The four types of temperament:

1. Those who are easily angered and easily appeased.

2. Those whom it is hard to anger but hard to appease.

3. Those whom it is hard to anger and easy to appease. *

4. Those whom it is easy to anger and hard to appease.

Ethics of the Fathers 5:14 . .Well. .Sorta. . This is something that needs to really be synced, and let sink into us.
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Reading through one of my favorite authors ( Rabbi Joseph Telushkin ) last evening. Since those temperaments are easy for us to assess other people. It may be a little more tricky being honest with ourselves. We are not perfect people. We won't always fit into one category every time. Some days we just get up on the wrong side of the bed. Maybe we are dealing with an individual that we have had some history, and it clouds our normal reaction. There are any number of ways in a self examination that could keep us from being fair with ourselves.

Whats seems important is that we have an awareness when it comes to our reactions. We can give ourselves a multiple choice option.

That 4th one on the list is the worst, and has even been described as even wicked. Sadly that may be true of our reaction at some point in our lives when dealing with others. But with better understanding of how this is categorized, we can step up today, and decide for ourselves all the tomorrows.

This type of self inventory requires us to be fearless and thorough. If we really don't like what we see. We can, through self examination begin to change. Just wondering what are some of the steps we could suggest taking to improve ourselves, and our outlook about other people ?

... Shutters Print Edition After 121 Years
 

Quote:It has been a long, long time since New York City's newsstands have been bereft of copies of The Forward. Founded as a Yiddish-language daily in 1897, the newspaper once known as The Jewish Daily Forward endured a host of major changes over its long life span — but through them all, the small publication reliably went to press with news that its predominantly American Jewish audience often couldn't find elsewhere.  But that will change come springtime.

There is an intriguing article in TheTorah.com titled: YHWH: The Original Arabic Meaning of the Name which notes, in part ...

Quote:If YHWH’s origins are in the Nomad-land of Yehwa among the Midianites, then the meaning of the name should be from the Arabic language family rather than the Hebrew language family. This further calls into question the etymology in Exodus 3 of the Tetragrammaton from ה.ו.י, “to be,” since, unlike Hebrew and Aramaic, Proto-Arabic does not have the root ה.ו.י for the word “to be.”

In 1956, Shelomo Dov Goitein (1900-1985), a scholar of both Jewish and Arabic studies, suggested that the name derives from the Arabic root h.w.y (هوى), and the word hawaya(هوايا), which means “love, affection, passion, desire.” He connected this suggestion with the passage in Exodus 34, in a set of laws known by scholars as the Ritual Decalogue. ...

What a pleasant discovery!

My name is Jay. I am a 73 year old Reform Jew who has lived for most of those years in the Chicago area. Those familiar with RF may know me as Jayhawker Soule. 

I am curious about Israelite history and deeply interested in Torah.

L'shalom ...

Hi everyone,

in the old forum, someone recommended "A Code of Jewish Ethics" by Joseph Telushkin to me. I am currently reading it and find it very worthwhile and insightful. However, you can never have too many books, so I was wondering which other books you might recommend. What are your favourites?
It might be anything from learning ressources over biographies to children's books, only prerequisite is that is has to do anything (topic, author, relevance) with Judaism or Jewish culture.

If you like, we can also use this thread to talk about or discuss books that are not necessarily recommendations, but that fit the "generally related to Judaism"-feature, that you are reading currently.

I hope for this to become a thread where anyone in search for a good read might find some new ireading inspiration. 

This lady has her YouTube Channel. All videos are about 2 minutes. Always something good !

Tracey R. Rich is the curator of a website called Judaism 101. It is from a more Orthodox point of view. It comes with a searchable database. It is not the work of any particular organization. It is strictly the work, and interpretation of Tracey Rich.

Enjoy - http://www.jewfaq.org/index.shtml

I'm currently watching the Netflix/BBC series Watership Down.  I loved the book and the original movie, of course.  In fact, I still get chills when I hear Art Garfunkel sing "Bright Eyes" (which he did at a recent concert at NYC's City Winery).  I can't say I was overly thrilled with the Netflix/BBC series when I first started watching it, but it has now grown on me.  It certainly has the dark elements of the novel and the original movie, and I especially like the way that the rabbits have more individualized personalities than they had in the movie, and how the female rabbits are also represented more.
 
While searching online for a Hebrew translation of Watership Down (I wanted to see whether Hebrew names of herbs and wildflowers might have been used for the rabbits' names by some translator), I came across this article from The Forward:
 
https://forward.com/culture/film-tv/4029...ship-down/
 
I found it interesting, and I hadn't known this fact, which was mentioned by the author:  "The book of Exodus provides the greatest parallel between Jews and rabbits, which have cropped up in many older haggadot. Typically, Jews are represented as hares fleeing from hunters and dogs."
 
The author mentioned a few other parallels between Watership Down and the Jewish experience, but what he didn't mention was the "all the world will be your enemy" quote from the novel, which Frith (God) proclaims to the legendary first rabbit.
 
Anyway, are there any others here who have enjoyed Watership Down?  Do you see anything in the novels or film productions that remind you of things Jewish?
 

Do any of you here believe Aaron was punished for making the golden calf?

Thanks.

I am reading another one of Rabbi Sacks books titled "Ceremony and Celebration"

On page 191 in the chapter where he writes about Pesah he says -

One of the most striking facts about biblical Hebrew is that, despite the Torah containing 613 commandments, it contains no word that means "to obey". Modern Hebrew had to adopt the Aramaic word letzayet. The word the Torah uses instead of "to obey" is shema, a word that means "to listen, to hear, to understand, to internalize, and to respond."

That is amazing as I never knew that!!

If you read most English translations, it uses the word obey quite often. Many times we are told by Christians, we cannot obey the law perfectly. Of course we know we cannot and never were told to or meant to. But this carries a whole new meaning to me. Now I can respond by saying the Torah never says to obey the law! Okay, the meaning "respond" may be close, but it isn't obey.