What Is Blood Libel?

Jews have been persecuted throughout history for many reasons, most of which amount to casting Jewish people as "the other" whenever a scapegoat is needed. Hard as it may be to believe today, the Jewish religion has often been equated with Satanic worship and worse. 

One of the persistent beliefs which crops up throughout history is that Jews steal the babies and children of their neighbors, and use their blood in various rites.  Interestingly, this is also a belief which has been applied to witches throughout history.  In the minds of many unsophisticated, xenophobic cultures, the Jewish religion becomes equated with witchcraft.

These incidents often start with the unexplained death of a child.  I think parents of all nationalities can relate to the horror of finding your child mysteriously dead, or simply missing.  This fear has stalked humanity for thousands, perhaps millions of years. 

Although the fear of losing a child is rational, all too often it can drive people to irrational lengths.  Today it drives parents to throw away drop-side cribs, always lay babies on their backs to sleep, and compile a list of forbidden foods as long as your arm. 

The fear of theft of a child has completely rearranged families' lives, such that children are never left alone or in the company of strangers.  But in medieval Europe, it might lead to rounding up a group of "foreign" people and torturing them to death. 

This accusation, that Jews steal children and use their blood in religious rites, is called the "blood libel."  This distinguishes it from other forms of libel, and is a term specific to the homicidal persecution of Jews. 

Blood libel is one of three main anti-Semitic allegations made throughout history.  The other two are well-poisoning (which was actually the work of cholera or bad sanitation) and desecration of the host.  Host desecration is similar to blood libel in that both stem from the persistent belief that the Jews killed Jesus.  And more so, that they celebrate the death of Jesus through various occult rituals.

In the myth of host desecration, Jews are said to steal the host from churches and desecrate them in their rituals, thus "crucifying Jesus anew."  The flip side of this is blood libel, in which Jewish people were said to collect the blood of Christian children and bake it into their own ritual bread, the Passover matzos.

Strange as it may sound to many people today, Jews have been slandered with these monstrous acts throughout history.  And in fact, it continues today.  As recently as 2007, when an Islamic leader giving a speech in Israel informed the crowd that Islam is better than Judaism because Islam has never baked the blood of children into ritual bread.  Also in 2007, an anti-Semitic group in Russia demanded that the government investigate the Jews after two young boys were found dead.

"Blood libel" is not a broad term which encompasses a wide territory.  It is in fact a specific term, with a specific meaning.  As you can see, it is in the same category as a Holocaust reference (as when Mel Gibson recently called Winona Ryder an "oven dodger").  Which is to say, not the kind of term you want to throw around lightly.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Jewish Food from Around the World

 

The Jewish people have existed for thousands of years and have made homes in various cultures throughout the world. One of the most enduring aspects of this long-lived, globetrotting history is food. Jewish food isn't so much a culinary tradition on its own as it is a sort of Silly Puddy of world cuisine. Wherever Jews have lived, they have picked up local influences in the foods they create. The following are just a few of the many intriguing, tasty and culture-infused foods in the Jewish tradition.

Kreplach

Just about every society on Earth has embraced the simple beauty of the dumpling. From the Chinese won-ton to the Eastern European pierogi, the filled ball of dough is a satisfying and versatile food that has been part of the human diet practically since the invention of refined grain. Kreplach, like a lot of Jewish bread recipes, is made from a rich, eggy dough. The most basic recipes call for small squares of dough to be filled with ground beef or chicken, then folded into triangles and boiled in soup. There are other variations on kreplach, including the hearty potato-filled style and the creamy cheese-filled dumpling usually served for the holiday of Purim.

 

Hamantashen

Speaking of Purim, these sweet pastries are the favorite symbolic food of the festival. Hamantashen are triangular cookies filled with various flavorings, usually fruit preserves or poppy seed, though more modern recipes allow for everything from chocolate to nut butter. The hamantash cookie represents the villainous Haman, the character in the Purim story who failed in his attempt to eradicate the Jews. Older traditions state that the cookies represent Haman's ears, though that story has been softened recently to equate them with his hat instead.

