Crucial Facts Related To Jewish Study-Ari Afilalo

The Jewish Studies Program allows students an energetic, interdisciplinary cluster of courses from Ancient Jewish History to Contemporary Multiculturalism. Ari Afilalo one of the famous writer has provide enormous facts regarding Jewish study. Have a look:

Curious to know what Jewish Studies are?

• Judaism, a lively religion in its own particular right, is the parent religion of both Christianity and Islam. One can't comprehend the starting points of these religions without understanding their foundations in Judaism.

• Israel is the only nation on earth with a Jewish larger part. The nation has restored the Hebrew dialect, taken in outsiders from everywhere throughout the world, and gloats a rich and fluctuated culture.

• Students who learn at our program at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in their lesser year rave about their chance in Israel. 

• The murder of 6 million Jews is not simply of worry to a large number of casualties. The Holocaust speaks to the aggregate fall of Western human progress and in this way is key to the worries surprisingly. 

• Investigation of the Holocaust opens understudies to a scope of disturbing however unavoidable inquiries. We offer courses ever, the writing of the Holocaust, and on scholarly and religious reactions to the Holocaust, and that's just the beginning.

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Ari Afilalo - Get To Know About the Jewish Religion

What is Judaism? Most people, both Jewish and gentile, would describe that Judaism is a religion. And yet, there are militant atheists who say that they are Jews! So, let to understand about  Jewish Religion.

One Transcendent God

Judaism, monotheistic religion originated among the ancient Hebrews. Judaism is described by a faith in one transcendent God who exposed himself to Moses, Abraham and the Hebrew prophets.

A Covenanted People

The Jewish people follow God by study, prayer and by the custom of the commandments set forth in the Torah. This devotion to the biblical Covenant can be recognized as the “witness”, “vocation,” and “mission” of the Jewish people.

Religious and Holy Writings

The most prominent Jewish religious text is the Bible itself, involving of the books of the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings.

Religious Life

Much of Jewish religious ritual is centred in the home. This holds daily prayers which are said three times each day - in the morning, the afternoon, and after sunset.

Also, you can check the books of a great author Ari Afilalo in order to know more about Jewish culture.

Ari Afilalo- Sephardic Jews and food customs

Sephardic Jews are the large and diverse group of Jews who belong to the particular region of Spain, Middle East, Egypt, North Africa, Turkey and Italy. The cuisine is influenced by the place of Jewish origin. Sephardic Jews arrived in NYC in 1654 by the way of sea. 

Jewish food customs: 

Kosher Food

Jews eat kosher food. Kosher food is the food that is fit to eat and is prepared according to the customs in accordance with Jewish Laws. 

Traditions and Shabbat

With an entire day of not cooking, Jew cuisine got innovative as the dishes need to be kept warm overnight. 

Innovative Passover cooking

Cooking at Passover needs to be innovative as eating chametz is forbidden. 

Relocations and cultural innovativeness

As the Jews moved from their origin to new places, their food has touched a lot of communities and is influenced by a lot of them. 

There is a large Sephardic Jewish community in the New York City. Ari Afilalo is a Sephardic Jew of French Moroccan ancestry. He is an expert on the internal trade laws and is the author of The New Global Trading Order.

Little Marrakesh on the Upper West Side

On a recent Saturday night, I sat in my Upper West Side Sephardic synagogue watching my French cousin and the ensemble that he founded sing the traditional Baqashot, to the beat of North African drums.  In doing so, they not only perpetuated but also transported a centuries-old tradition.  The Baqashot, literally “supplications,” are songs and chanted poems on themes related to the week’s Parsha.  They were sung in winter nights in Morocco, Syria, and other Sephardic communities.  On Saturday night, when Shabbat ended early, the community would prolong its spirit with an evening of music and spirituality.

New York Hevrat Baqashot,  

My cousin founded the New York Hevrat Habaqashot, the New York Baqashot Ensemble, when he immigrated from France.  The Hevra’s members, all young professionals by day, research text, compose musical accompaniment, rehearse tirelessly, and have revived the custom in New York City.  This was their sixth annual performance.  They delighted the audience, Ashkenazic as well as Sephardic, and as I watched my cousin lead the group it occurred to me that our common ancestors shared the same experience in Marrakesh for centuries, until the Moroccan Jews started leaving about 60 years ago.

