Word: talmudic
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Society has often had doubts about intermarriage between the generations. The Talmud warns that "the Lord will not pardon him" who marries his daughter to an old man or takes a wife for his infant son. Literature abounds with bawdy cautionary tales describing the jealous geriatric husband and his ripe, relentless bride. For all the sniggers, though, older men have historically married much younger women. Given the hazards of childbearing until 50 or 60 years ago, it was not unusual for a man to bury one or two young wives. In those days, death provided the variety now offered...
...pure fiction. In his first feature film, The Song and the Silence, director-writer-photographer Nathan Cohen tries to re-create the world of Polish Jewry just before the Nazi holocaust of 1939. To summon up the past, he meticulously compiles scene after scene of scholars poring over the Talmud, women dancing the hora, rabbis lecturing-and finally, Germans plundering. At almost every turn, Cohen, a television news cameraman, betrays his background. Amateur performances only serve as bridges between static reconstructions; when there is action, it is the characters who are moved, not the audience...
...Jewish landlord to a beth din, or religious court. "This was a bunch of very old guys who haven't read James Baldwin or Rap Brown," says Boston's Leonard Fein, "and they wouldn't know a social-action council if they fell over it. But they know the Talmud and the Bible." Using these texts, the judges improvised a solution that satisfied both sides. The landlord agreed to make overdue repairs, and his tenants promised to do their share in good housekeeping. So far the bargain has been kept...
...taken place essentially as portrayed in the New Testament. A very important but little-known gauge of the reliability of the New Testament accounts are the purely Jewish sources and traditions, which require the death penalty for Yeshu Hannosri (Jesus of Nazareth), such as Sanhedrin 43a of The Babylonian Talmud. The stoning of Jesus' brother James during the absence of the Roman governor in 62 A.D. is another shred of important evidence. The Gospels, then, are not necessarily anti-Semitic for their portrayal of a Jewish prosecution at the trial of Jesus, as is shown in my book Pontius...
...unusually prone to bizarre deaths. Among others: Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687) died of gangrene after smashing his foot with a heavy, canelike conductor's baton while leading an orchestra; Charles Valentin-Alkan (1813-1888) toppled a bookcase over on himself while reaching for a copy of the Talmud; Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) came down with cholera after drinking a glass of tap water; and Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961) suffered fatal brain damage when he became entangled in the leashes of two fighting dogs and fell on a sidewalk...