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Jonathan Rosen

Jonathan Rosen Biography

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“The Talmud offered a virtual home for an uprooted culture, and grew out of the Jewish need to pack civilization into words and wander out into the world. The Talmud became essential for Jewish survival once the Temple - God's pre-Talmud home - was destroyed, and the Temple practices, those bodily rituals of blood and fire and physical atonement, could no longer be performed. When the Jewish people lost their home (the land of Israel) and God lost His (the Temple), then a new way of being was devised and Jews became the people of the book and not the people of the Temple or the land. They became the people of the book because they had no place else to live. That bodily loss is frequently overlooked, but for me it lies at the heart of the Talmud, for all its plenitude. The Internet, which we are continually told binds us together, nevertheless engenders in me a similar sense of diaspora, a feeling of being everywhere and nowhere. Where else but in the middle of Diaspora do you need a home page?”

HomeInternetDiasporaTalmud
Book:The Talmud and the Internet: A Journey Between Worlds
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“It was easier to visit him in the hospital at the height of his illness than to encounter him on the street struggling through this intermediate existence. I wanted to think of illness and recovery as two clear, diametrically opposed states.”

HealthMental HealthIllnessChronic IllnessIllness To Wellness
Book:The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions
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“The Talmud tells a story about a great Rabbi who is dying, he has become a goses, but he cannot die because outside all his students are praying for him to live and this is distracting to his soul. His maidservant climbs to the roof of the hut where the Rabbi is dying and hurls a clay vessel to the ground. The sound diverts the students, who stop praying. In that moment, the Rabbi dies and his soul goes to heaven. The servant, too, the Talmud says, is guaranteed her place in the world to come.”

WorldSoulMomentsStoriesDiesHeavenSoundDyingStudentsPrayingServantClimbsThat MomentRoofClayVesselPlaces In The WorldRabbiHuts
Author:Jonathan Rosen
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