 

Pescado Frito

Though a lot of the foods associated with Jewish cuisine in America come from the Eastern European Ashkenazi tradition, there are many great foods that come from the Western Sephardim. One of those tasty recipes is pescado frito, a deep-fried white fish popular with the Jews of southern Spain during the Renaissance. The fish is fried in vegetable oil whole and usually served with fresh citrus, like lemon or lime. The batter for the fish is made from eggs and matzo meal, giving it a distinctly Jewish flavor. This recipe, consistent with the oil-centric cuisine of the eastern Mediterranean, migrated with Jews into Spain and some accounts have the recipe jumping to 19th century England where it was altered and became the famous fish-and-chips meal.

The Georgia Guidestones, "American Stonehenge"

The so-called "American Stonehenge" was built in 1979, when a mysterious person going by the name of "R. C. Christian" (which was possibly a reference to Rosicrucianism) hired a local stone work company to make and install them for him.

Known more formally as the Georgia Guidestones, this monument stands in Elbert County, Georgia.  It is comprised of four gigantic granite slabs arranged around a fifth central slab, a capstone, and an explanatory footnote in stone set nearby.  The Guidestones have ten commandments written in eight different languages, one per face of the four main stones.

The ten commandments of the Georgia Guidestones came up recently when I was watching an episode of "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura."  Someone on the show mentioned that the Bilderberg conspiracy wanted to keep Earth's population low, perhaps in accordance with the Georgia Guidestones.  A totally random reference, as far as I can tell, but it is the first commandment: "Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature."

In fact, all ten of the Guidestones' commandments read like the ten biblical commandments, as translated by the label on a bottle of Dr. Bronner's Liquid Soap.  (Although as funny as it would be, commandment #10 is NOT "DILUTE DILUTE DILUTE OK!!!")

Some of the commandments are downright menacing.  #2 says, "Guide reproduction wisely - maintain fitness and diversity" sounds like a pretty solid commandment in favor of eugenics.  Given the Guidestones' location - rural Georgia - and that part of the country's connection to the KKK, well.  Kinda scary.

Other of the commandments are frankly anarchist (in the traditional sense), like #7, "Avoid petty laws and useless officials" and #8, "Balance personal rights with social duties."

And we finish out with a rambling beatnik hippie love song, as wacky as the DOUBLE RAINBOW guy.  Commandment #10 is "Be not a cancer on the earth - Leave room for nature - Leave room for nature."

These tablets weren't created on a whim, as a prank.  And they weren't cheap, either.  Whoever bought the land from a local farmer, then deeded the land to Elbert County, obviously meant these things passionately.  They had a burning desire to communicate, and wanted to ensure that their communication would be heard throughout the ages.

And who might this person be?  Well, there is a lot of "highly persuasive yet circumstantial evidence" indicating that R. C. Christian may be none other than cable television demigod and media empire mogul Ted Turner.

Ted Turner's father ran a billboard business, which Ted took over in 1964.  In the intervening years, Turner parlayed it into a multi-billion dollar business.  Today Ted Turner's worth is estimated at 1.9 billion, and he is America's largest private landowner.  Part of the reason he has become our largest private landowner is due to his self-assigned mission to repopulate the American plains with the buffalo, which Turner ranches on 15 massive estates.

Turner's politics are defiantly left-wing, and he is a supporter both of environmental causes and social causes like Obama's health care plan.  Could the father of CNN be the father of the Georgia Guidestones as well?  If so, he isn't telling!

Photo credit: Flickr/The Rocketeer

Jews in the Crusades

The Crusades, those times of war and atrocity across Europe and the Levant that defined much of the brutality of the Middle Ages, are most famous as conflicts between Christians and Muslims. Indeed, those two religious groups contributed the largest part of the soldiers and suffered the highest casualties of the Crusades, though they were not the only ones to fight. Jews experienced much hardship during that troubled period, such that they wouldn't see the same level of violence and persecution until the rise of fascism in Europe in the early 20th century.

The Crusades were a politically complicated series of wars and grand, social gestures. No one thing precipitated the First Crusade launched by Pope Urban II. Rather, it was a natural result of various shifts in the social and military power of Christian entities throughout Europe, Africa and Asia. Islam had been steadily growing in influence for centuries, threatening to supplant the hegemony of the forces of the Holy Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire and the Papal States. When Muslim empires began to capture lands in the Middle and Near East from Byzantium, Christian powers conspired to launch a series of response attacks in a bid to cut their losses.

This was a huge undertaking, socially speaking. The religious charge that compelled so many Western Christians to join the Crusades can be seen as a sort of marketing push. The campaign to reclaim Jerusalem, a holy city of dubious strategical worth, came as an additional goal long after the First Crusade was planned. By making the Crusades about spiritual rather than political concerns, the Christian forces had locked themselves in what would end up being a tireless back-and-forth of bloody warfare.

