Conference taveng::bagels

I do believe that one -- my mother had a similar incident happen
with someone from the Deep South!

	A big misconception is the place of blessings in Judaism.

	A blessing does NOT:

		a. make anything kosher
		b. make the boo-boo go away
		c. ward off evil spirits

	A blessing is basically one of the following:

		a. thanksgiving to G-d (as in blessing on food)
		b. commemorates a holy event (as in blessing on putting
						on tephilin)
		c. praise to G-d (as in seeing a rainbow)

	Much prominence is given to the blessing of a Tzaddik (or righteous
		person). This can be found in Genesis where Isaac blesses
		Jacob, the priestly blessings mentioned in Numbers, the
		blessings on Mount Gerrizim mentioned in Deuteronomy and
		,more recently, the Chassidic "blessing from the Rebbi".
		In all these cases, it is a human that is being blessed.
		This is an entirely different category and has nothing to
		do with kosher. In fact, it would probably be better
		discussed in Jewish philosophy or ethics, than in Jewish Law.
		In these blessings, a wish/request is made that G-d bless the
		recipient with [something good] (fill in the blank) or that
		HE watch him over [something bad] (ditto).

	Kosher is a very broad term that basically means that all
		the laws of Judaism have been followed. For example:

		a. Kosher food

			1. No non-kosher animal (i.e. pig)
			2. No milk and meat together
			3. Food from Israel has been tithed
			4. Meat has been slaughtered correctly (shechita)
			5. No bugs (i.e. Romaine lettuce)
			6. PLUS --

				a. there are special laws relating to
					grape products
				b. there are special laws relating to
					Passover (i.e. unleavened)
				c. there are special laws relating to
					first fruits ,firstborn animals,
					and new fruit trees
				d. there are special laws relating to
					certain grafted fruit
				e. etc.

		If it is kosher, THEN you make a blessing before eating it!


		b. The same applies to kosher mezuzah,succah,mechitza,
			mikvah,tephilin,tallis,etc. All of these have
			special laws that need to be followed to make
			them kosher.

		c. The word kosher comes from the word "kasher" which
			means prepared or, in this case, prepared according
			to Jewish law. An article has to first be kosher
			before it can be used. For example: Food must be
			kosher before it can be eaten, a succoh must be kosher
			before it can be used on succos, etc. Kosher means
			that it was prepared correctly.

	Sorry if I sound strident here. I grew up in a cloistered Yeshiva
		environment and these misconceptions bother me. It's all
		part of going out into the "real" world, I guess.

			shabat shalom,

				dave

re .0, .1

I had the same experience re: horns but he was only looking for the stubs
because he "knew" the whole horn was circumsized off after birth. I met
the guy in the Navy. He wasn't prejudiced at all, just incredibly uninformed.
He was also very bright. It is always amazing to me how otherwise intelligent
people can have the most absurd "facts" tucked away.

re .2

I always have trouble with what is hallahkik vs custom. Sephardic customs
sometimes struck me as wrong rather than unusual. 

A lot of the kosher vs non-kosher wine has to do with being different 
than the gentiles rather than biblical in origin. Separating family customs,
from "country of origin" customs, from Mishna, from Bible is something I
like to do.

We just voted to allow women to make alliyot, and be counted in Minyanim
but not be witnesses. That is an example where  the law exempting women from
time dependent ritual became a prohibition against there participating. On
the other hand Rashi's daughters wore Tephillin.
/joel

Stupid question from a non-Jew, regarding horns: did these folks say anything
about WHY you'd have horns? I grew up just outside Worcester, MA (yeah, my
folks used to go down to the bakeries on Water St. on Sundays, too) and I
never heard anything like that. Do you think there might be a connexion with
Michelangelo's Moses, which has these rounded horns (courtesy of a bad trans-
lation of the Bible)?

Dick

That IS the reason why... I wear a pendant that has a replica of
one section of Michelangelo's painting.  It seems that the sun ray's
(Denoting Deity) were construed as horns and, hence, that Jews were/are
devil worshippers.
              

I know I am !!! I listen to Barry Manilow.  :-}

Michael

re. .3 "A lot of the kosher vs. non-kosher wine has to do with being different
than the gentiles rather than biblical in origin."

I was interested in finding out what could make a wine non-kosher and came
across another possible explanation.  Apparently, some wines are strained
through ground bone.  Since it is impossible to find out what kinds of animal
bones were used (and even if it were, it is highly unlikely that the bones
were koshered), the wine is non-kosher.  This method of straining wine does
not seem to be very popular today (particularly among the less expensive
wines) since it is quite slow and expensive.  However it is possible that
at one time this was the most common method used and as a result any wines
that were not specially prepared were treif.

I again want to stress that this is just one of many possible explanations
and I do not include it here as the ultimate reason, but rather as a point
of interest.

