{"id":63888,"date":"2019-10-03T13:38:58","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T10:38:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=63888"},"modified":"2019-10-03T13:38:58","modified_gmt":"2019-10-03T10:38:58","slug":"were-part-of-something-larger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/were-part-of-something-larger\/","title":{"rendered":"We&#8217;re Part of Something Larger"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"63888","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":63587,"related_cahpter":"325","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Last in the series","content":"<p>While a number of Jews over the years sought to escape their fate by converting\u2014with mixed results\u2014many others seem to have sensed that they were part of something bigger and more enduring than the reign of any one king, czar, or <em>f\u00fchrer<\/em>, something they could not bring themselves to abandon.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m thinking in particular of a story that took place in 1946 at a displaced persons camp in Germany where survivors of the Holocaust were waiting to be resettled. Among these Jews was a group of rabbis who approached the American general in charge and asked if the U.S. Army might help publish a set of Talmuds for them and others to study. The Army agreed.<\/p>\n<p>Unable to find a single complete Talmud in all of western Europe (the Nazis had made a point of burning Talmuds and Torahs), they had to import one from New York. The Army then commandeered a printing press in Heidelberg that had previously been used to churn out Nazi propaganda and printed one hundred copies of this massive, ancient Jewish text.<\/p>\n<p>These survivors had lost their homes, families, communities, and nearly their lives. And conditions in the displaced persons camps were by no means luxurious. I imagine there were quite a few things they could have asked for to improve their living circumstances and help secure their future prospects. But these rabbis seemed to believe that the key to their survival lay in continuing this sacred conversation with generations past and generations to come\u2014a conversation that has sustained and renewed Judaism in each new era.<\/p>\n<p>From Jews who kept Judaism alive in exile in Babylonia; to the Rabbis who reimagined Judaism after the destruction of the Second Temple; to Jews expelled from Spain in the fifteenth century who embraced a mystical form of Judaism called \u201cKabbalah\u201d; to eighteenth-century Jews who, frustrated by the intellectual elitism and spiritual deficiencies of traditional Judaism, developed a populist approach to Judaism known as \u201c\u1e24asidism,\u201d which emphasized passionate spirituality rather than legalistic scholarship; to Jews who became Zionists and fought to establish the State of Israel, we have always come up with new arguments for Judaism and new ways to be Jewish.<\/p>\n<p>Excerpt from Sarah Hurwitz,\u00a0<em>Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life\u2014in Judaism (after\u00a0<u>finally<\/u>\u00a0choosing to look there),<\/em>\u00a0Random House, 2019, p.\u00a044-45.<\/p>\n","image":{"ID":63589,"id":63589,"title":"Sarah Hurwitz cover","filename":"Sarah-Hurwitz-cover.png","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover.png","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/discovering-millions-of-pages-and-new-old-ideas\/sarah-hurwitz-cover\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"sarah-hurwitz-cover","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":63586,"date":"2019-09-26 15:33:44","modified":"2019-10-22 16:15:58","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/png","type":"image","subtype":"png","icon":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1000,"height":1000,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover-150x150.png","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover-300x300.png","medium-width":300,"medium-height":300,"medium_large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover-768x768.png","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":768,"large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover.png","large-width":1000,"large-height":1000,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover.png","1536x1536-width":1000,"1536x1536-height":1000,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover.png","2048x2048-width":1000,"2048x2048-height":1000,"post_full_size":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover.png","post_full_size-width":1000,"post_full_size-height":1000,"home_baner":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover-420x420.png","home_baner-width":420,"home_baner-height":420}},"embedded_video":"","video_duration":"","show_fb_comments":true,"credit_media":""},"tile":{"top_caption":"Excerpt from \"Here All Along\"","main_caption":"We're Part of Something Larger","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"Last in the series...","preview_embedded":"","preview_image":{"ID":63589,"id":63589,"title":"Sarah Hurwitz cover","filename":"Sarah-Hurwitz-cover.png","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover.png","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/discovering-millions-of-pages-and-new-old-ideas\/sarah-hurwitz-cover\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"sarah-hurwitz-cover","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":63586,"date":"2019-09-26 15:33:44","modified":"2019-10-22 16:15:58","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/png","type":"image","subtype":"png","icon":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1000,"height":1000,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover-150x150.png","thumbnail-width":150,"thumbnail-height":150,"medium":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover-300x300.png","medium-width":300,"medium-height":300,"medium_large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover-768x768.png","medium_large-width":768,"medium_large-height":768,"large":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover.png","large-width":1000,"large-height":1000,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover.png","1536x1536-width":1000,"1536x1536-height":1000,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover.png","2048x2048-width":1000,"2048x2048-height":1000,"post_full_size":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover.png","post_full_size-width":1000,"post_full_size-height":1000,"home_baner":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/09\/Sarah-Hurwitz-cover-420x420.png","home_baner-width":420,"home_baner-height":420}},"preview_video":"","external_link":"","link_for_pay":false,"tile_gallery_items":false,"credits":""},"alternate_tile":{"top_caption":"","main_caption":"","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"","hide_media":false},"tile_group":{"preview_image_url":false,"main_caption":"","sub_caption":"","":null,"popup_package_extra_content":"","read_time":""},"home_color":"","home_gallery_top":"","home_gallery_middle":"","home_gallery_book":"","home_gallery_bottom":"","seo":{"seo_title":"","seo_description":"","seo_default_title":"","seo_default_description":""},"links":false},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63888"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63888"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63889,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63888\/revisions\/63889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}