A byproduct of this religious violence was intense anti-semitism. Jewish communities throughout Europe experienced persecution and even extermination as sentiments flared against any non-Christian peoples. It became popular for states to enact anti-Jewish laws, most notably the rulings of Pope Innocent III. This widespread hatred directed at Jews led to Jewish support for Muslim forces in Israel.

Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Jews slowly returned to their homeland and established settlements. Cities such as Haifa and Tiberias saw significant military support from Jewish armies during the First Crusade, while Jews notably allied themselves with the Muslim occupiers during the assault on Jerusalem. For their trouble, they were slaughtered, enslaved and ransomed. Many important works of Jewish literature barely escaped the aftermath.

The horrors of the Crusades created a rift between Jews and Christians that has only really begun to heal in the modern day. The social isolation that followed the persecution of Jews in the Middle Ages paved the way for the pogroms of Czarist Russia and the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, just as the great battles of the Crusades set the stage for modern warfare in the Middle East.

Practical Advice From The Torah

Though most translations still tell the stories of the Torah in lofty, archaic language, it's important to understand that the lessons they teach have more to do with the common, human experience than with anything more grand. Underneath the poetics and awkward phrases, the Torah is full of practical advice that is as useful today as it was those thousands of years ago when it was written. The following are just a few selections from the many and varied Toritic lessons for everyday life.

Best Foot Forward

In the book of Genesis, Chapter 41, Joseph is a slave in Egypt. He was long before sold into slavery by his jealous brothers and seemingly stripped of his birthright. A complete unknown, he had fallen on the hardest of times. Joseph had a talent, though. Life so low in society had made him thoughtful and reflective, so he developed a knack for interpreting dreams. After his interpretations of the dreams of some fellow prisoner-slaves resulted in some pretty major social developments, the Pharaoh himself requested Joseph's advice. The passage describing the request makes sure to include a mention of Joseph's preparatory measures. Plainly, he shaves and puts on his best clothes. Though he lived in the lowest station of society, Joseph took the time to present himself in the most dignified, respectful manner possible when an opportunity arose. Having the forethought to clean up before a meeting can be the difference between mere survival and true success.

 

In Marital Strife, Listen

Earlier in Genesis (Chapter 21, to be specific), Sarah and Abraham are having some difficulty in their marriage. Years earlier, Abraham took a concubine to produce an heir when Sarah failed to conceive. By the time Sarah gives birth to Isaac, Abraham already has a son in Ishmael. Sarah is worried that Ishmael will supplant Isaac, so she argues with Abraham about sending Ishmael and his mother Hagar away. God's advice to Abraham is the phrase Sh'mah B'colah, literally "Listen in her voice". There has been some debate among scholars about what exactly this means and which "her" God is referring to (Sarah or Hagar), but the core lesson is the same regardless. When there's conflict at home, it's important to really listen, not just to the words our partners say, but to the meaning therein.

 

Delegate, Don't Abdicate

Parshat Yitro, the Torah portion beginning at Exodus 18:1, finds Moses confiding in Jethro, his father-in-law. After escaping Egypt, the Israelites are a society without law. Moses, as their leader, is forced to act as the judge for every dispute among them, no matter how small. The stress of this job gets to Moses and he starts to indicate a lack of will to do anything at all. Jethro advises him to relieve the burden by dividing it among the wisest and most trusted of the Israelites. After Moses delegates his power to a layered system of judges, he is capable of leading the people once more and maintaining order as they travel. The lesson here is clear: No individual, no matter how capable he or she is, can consistently do the work of many. By relying on a trustworthy community, leaders can concentrate on the big picture. This applies to everyone, from those in political office, to managers in business, to a parent approaching house chores.

Friendship in Judaism

Though much of Jewish philosophy focuses on the values and obligations of the family unit, as well as the elements necessary for good political leadership, the sages have also had a lot to say about the role friendship plays in Judaism. In fact, friendship is considered one of the great virtues a person must acquire in order to truly understand Torah, also known as the Middot Torah. The specific Middah Torah concerning friendship is known as Dibbuk Chaverim, a Hebrew term that literally translates as "Binding of Friends", or at least binding in the sense of forming a union. Dibbuk is a binding by fusion, whereas the term Akedah is a binding by force, as with a rope, while Shasheret means binding as two links in a chain are bound (also metaphorically applied to the binding of two lives in marriage). Dibbuk Chaverim indicates a kind of equality in the union, as well as a mixing of personalities. Plainly, the Jewish concept of friendship focuses on the influence two people can have on one another.