--Janet

I think that some clarification is necessary.

There are three basic categories when talking about wine and its drinkability.


  1 - "Yayin A'kum" -- which means the Wine of a pagan. This wine is not
      allowed because it was made to be used for pagan worship. Since today
      there most likely is no real pagan worship this category does not apply.

  2 - "Stam Yayin" -- The Rabbis of the Talmud in an effort to preclude 
      assimilation amongst the non-Jews put a prohibition on any wine made
      or used by any non-Jew even if not for pagan worship. This prohibition
      applies today as well. The phrase itself means Any Wine, the connotation
      being to any wine of a non-Jew.

  3 - Any wine which through its processing might have become non-kosher for
      any number of reasons.

The first two categories are peculiar only to Wine. The third category basically
applies to any food item.

Cb.

re .0

When I first started at DEC straight out of school, I worked with another
software specialist straight out of a small town in Arkansas. One day I
was telling him about a piece of artwork I had acquired for a moderately
large sum of money, to which he responded:

	"I wouldn't spend that much money on a picture.
	Why didn't you try to jew 'em down?"

I had to ask him to repeat the statement a couple of times before I
figured out that that was Arkansasian for haggling/bargaining. He had
no idea that that was considered an ethnic slur and was surprised at
my indignation. BTW, I was the first Jew he had ever met!

	Marla

Woah !!... I have heard that term MANY times in New York City.
Seems it had some origin in that area.  I am quite surprised that
you have never heard that expression before.  I, too, find
it offensive and prefer the term Haggle or Bargain.

Michael 

A note on Kosher wine. Seems when we got married, I made the mistake of not
buying explicitly Kosher wine (Carmel, Kedem, etc.). We bought a case of
champagne from the local wine merchant, and when we got it to the orthodox
shul we were getting married at, they would not let us serve it. Luckily
they had some kosher wine which we borrowed.

    This is a direct reply to Mike Mahler.
    
    In note 9.3 you talk about your trip to Japan.  You say, "Recently
    I have travelled throuout Japan.  Now this was interesting.  Most
    of them do not know what a Jew is!!  At first they..."
    
    Mike, to whom are you referring when you say them and they?
    It is as if you're saying, "oh, the people of Japan, they're all
    alike."
    
    You asked for examples of ignorance.  Your first few sentences of
    note 9.3 is one.  
    
    Is your way of referring to the people you met in Japan (and seemingly
    those whom you did not meet as well) any less offensive then someone
    saying, "I've never met a Jew before?"
    
    Liz
    

    "They" are my friends family.  I was just surprised that
    they never heard of a Jew before [them, not Japanese
    in general] and then realized it was my pronunciation
    that threw them.  They call us Judai.

    
    	Some (dumb?!) questions from a gentile:
    
    1. What is the controversy regarding the "killing of Christ by Jews"?
    	Are they two distinct positions of the Catholic Church and Jews?
    
    2. Who is a pagan according to Jewish faith?
    
    3. Do Jews consider Jesus Christ as
    	a. one of the prophets (Moses the first?!)
    	b. the last prophet (Incorrect?!)
    	c. not a prophet at all (again incorrect???)
    
    Thankyou
    -parthi

    Two Jews, at least two opinions.  Here's one.

>        1. What is the controversy regarding the "killing of Christ by Jews"?
>    	Are they two distinct positions of the Catholic Church and Jews?
    
    For years, the RC church taught that Jews were responsible for Jesus'
    death.  This is historically absurd (Jesus was killed by the Romans
    under Roman law; the accounts in the Christian Gospels show that
    Jewish law was not invoked.)  More recently the church has recanted,
    but it's still in the folklore and the basis of much anti-Semetism.

>    2. Who is a pagan according to Jewish faith?

    More than one opinion as to what it really refers to.  On one extreme,
    Christians (trinitarian); on the other hand, almost no one today
    (since the Biblical reference was to now-defunct religions).  It's
    one of those topics that rabbinnic commentary goes around on.
    
>    3. Do Jews consider Jesus Christ as
>    	a. one of the prophets (Moses the first?!)
>    	b. the last prophet (Incorrect?!)
>    	c. not a prophet at all (again incorrect???)

    	The answer is "c" above.   Just another false Messiah, and there
    were others.

            fred

    I'll agree with Fred's opnion.

    Michael 'Raised Conservative'.

    .16
    
    	Mike, The same thing happened to me about 15 years ago in college.
    
    	Of course I chalked it up to just plain redneck stupidity.
    	(I went to TEXAS A&M UNIV.)
    