That got me thinking about the resilience and portability of Jewish culture and life through our successive Exiles. I grew up in Paris, France, a few miles away from my cousin’s community.  Our synagogues were made up primarily of North African Jews, who left Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia after the establishment of the State of Israel and the independence from France. It is not easy to be an easily identifiable Jew in Paris these days. The kippa goes off or is hidden under a hat, and we do not readily advertise who we are.

Source Link-: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/little-marrakesh-on-the-upper-west-side/

Shemot’s Rebels with a Cause: What Makes Might?

The Book of Exodus starts with contrasting narratives of fear-mongering and cruelty, and courageous acts of compassion.  A new Pharaoh rises to rule Egypt.  He chooses to ignore that Yosef the Hebrew turned Egypt into the world’s sole superpower.  Instead, Pharaoh convenes the Wannsee Conference of the day, to plot the annihilation of the Children of Israel.  Pharaoh’s indictment of Israel contains no accusations of misconduct, only the fear that “they could multiply and join with our enemies in case of war.”  From there, enslavement and true ethnic cleansing, the killing of baby boys at birth, ensues.

The first recorded acts of rebellion come from resisting midwives refusing to kill newborns and then from Batya, Pharaoh’s own daughter.  Seeing Moshe in the Nile, the text tells us, Batya immediately realizes that he is a Hebrew child and “has compassion for him.”   She not only saves Moshe but sends him back to his mother among the Hebrews to be nursed.  When he grows up and is brought to Pharaoh’s palace, Batya names him Moshe because “I brought him out of the water.”  The very name Batya gives him connotes her continued defiance of the Pharaonic policies.

The Midrash, enamored with Batya, tells us that she went on to marry a Hebrew man named “Mered,” or “Revolt,” who was in fact Caleb ben Yefuneh.  Caleb was of course, along with Yehoshua, one of the dissenters from the ill-fated mission and fear-based report of the 12 Spies.  Both Batya and Mered are rebels, the Midrash says.  They had the courage to stand up to the prevailing beliefs in their society, and therefore deserved each other.

Owing his life to an Egyptian rebel, Moshe embodies his adoptive mother’s courage and compassion, on behalf of his own people as well as strangers.  Instead of living a comfortable princely life, Moshe rebels and kills the Egyptian taskmaster savagely beating a Hebrew slave.  And as he runs away from Pharaoh’s wrath, alone in a foreign land, Moshe’s first act is to come to the rescue of Yitro’s daughters, harassed by hostile shepherds.

It is no coincidence that the Book of Exodus opens with stories of cruelty and compassion.  The Book will then move on to a long narrative dominated by themes of power and conflict, pitting Pharaoh, the commander in chief of the world’s most powerful army, and the unleashed might of G-d coming to the rescue of the oppressed. The powerful Egyptian armies wind up drowned in the Red Sea as the Empire falls. The lessons are clear:  Might is not enough.  It must have as its basis a foundation of compassion in order to endure and prevail. One rebellious act of compassion has set in motion a great historical movement of liberation, whereas policies devoid of humanity triggered self-destruction — even for the mightiest in the world.

Source Link-: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/shemots-rebels-with-a-cause-what-makes-might/

Out of the clouds, into hope

Tomorrow, we will exit the Clouds of Glory that the huts of Sukkot symbolize.  For eight days, we have been asked to re-experience the Divine protection that shrouded our ancestors as they left the narrow straits of Egypt’s slavery.  Into the clouds through the desert we went with them, sustained by the spirit of G-d rather than the earthly walls of our houses, businesses, and material belongings.

Now we fall out of the Clouds into Simchat Torah, and in the classical Jewish tradition our holiday joy is mixed with a sprinkle of sadness.  We conclude the annual Torah cycle with the poignant death of Moses on the edge of the Promised Land. “And there never arose again in Israel a Prophet like Moses, whom G-d knew face to face,” the Torah concludes, adding in its very last verse a nostalgic reference to “all the mighty hand and all the awesome fear that Moses executed before the eyes of all of Israel.” 

The proximity between our exit from the Clouds and the harsh wake-up call of Moses’ death, has profound national significance for the Jewish people.  Rashi and our Sages ask what exactly did Moses do “before the eyes of all Israel” that merits being mentioned in the final words of the Torah.  Answer: the Golden Calf episode, when Moses was stirred into breaking the Tablets before the Israelites’ eyes, after he returned from 40 days and 40 nights working with G-d only to find his wayward people in the throes of idolatry.