Arguably the most important aspect of friendship in Judaism is the notable lack of obligation or contract. While all other relationships in the Jewish perspective are characterized by a series of duties clearly defined in the Torah, from parenthood to marriage to business associations, there are no such measures of propriety or legality among friends. This makes friendship both freer and more fragile than any other kind of relationship. All acts of kindness, support or justice among friends are entirely willful. This is one of the reasons why true friendship is a prized virtue in the eyes of the sages. It is goodness compelled by no other force than the desire to do good.

Friendship in Judaism also has a more practical side. In the study of Talmud, for instance, it is the tradition for people to study in pairs. This is because an individual alone has access to only his or her own insight, whereas a partnership allows students to share their ideas and point things out to one another that they would have missed had they been studying alone.

Outside of study, the sages also pointed out the value of friendship in everyday life. In the Pirkei Avot, the Talmudic collection of moral and ethical wisdom of the great commentators, it is stated, "...woe to him who is alone when he falls and there is no one to lift him." This passage recognizes that life can be difficult and that everyone has moments of personal struggle. It is then the ability of one's friends to be a system of support where all else has failed. We help our friends not because we must, but because the world is made better when we do. This is the very core of Tikkun Olam, the repair of the world.

In the the written works of the Torah, one of the strongest examples of friendship is that between David and Jonathan. Jonathan is the son of King Saul, who would eventually become David's enemy. In David's youth when he was welcome in Saul's court, he and Jonathan developed a kinship that surpassed any other relationship either of them ever experienced. Jonathan was David's truest friend, ultimately saving David's life. The Book of Samuel, in which this story can be found, is nothing if not a collection of examples of people failing in their relationships and responsibilities. Jonathan and David's friendship stands out as the one example of unfaltering goodness and it turns out to be a pivotal moment in David's journey.

So, though Judaism doesn't bind friends together by contract or by moral decree, it still recognizes that friends can have a significant impact on our lives. True, unwavering friendship is vital for the understanding of Torah because it is perhaps the greatest example of pure compassion in the human experience.

Sunday Religion School

Judaism in modern America has always been heavily influenced by the practices of our Christian neighbors, if only because of proximity. The convention of sermonizing was mostly foreign to the faith until the Reform movement adopted it in the late 19th century, though many 21st century congregations prefer the more study-base D'var Torah at their Shabbat services. Some older synagogues have pews instead of chairs, a brief and rather poorly received change first instituted by Reform movement pioneer Isaac Mayer Wise. Of all the Christian-influenced conventions in Judaism, one of the most pervasive and enduring is the Sunday religion school. Sunday has no particular importance in Jewish ritual and it should be noted that classical Jewish communities didn't limit religious education at the local synagogue to just one day a week. Sunday school is a natural outgrowth of the demands of secular American culture. Simply, children go to secular school Monday through Friday, it's impractical to ask people to devote their evenings to yet more study and Saturday has been more or less claimed as the culture-wide day of leisure. So, Sunday belongs to religious education, regardless of one's affiliation.

The problem with Jewish religion school in the Sunday format isn't so much the day on which it takes place, but the way the standard arrangement doesn't really mesh with the rest of the community. Jewish religion school is an ever-shifting thing. The way it looked in most Reform congregations in the early 1990's is drastically different than its current incarnation. What began as formless, multi-subject classes transitioned in many synagogues to a rotating system of specialized classes. In other words, a classic elementary school model vs. a standard high school model.

But this doesn't really get at the core of the problem. Judaism is incredibly dependent on community involvement. Separating students by age and subject matter runs counter to the way the rest of daily religious life works. It would be more fitting to create a flexible, mixed-age system that requires older students to actively participate in the education of younger students. Just like in the Torah portion Parasha Yitro, the government-establishing conversation between Moses and his father-in-law Jethro, the community can become more efficient and interconnected by simple delegation.

After all, Jewish lessons are inherently layered. Every story in the Torah, every philosophical discussion in the Talmud and every holiday ritual has multiple levels of meaning. The parable-style surface of a lesson is an entry point for young children, the deeper symbolic layers for those coming of age and the grand, uniting morals for those ascending to adult responsibility. It's vital that Jewish youths are asked to actively participate in the growth and maintenance of their community, rather than being cordoned off in classrooms.