    Joel

    Same thing happened to me in Milwaukee.  I was working as a student
    orientation counselor at the University during the summer of 1968.  After
    a party one evening, one of the incoming freshmen women asked me
    my nationality.  She though I was Grrek or Italian.  When I told
    her I was Jewish, she was shocked.  She said I couldn't be because
    the nuns had told her that Jews had horns. The girl was from
    Kenosha---a relatively small city with a miniscule Jewish population.

    ---Av

    In 1966, when my wife was teaching 4th grade outside of Syracuse, NY,
    she informed the class that she would be out for the high holidays.
    After a bit of class discussion about Judaism, one of the boys asked
    whether Jewish boys played baseball.
        
    Dave
    

    I find the notion of Jews having horns an interesting one. Does
    anyone no where this may have originated.
    

    did it originate based on Michalangelo's Moses?  ( or it that a
    little esoteric...)

    I had never heard this one (Jews have horns?? Gimme a break; I do
    NOT have horns.) until after I came to work for DEC, believe it
    or not.  I grew up in an enlightened sort of family, so my brother
    and I had never heard most ethnic slurs (calling other human beings
    "frogs", "wops", etc.) either for our own ethnicity or any others
    until we left the familial nest.  I'd never heard the one about
    people that think that matzoh is baked with blood, either - amazing
    what nonsense you can foist off on some people....
    
    When I asked about the "horns" legend, I was told by several different
    people that this came about because of a bad translation.  At some
    point, Moses is desribed as "glowing" or "shining" from being in
    the presence of G-d.  This got mistranslated in some early Christian
    translation (into Latin, I suppose) as "Moses has horns" because
    of some similarity between the Hebrew words (some Hebrew scholar
    can fill in the exact Hebrew here - I don't remember it exactly
    and so won't try to guess), and this amusing translation was propagated
    into later ones that were translated from this Latin (or whatever)
    one.  I don't know if this ended up in the King James Version or
    not (anyone have one to check against?), but at any rate it made
    it into several other translations, and that is where this particular
    silliness came from.  Or so I was told.
                                           

The Hebrew root "krn" (kuf-resh-nun in Hebrew letters) denotes an animal's
horn.  It has the additional meaning of ray of light, which is basically
horn-shaped.

The book of Exodus used the verbal form "karan" of this root to say that
Moses' face was shining as if it were emitting rays of light.  A Biblical
translation that misapplied the "horned" meaning to this context was indeed 
what led Michelangelo to sculpt Moses with horns.

P.S.  I don't have horns, either.  Check it out if you must ;^)

David Ellis -- Secure Systems Group -- LTN2-2/C08 -- DTN 226-6784 

    Thanks!  I knew someone here would recall the exact Hebrew word
    that started this particularly silly legend.

    I'll go one better ... another software specialist (conservative
    raised Orthodox) overheard me talking to someone about
    Rosh Hashanah.  Afterwards he said, "I didn't mean to 
    eavesdrop, but ARE YOU JEWISH?  
    
    Following my affirmative reply he said, "But you don't
    look Jewish!!"  
    
    I replied "...really ... what does a Jew look like?"
    
    He reponded with some very stereotypical remarks ... and
    got very quiet when he started listening to himself.
    
     .... need I say more ?
    

A few years ago, when still working in Colorado Springs, I met a
PSA who had an MA in Psychology. During the conversation I mentioned
visiting Jerusalem and was rewarded with a stupefied look. Taken
aback, I asked whether she knew where Jerusalem was. 

Long silence. Finally, she blurted, half asking: "The Bible?". 

-- Ron

    Don't you have to take a geography course to get through high school
    anymore??   Let alone graduate school...
    
    Actually, I guess the answer is probably NO; I read somewhere that
    some group (of concerned teachers, I think) did a survey of graduating
    high school seniors.  The students were given a world map and asked
    to locate various countries and cities.  A fairly large percentage
    (around 30%!) could not correctly locate the United States! - and
    these were American children.  The paper I was reading was using
    this as an emxaple of why Americans do not understand "foreign policy".

    	Maybe the misconception comes about because a lot of us Jews
    are horney.

    
    It is amazing how otherwise bright, capable people can be so unaware. A
    colleague of mine (both bright and capable) told us of the good fortune
    of her friend who was about to marry a "richjew".  It took me a
    minute to realize why I felt uncomfortable; all Jews to her were
    "richjews".  She never referred to Jews as just Jews.
    
    Another time when I realized just how ignorant people can be happened
    a couple of weeks ago.  I had been to New York City for the weekend
    and had found an exhibition on The Dreyfus Affair at the Jewish
    Museum to be both moving and insightful.  The curator of the museum
    has written an excellent book on the subject, quite scholarly in
    scope.  I was showing the book to a friend one night who was very
    interested, but had done so only after her husband had left the
    room.  He happened to pass through as we were looking at the book and
    said, "Why waste your money on something like that?  I read a book
    that said he was guilty."

