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There's something about the sea that captivates. Perhaps it's the play of light on the water's surface or the inexorability of its motions: back and forth, back and forth, it goes. Whatever the reasons, the sea beckons. Its hold on us is even more irresistible when joined to rituals such as tashlich, the symbolic casting of our sins into the water, an activity that is as much a part of the Rosh Hashana repertoire of extra-synagogal things to do as eating a new fruit or dousing it with honey.

Little wonder, then, that over the years tashlich has held its own.

Wherever Jews lived -- in England, France, the United States, Turkey or India -- they could be found on the first day of the Jewish New Year, standing by a body of water, be it ocean, river, lake, stream, pond or creek. Some clutched clumps of bread in their hands, which they then throw into the current: away, away with our wrongdoings!

Others, like the Bene-Israel, made use of a small pamphlet, The Remission of Vows and the Prayer Offered on the Sea Shore.

Published in Bombay in 1864 by the Bene-Israel Improvement Society, probably as a fundraising device, this humble, 20-page compendium -- another one of the Kiev Collection's treasures -- contains all manner of prayers. Most of them would be familiar to those of us who know our way around the mahzor, the liturgical text used on Rosh Hashana -- familiar, that is, if we could read Marathi.

With the exception of the title page and the frontispiece -- which, in a show of typographic derring-do, featured seven different kinds of English-language fonts, and the occasional appearance of Hebrew, whose hand-set aleph tilts mischievously to the right -- the entire text is written in this ancient Indian language.

Of a different order, but equally compelling, is Tashlich at Turtle Rock, a recently published children's book by Susan Schnur and Anna Schnur-Fishman.

Intended for youngsters between the ages of five and nine, it links the modern conventions of the adventure yarn to those of the ancient ritual, heartening its readers along the way.

From the shores of the Arabian Sea to a creek at Turtle Rock, from the mid-19th century on through the 21st century, Jewish life ebbs and flows.

Image credit: Kiev Collection.


Shulkhn Arukh. Venice, 1565. Credit: Kestenbaum & Company Auctioneers, New York. Link.

I sometimes wonder what the codifier of the Shulkhn Arukh (The Set Table), that 16th century compendium of traditional Jewish ritual practice, might make of American Jewry.

This, after all, is a community whose members have perfected ‘kosher-style cuisine,’ while ignoring the strictures of kashruth, and who’ve reduced the 25 hour Sabbath to a nocturnal experience: the Friday night “oneg” at synagogue.

And that’s just the half of it. Earlier in the 20th century, contemporary critics were so alarmed by the idiosyncratic nature of Jewish ritual behavior that they worried lest shared norms and practices disappear entirely. In the United States, it was said, every Jew carried his own Shulkhn Arukh.

Then again, this is also a community whose members have come up with a wide range of ritual innovations that enhance rather than minimize tradition. Having just attended the simchat bat of my grand niece, I would certainly add that ritual practice, which has become de rigueur in Orthodox as well as in Reform circles, to the list. Topping it would be the bat mitzvah, a ritual innovation of postwar America and now one so firmly rooted it’s hard to imagine Jewish life without it.

This ongoing tug of war (or maybe it’s just a tussle) between tradition and innovation keeps sociologists and sermonizers scratching their heads. It keeps the rest of us wondering, too.

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Earlier today, while riding the Metro, I overheard the following mother-daughter conversation:

Mother: "Do you remember, dear, who was the very first president to live in the White House?"

Daughter: "Yeah. John-something-or-other."

Who says history isn't alive and well in the U.S.?

Image: The first U.S. president to live in the White House. Source: Wikipedia.

For centuries, taking to the road has been the stuff of grand adventure and equally grand literature. From Benjamin of Tudela's 12th century Book of Travels to Jack Kerouac's 1957 On the Road, travel has been bound up with freedom and an enhanced sense of self.

But what if travel turned out to be more a matter of constraint, of diminished expectations, than of affirmation?

Consider the experience of kosher-keeping Jews in America of the early 1900s, at a time when kosher food was hard to come by. For them, travelling throughout the United States was surely no picnic.

To ensure that those American Jews who observed the dietary laws at home could maintain them while on the road as well, the United Synagogue of America published a pocket-sized compendium listing those venues where a good kosher meal could be had. Its Directory of Kosher Hotels, Boarding Houses and Restaurants in the United States (1919) provided a detailed list of "racial restaurants" where America's Jews could find a ready welcome and an ample menu.

For African Americans, in turn, the pleasures of travel in the United States were mitigated not by the dictates of religion but by the cruelties of racial prejudice, which severely hampered their freedom of movement. By supplying a list of hotels and "tourist homes" where African American travelers might safely rest their heads, The Negro Motorist Green Book (1936) held the world at bay.

As much a form of travel literature as Kerouac's salute or Benjamin of Tudela's picaresque tales, this text is the subject of a new play, The Green Book, which will be given a staged reading in Washington, D.C., next month, under the aegis of Theatre J and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

With my students in tow, I hope to be on hand for that event. And who knows? Perhaps it'll even give rise to a brand new course.

Images: Benjamin of Tudela in the Sahara, in the 12th century. Engraving by Dumouza, 19th century. Source: Wikipedia. And a highway view from creative commons licensed Flickr content.

Just when you think you've seen it all, along comes a document or a song or a photograph or a book that greatly enlarges your frame of reference and ratchets up your appreciation for the cultural patrimony of the Jews.

This happened to me the other day when I came across Masa ha-dag, a children’s book of the 1920s that recounted in Hebrew the far-flung adventures of a fish (pictured).

One of the treasures of GW’s Kiev Collection, it had what my grandmother would call, in Yiddish, ale mayles -- all the right virtues or perquisites.

For one thing, the book was published in both Berlin and Jerusalem, underscoring the global reach of Jewish culture during the interwar years. For another, it boasted a sterling array of contributors: its Hebrew translator was Hayim Nachman Bialik, the preeminent Hebrew poet of his day, and its illustrator was Martha Seidmann-Freud, a leading Berlin book artist who preferred to go by the name ‘Tom,’ and whose uncle was none other than Sigmund Freud.

If that’s not enough to whet your appetite, there’s more: the book contains the most eye-catching, luscious illustrations I’ve seen in quite some time. Its palette of warm pinks and greens and yellows, much less its animated line drawings, puts you in mind of a time when all things seemed possible.

The start of a new semester, the advent of the Jewish New Year and the debut of a blog. In this instance, as in so many others characteristic of the modern Jewish experience, tradition -- Jewish learning -- receives a new lease on life, thanks to its encounter with the latest technology.

Much the same could be said of yet another Jewish cultural institution: shana tovas, Jewish New Year cards.

An invention of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, these beribboned and beflowered creations, replete with accordion pleats and pop-out features, were made possible by harnessing the popular art of the chromolithograph and the engine of mass publishing to the age-old custom of wishing one’s relatives, friends and neighbors a sweet new year.

As you can see from this sampling of shana tovas from the Bernice and Harry Kramer Collection of the National Yiddish Book Center (PDF file), these newfangled creations enlivened the rhythm of Jewish life. Here’s hoping our blog will do the same.

Images of shana tovas: courtesy of the National Yiddish Book Center. More images after the jump.
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