It's also important to give their parents a reason to stick around. Still today many synagogues have no Sunday programming for parents who drop their kids off for religion school. Something as simple as an informal brunch with some learning opportunities and, as above, a chance to participate in the education of the children would do wonders for building a community in action instead of just in name.

Hanukkah Made Modern

The rituals of Hanukkah are fairly sparse in comparison to those of other holidays. Most of the observance is limited to at-home customs and there is very little in the way of a religious service. Some synagogues perform their own, semi-formal service, though there is no standard congregational service in the liturgy for the holiday. Hanukkah is meant to be kept in the home, though the lack of a traditional service also indicates that Hanukkah as a holiday came into being much later than more formalized observances like Yom Kippur and Passover. It's a holiday for people in the diaspora and people on the move. This, unfortunately, separates the average Jewish family from the guidance of those educated in the rituals, language and history of the faith. So, while it's easy for modern Jews to learn the Hanukkah prayers and even find their literal translations, it's less likely that they'll have access to the deeper meanings of those things.

Consider the most standard elements of Hanukkah at home. Every night, Jews on Hanukkah light the Khanukiah, a special, nine-branched Menorah candle holder. Many only know to add one candle for each successive night, though they don't know the proper order nor why we arrange the candles the way we do. The halakha, the standardized custom, of the Hanukkah candles is discussed in the Talmud by the scholars Hillel and Shammai. They debated how to properly arrange the candles, ultimately conceding to Hillel's position. He stated that the number of candles should increase as the holiday progresses in order to symbolize an increase in joy over time. It was also decided that the candles should begin at the far right branch and extend each night to the right until the Khanukiah is filled, representing the usual right-to-left method of reading Hebrew, with the newest candle being lit first.

The Hanukkah prayers themselves can be somewhat misleading without a scholarly eye. Though the first prayer is simply a Hanukkah-specific variation on the standard candle-lighting prayer one says on Shabbat, the second prayer (if a family even remembers to say it) is somewhat deeper in its intent. Simply referred to as "The Blessing for Hanukkah", it is actually a recognition of miracles from the past. The meaning of this prayer has become muddied over time, especially since the legend of the long-burning oil has replaced what the ancients would have recognized as the true miracle of Hanukkah.

The miracle was not the small amount of oil burning for eight days instead of one, itself just a parable told to symbolize the necessity for hope in troubled times. The miracle is that the Jews under Syrian Greek rule somehow threw off the oppression of their much stronger occupiers. Hanukkah is a celebration of hard-won freedom, not magic. By saying the prayer in recognition of miracles, we remind ourselves that extraordinary things have happened in the world, and more importantly that extraordinary things can happen in the world. It is not just a prayer that frames the past as a time when the seemingly impossible occurred, it is a reminder that the world is built on victory coming out of hopelessness. Hanukkah is relevant not just to the Jews of 1st century C.E. Israel, it is relevant to the Jews of Europe in the 1930's and 40's, to the Jews of modern Israel and to every individual who ever overcame great adversity. Just as Jews recognize that the covenant between God and Abraham is still valid to people alive today, we recognize that the capacity for miracles, in whatever form, is still possible for modern people.

It's important to understand that no Jewish observance, however old or esoteric, is entirely focused on the past. Even something as archaic as the lighting of Hanukkah candles is a deeply meaningful ritual.

Judaism and Ethnicity

Recently, we received a question in our comments section in reference to an article about Messianic Judaism and how it differs from what is traditionally accepted as Jewish philosophy. In that article I made a brief mention of how the perception of Jews as a social group has changed, especially in America, over the past century. The commenter, B. Wolper, asks,

You say in your article that Jews were considered an ethnic group until around the mid-twentieth century.  What changed that?  Why are we not considered an ethnic group anymore?

I would like to thank B. Wolper for the question and will now clarify exactly what I meant when I suggested that Jews in modern day America are no longer considered a distinct ethnic group.

Ethnicity as a concept is at best fluid and at worst the product of arbitrary prejudice. It isn't a once-and-forever concrete idea. To claim that a particular group of people belong to a specific ethnicity is to claim that they are fundamentally different and thereby separate from other people. This has been used to identify people based on everything from physical features to cultural practices and it is rarely without some connotation of racism.