    Re: .0,.1,.17
    
    Being a native Texan and southerner, I have never heard of Jews
    having horns.  So take heart, not all people in the south are stupid
    and ignorant.
    
    Terry
    

    .30
    
    Terry, I didn't mean to imply that everyone from the south was stupid
    and /or ignorant, and if it make you feel any better there are just
    as many people up here in the northeast who act in the same manner
    relative to arrogance about religious or cultural issues.

My mother in law had the same experience regarding "horns", with her roommate
in college (Indiana?).


Several years ago my wife had a job at Cornell University.  Cornell has a
fairly large Jewish student population from the general NYC area, but Ithaca is
up in the middle of a Bible-belt in upstate NY.  One day a co-worker discovered
that my wife was a Jew, because she was going to be taking the holidays off.

"No!  You don't look Jewish.  You must be only a little Jewish."

"I am not 'a little' Jewish.  I am a Jew."

"But you don't seem like a Jew."

Now mind you, many of the Human Ecology (ex-Home-Ec) students that this person
came in contact with, had many of the mannerisms associated with what you might
call JAPs (this is back before 'JAP' became such an anti-Semitic problem at
northeastern colleges especially among non-Jews), so seeing someone who didn't
look, and sound, like they did, apparently threw this person.  The discussion
went on to other areas:

"What do you do on Christmas?"

"Nothing.  Christmas is not a holiday I observe."

"But then how do you worship Christ?"

This person apparently didn't understand that it was possible that anyone, even
a Jew, did not worship Christ.  It took some convincing that Christ was not
necessarily a central figure to all people.  This was a foreign concept to her.


Another friend from college, told about his plant trip for an interview at a
company out west.  At an airport, he struck up a conversation with a naive
young woman, who became delighted at having discovered her first Jew.  She
asked him how he liked his "home", meaning Israel.  When he said he'd never
been there, she asked him when he was going, assuming that ALL Jews went back
to their "homeland" a lot.

  Andy

.32> ... Ithaca is up in the middle of a Bible-belt in upstate NY.

I grew up in Ithaca, and cannot understand how it could possibly be classified
as part of a "Bible-belt".  Most of my friends there were non-Jewish, including
a few who lived way out in the sticks, but I never had any problems with
differences in religion.

.32> This person apparently didn't understand that it was possible that anyone,
.32> even a Jew, did not worship Christ.  It took some convincing that Christ
.32> was not necessarily a central figure to all people.  This was a foreign
.32> concept to her.

The first time that I ran into this situation was not when growing up in
Ithaca, but later, in eastern Massachusetts.  It surprised me a bit, but
that area always seemed somewhat more provincial than Ithaca.

I didn't mean by that that Ithaca itself was Bible-belt; in some respects
Ithaca is somewhat of a contradiction compared to much of the surrounding
counties.  (The area is also predominantly Republican, but not so much Ithaca
itself.)  Ithaca also has a sizable non-student Jewish population.  What I
meant was that there are fundamentalist Christian concentrations in the upstate
New York area.  Also, "Ithaca" (but technically not the city itself) is/was the
center of the Christian Broadcasting Network's old New York state network.

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that the Ithaca area harbors ignorance about Jews.
Many Ithacans are too enlightened for such a thing to have happened, but these
things do happen sometimes.

    Ithaca is a college town, and thus fairly cosmopolitan.
    But just drive out a bit and you're in the boonies (with
    the exception of Trumansburg, where the left-over hippies
    hang out).  But I'd guess the level of ignorance refered
    to in that incident is exceptional even so.
    
    I grew up there, too (IHS class of '71).
    
    			-John Bishop

    
    Not to leave the wonderful discusion about Ithaca, but another interesting
    true story comes to mind right here at DEC.
    
    Several years ago amidst a discussion of Passover I was amazed to find
    out how many people did not believe that Jesus was born a Jew and
    that infact the "Last Supper" was a Passover Sedar. It was amazing
    because both a Jew and non-Jew questioned my statements. I pointed
    the Jew to his local Rabbi and the non-Jew to her local Priest to
    find out the truth.
    
    Simply amazing ..... education is truly important.
     

    I lived on a kibbutz from '68 to '71 and had the great opportunity of
    extensive travel about the country. I was on the bus, near Tel Aviv,
    with my Israeli girlfriend, when we drove by a large walled compound
    that had barbed wire along the top and was flood-lit. I asked her if
    this is where they keep all the terrorists that are captured. She
    replied that it was a civilian prison, full of murders, rapists,
    stick-up artists! I felt quiet stupid, as being born in London and
    growing up in Montreal, it never occured to me that Jews could commit
    "blue-collar" crimes. Embezelment, yes but not walking into a gas
    station with a sawn-off shot gun!