivaho's Mercurial genius to let words permute into sublime association (even as any conceit towards divine synchronicty was despaired of) Yalhak's Majestic magnimamity and wholeness of vision/purity of impurity of perspective (along with the  lucid clarity of Yesod, Aisav, and the other maaminim he brought) and the writers we never even really identified, who bought so much class, genius, and perfect kvetchery to the conversation (who was Hiavrom anyway? he was brilliant! I hope he's OK.)

All the Neo-Nazis who stopped by to let us now what was going on, all the feminists and fetishists, all the excited Chabadskers, all the grieving relatives– so much got circulated, and maybe so little was heard, who knows? who knows. Who knows how much we ever hear from each other that we weren't ready to chap. But I feel like a lot of rare expression and relative taboo was aired here, and i'm really proud of that. As proud as one can be of something that one just let happen.

All the martyrs and all the victims; all the heroes and all the wimps. All the Faggotry and all the ugly, ugly Charedi shock-porn. All the piety and simple faith. Everything but the bullshit, and the noise, and the hiding of ourselves inside of our conceptions. It really has been a great ride, and I can only pray that some of this survivesinto the annals ofHistory, the story of how the Jewish Problem was, if only for a moment, touched upon, if not successfully adressed, from within, rather than just from without. God bless you all, to move on, and see how easy it is just to start up a crazy fucking conversation in this great, wide future of accessible interests, may we one day merit to see it to it's end.

Shana Tov, and i'll see you at the Jubilee

Yoseph Leib,

AKA Yhosephus,

AKA the guy that fucked your sister, back when she was still cute.