Jewish ethnicity is, itself, the product of the sudden introduction of Jewish people into cultures that had no Jews prior to the establishment of their own ethnic identity. Whereas Jews in ancient Canaan were not considered ethnically distinct from their pagan Canaanite neighbors (as evidenced by the fairly common practice of marriage between Jews and non-Jews in that time and place), Jews were considered a distinct ethnicity in Europe when they migrated to the region after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire. Jews were not considered Persian, Arab or even specifically Israelite, but where called ethnically different based on their religious and cultural customs.

Jews have also had a history of being insular in less welcoming cultures. The degree to which Jews have segregated themselves from their surrounding culture has always been in proportion to that culture's unwillingness to accept them as regular citizens. In extreme cases, such as the Jews of Eastern Europe under the Russian Czars, Jews lived in ghetto-like conditions that kept them separate from all non-Jews in their region.

Jewish culture in America has always been less segregated than these extremes in Europe prior to the mid 20th century. As with many other immigrant populations, such as the Irish, Italian and Polish populations of America, Jews certainly began as an isolated group but have become more integrated into regular society with each generation. It's true that Jews were considered ethnically distinct from all other American populations as recently as 50 years ago, though it's hard to see much more than a few superficial distinctions in modern culture. The "Jewish part of town" is an increasingly anachronistic concept, as is the corporation that refuses to hire Jews or the de facto prohibition (on both sides) of marriage between Jews and non-Jews. On most forms that ask respondents to list their ethnicity, "Jewish" is not an option, just as "Christian" or "Buddhist" is not.

This gets to the core of why Judaism never truly was and ever more today is not an ethnicity. There are Jews from a wide variety of backgrounds. To say that Jews are ethnically distinct from, say, Asians is to imply that no Asians can be Jewish, which we know isn't true. Judaism is a religion with roots in an ancient civilization and so it has some distinct customs, but Judaism is not an ethnicity.

Prayer and Daily Life

In modern life, the act of prayer has been compartmentalized. Those who pray usually only do so at appointed times of ritual. They pray at religious services, before or after meals, on holidays and at life cycle events like weddings and funerals. This is all well and good, but there's also room for what one might call "spontaneous" prayer, little observances throughout the day that can bring spirituality into our regular lives.

Judaism has a functionally limitless variety of prayers, many of which aren't employed on any regular basis. They aren't the ritual prayers of services and other static observances. Rather, they are little markers for rare, sometimes singular occasions that highlight the all-encompassing nature of Jewish philosophy. Judaism is not a faith in a box, separated from the rest of life. In its purest form, it is a way of elevating every individual moment, a spiritual outlook that attempts to frame every instant as another step in a continual process of creation. Consider the following rare prayers.

 

The Ne'eman Bivrito is the little-known prayer one is meant to say upon seeing a rainbow. In Judaism, rainbows are symbols of the covenant between God and Jews as described in the famous story of Noah and the flood. In the story, God shows Noah the rainbow after the waters had receded as a sign of the promise to never bring the world to destruction again. This tale underlines the inherent symbolism of rainbows themselves. The tumult of storms, times of trouble that they are, is temporary. Clouds always part, the ground dries and the sun shines again. To say a prayer upon seeing a rainbow is to recognize that all troubles eventually fade.

 

The Shenatan Mikvodo is an especially rare prayer in the 21st century, though it doesn't necessarily have to be. It was originally written to be said upon the infrequent occasion of meeting a king. Though there are few actual monarchs left in this world, the language of the prayer doesn't limit the observance to just crown-wearers. Really, meeting any powerful political leader justifies the recitation of this prayer. It is a recognition of the capacity for flesh-and-blood humans to reflect holy virtues in leadership. This is a blessing of hope that the leader will be wise and benevolent in his or her decisions.

 

Other prayers are less specific but are also fitting for special, non-ritual moments of life. The two that come to mind first are the Shehekhianu and Oseh Shalom prayers. The former is appropriate for any recognition of the new. A birthday, the first snowfall of the year, the first day at a new job, or any other special event can be marked by the Shehekhianu. The Oseh Shalom is simply a prayer for peace. At any time when one perceives a need for peace or even a moment when peace has triumphed, Oseh Shalom is appropriate.

It is important for Jews to make their faith a part of their daily lives. One is not just a Jew in the synagogue or among other Jews. One is Jew at all times and in all things.

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