When Is a Rabbi a Wise Man, and When Is He a Heap of Walnuts?

Pick
Nov. 17 2014
About Philologos

Philologos, the renowned Jewish-language columnist, appears twice a month in Mosaic. Questions for him may be sent to his email address by clicking here.

The Yiddish phrase talmid hokhem denotes someone learned in Talmud. But, despite a common misconception, it does not contain the word Talmud. Rather, it comes from the Hebrew talmid hakham, meaning “student of a sage.” To unpack the origins and history of this phrase is to learn something of the history of the rabbinate. Philologos writes;

The distinction in the Talmud between a rav or rabbi and a hakham is one of degrees of knowledge. Although every hakham is a rav, not every rav is a hakham. Thus, a passage in the tractate of Gittin says that the late second- and early third-century rabbi Isi ben Yehuda ranked the sages [hakhamim] as follows: “Rabbi Meir was a sage [hakham] and a Torah scribe. Rabbi Yehuda was a sage when he wished to be. Rabbi Tarfon was a heap of walnuts. Rabbi Yishma’el was a store stocked with everything. Rabbi Akiva was a secret treasure. Rabbi Yohanan ben Nuri was a peddler’s box. Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah was a spice box.” All these hakhamim, in other words, were more than ordinary rabbis, but not all were on the same level.

Read more at Forward

More about: Language, Rabbi Akiva, Rabbis, Talmud, Yiddish

The Democratic Party Is Losing Its Grip on Jews

Since the 1930s, Jews have been one of America’s most solidly Democratic ethnic groups. Although, true to form, a majority again voted for Kamala Harris, something clearly has shifted. John Podhoretz writes:

Over the course of the past thirteen months, Jews in America have been harassed, threatened, seen their ancestral homeland derided as a settler-colonial genocidal state. They have seen Jewish kids mistreated on college campuses. And they have seen the Biden administration kowtow to Muslim populations hostile to Jews and the Jewish state in Michigan. They have heard the criticisms of Israel’s efforts to defend itself, and have noted the silence from the administration when it came to anti-Semitic assaults and the refusal of college presidents to condemn the treatment of Jews and Jewish topics under their ambit.

And Jews have acted.

The initial evidence from last night’s election is that there has been a significant shift in the Jewish vote from previous elections, a delta of anywhere from 10 to 40 percent overall.

Read more at Commentary

More about: 2024 Election, American Jewry, Anti-Semitism, Democrats, U.S. Politics