By reminding us now of the Golden Calf story of ultimate betrayal, unconditional love, and radical forgiveness, the Torah is telling us that its divine spirit is certainly on top of Sinai, in the divine clouds, but that it must be lived and experienced in the material world of the people.  And that as a people we must understand that if we reject the Torah ideals, and betray its commitment to the poor, the stranger, social justice, and integrity, the Torah might as well be shattered.

As we exit the clouds and return to our material world, the Torah is insisting that, like Moses, we the people must have unconditional love for one another. This extends even to those who, like the Golden Calf conspirators, reject our most fundamental beliefs at the worst of time.  We must always forgive one another for the sake of a higher national mission — that expressed in the Torah’s ideals.

Click Here To Read Full Article-: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/out-of-the-clouds-into-hope/

Moving Forward After Nationalist and Populist Movements

Research by two Rutgers Law School professors traces the economic and cultural roots of populist and nationalist movements in the United States and Europe, including the United Kingdom’s “Brexit” vote to withdraw from the European Union, the rise of the extreme-right parties in France and Germany, and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States.

Ari Afilalo and Dennis Patterson suggest that throughout the Western world, and especially in the United States, people are angry that they haven’t benefited from globalization.

In the United States and other Western countries, Afilalo and Patterson say there has emerged what they call a “chronically excluded class” that has lost the economic security that it enjoyed in the 20th century. Afilalo and Patterson say the “chronically excluded” have reached the boiling point, and they’re angry because there are currently no opportunities to regain economic security.

“People have a right to be angry because they have not benefited from globalization in a way that the top tier of society has,” says Patterson, the Board of Governors Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School’s Camden location.

Afilalo and Patterson say the U.S. government is failing to provide its people with social and economic security because it uses obsolete policy tools from the 20th century. They cite the federal government’s policies after World War II, when the government delivered economic security by relying and legislating around a base of corporate employers providing a massive supply of stable careers in manufacturing, services, and other jobs.

“It used to be that you go to work for a corporation and you were a loyal employee for your whole life, you got a pension and you were good. That paradigm is gone and it’s not coming back,” says Patterson. He says part-time work, platform economy, and moving from one job to another will replace the old workplace model. Patterson says the federal government should be working on a plan to create security for people in that environment.

According to Afilalo and Patterson, the Western nation-state is in crisis because manufacturing and retail jobs were traded away to emerging economies. They also point to other changes, such as automation and the platform "gig" economy eroding the career-based model of work, the skills gap between the new type of jobs created in large quantities and the declining middle-class workforce, and the fact that more than 90 percent of new entrants in the global middle class come from Asia and other emerging markets.

Afilalo says half of the world is now middle class. “If I am in Indonesia, I’m happy to become a member of the middle class. I get my basic goods that I did not have before. If I am the same person in Appalachia, then I am going down,” says Afilalo. “They are going from manufacturing to the retail services industry, which is being devastated with the advent of technology.”



Afilalo’s and Patterson’s findings are a part of a decade-long research project on the role of a nation-state as the provider of economic security and opportunity in globalized markets.

They say the U.S. government needs to revamp the way economic policy is structured. They want a government that enables economic opportunity for the chronically excluded and provides social protection that is not dependent on a career-type, long-term job. Examples include a portable social account that would be a vehicle to enable business in the gig economy, and public-private partnerships to create jobs programs that train and link the chronically excluded to the skilled job openings that abound in the United States.

Patterson and Afilalo say that some reforms to the trade system are necessary, but that a return to protectionism would harm U.S. interest. “If President Trump has his way, the economy will be far worse off than it is now,” says Patterson. “Protectionism has never resulted in economic growth.”

The results of their research will be included in a book by the Rutgers–Camden scholars that’s scheduled for release in the fall of 2018.

Patterson is teaching a course on contracts this semester. In the spring, he’s teaching a seminar with former Rutgers Law School Dean Ray Solomon on the changing nature of work and regulation, which will cover globalization.

Afilalo teaches a contracts course this semester, and will teach a globalization-heavy course in international trade and business transactions in the spring that covers the international trade system, international financial and investment rules, and the private law of cross-border transactions.

For students interested in international law, Patterson suggests that they study economics and political theory, and to travel widely. Patterson spent the last eight years living in Italy while he was on leave from Rutgers Law School and learned more about Europe and the European Union. Afilao recommends that students learn one foreign language. “Spanish and French are obvious candidates,” says Afilalo, “But I also think that to the extent practicable a student should strive to speak any language used in the Arab or Asian markets; that would give her or him a great comparative advantage.”

Click Here To Read Full Article-: https://law.rutgers.edu/news/moving-forward-after-nationalist-and-populist-movements