“Tradition is the illusion of permanence”: A fresh look at some Purim, Pesach and other Jewish festival traditions

The wealthy Furtado expressed “his firm determination not to hold any further intercourse with members of the community”, baptised his children and built some tenements in Mile End named “Purim Place”.

Furtado was not the only one to leave the fold because of the inf lexibility of the Bevis Marks committee. Isaac D’Israeli and his father were members. In 1813 the shul elected Isaac warden. He refused the honour, miffed that he was given it so late in his life. The shul fined him £40 for turning it down as was its tradition. Isaac refused to pay and an angry correspondence continued until 1817, when, with Benjamin’s bar mitzvah coming up and a teacher employed, Isaac sent a letter saying “I am under the painful necessity of wishing that my name be erased from the list of your members of Yehedim.”

He then baptised his children – but not himself. Benjamin gave no speech at his barmitzvah but delivered many as British Prime Minister.17 (Obser ving British tradition the first synagogue in Cape Town, Tikvath Israel, in 1849 drew up laws fining members who refused to take office – but without such consequences.18

Passover is tradition-rich – some very old, some not so very old. The Haggadah text is based on a prayer book edited by Rabbi Amram ben Sheshnah from Sura, Babylon (856 – 876 CE.). Dayenu came into the Haggadah with Rashi (1040 – 1105), Chad Gadya with Sefer Rokeach (1160-1238) and Ki Lo Naeh, Ki Lo Yaeh was first cited by Rabbi Yaakov bar Yehuda of London (c.1285 CE).19

According to Israel Abrahams in Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, ritual had not gained that mastery over Jewish life which it enjoyed after the 15th Century. He quotes a story of Maharil spending Passover at his father-in-law when his daughter asked her father why he had raised the dish, and the father immediately proceeded with the recital “We were servants of Pharaoh in Egypt’”. Thus her question replaced the Four Questions.20

A few decades ago there was a tradition of leaving an empty chair for the Russian refuseniks living under a modern pharaoh who would not let his people go. That was abandoned when the gates were opened. Today a new tradition is developing of filling a cup of water just before the second cup of wine to honour the role of Miriam the Prophetess and highlight the contributions of Jewish women. This tradition was supposed to have originated at a Rosh Chodesh group in Boston in 1989.21 Miriam’s Cups are now on sale in glass, silver, lacquered wood or pottery, often decorated with depictions of Miriam or verses referring to her participation in the Exodus.

Another new tradition is that of an orange on the seder plate. Why an orange? Biblical scholar Susannah Heschel22, Abraham Joshua He s chel’s23 daughter, was challenged by a man when she lectured on women rabbis.“A woman belongs on the bima like an orange belongs on the seder plate,” he is supposed to have said. Thus did an orange on the seder plate become a symbol of women’s rights.

It is a nice story, but Heschel disagrees. She read a feminist Haggadah in the early 1980s which proposed placing a piece of bread on the seder plate to symbolise the need to include gays and lesbians in Jewish life. Heschel liked the idea of putting something new on the seder plate to represent suppressed voices, but definitely – definitely – not bread, so an orange became the symbol of all marginalised populations.24

The Sukkot tradition of building f limsy temporary booths has also seen changes. The Israel Museum has a beautiful sukkah consisting of thirty painted panels copied from prayer books printed in Sulzbach, Germany, in 1826 and created c 1836 for the Deller family in Fischach, Bavaria, and smuggled out of Germany inside a wooden crate in 1934.25Painted sukkot might have been traditional in Germany but did not accompany the wandering Israelites. The fame of the sukkah belonging to D Polak Daniels, a warden of The Hague Jewish Congregation and a member of the Municipality and South Holland County Council, reached Queen Sophia, who wanted to see it. She was invited, spent a half-hour enjoying refreshments inside and on leaving said, “I take your word for a great deal, but you cannot make me believe that your ancestors in the desert lived in such splendid booths as this.”26

The Chanukah tradition was to display chanukiot where passers-by could see them. Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg (13th Cent ur y) hung his metal one on his door. When it became dangerous to place these outside the home, the tradition changed and they were placed inside the house, necessitating a design modification to enable them to stand instead of hang. Once again – thanks to Chabad’s public lighting – chanukiot are back in the open.27

Barmitzvah celebrations only became a fixed rite in 14th Century Germany. The most essential features in 16th Cent ur y Ger many and Poland was laying tefillin and being called up to the Torah.28 After the shul service there was as a seudat mitzvah in the boy’s home. The barmitzvah boy’s talk dates to the 16th Century and its purpose was to enable him to demonstrate his Talmudic knowledge – often written by the teacher and learnt by heart. In Morocco, he would walk among the guests after his talk holding his tefillin bag and they would throw in silver coins. These he would give his teacher!29

Living precariously in Mediaeval Europe, exposed to threats of expulsion and confiscation caused by jealousy and greed, special sumptuary laws were introduced. The Council of Four Lands30 (1650) ruled that only ten strangers could be invited, one of whom had to be a poor man. In Ancona, Italy (1766), only the family could attend the feast although well-wishers could be given coffee and sweetmeats.31 Guests would be taxed and fined if too many were invited.32 In Prague (1767), the only women who could be invited were the boy’s mother, sisters, grandmothers and sisters-in-law – not aunts.33

Barmitzvah traditions no longer include sumptuary laws, although Cape Town has a Simcha Fund for people willing to add a percentage for those unable to afford a celebration. With many displays of conspicuous consumption, it is a pity this does not become more of a tradition. One Frankfurt prohibition (1715) has been retained – that banning bar mitzvah boys from wearing wigs.34

Another feature often found is that mentioned by Edmond Fleg, a Zurich tzaddik’s son, who said he sang his parsha faultlessly in 1887 without understanding a word.35

The old Jewish Museum in Cape Town contained a barmitzvah album given to an anonymous boy in Upington in 1948. It included a Bird’s Eye View of Jewish History starting with Abraham and ending with the entry: 1941 – Ghettos for Jews are introduced in Poland by the Nazis, Nazis conquer Romania, Bulgaria and Greece. Jews’ lot grows still worse.

How dreadful is hindsight,

The barmitzvah boy had not filled in the pages meant for the theme of his speech or the rabbi’s message, but he had listed his gifts: a meccano and monopoly set, two brush and comb sets, a writing set, hankies, books, money, two ties, that album and an air gun. No fountain pens – at one time they were so popular that a common joke was that the f lustered boy started his speech: “Today I am a fountain pen.”

Tradition disallowed women from participating directly in religious services. “Bat mitzvahs were not always an everyday tradition. Women had to fight for that right”, wrote Jo-Ann Arnowitz, Florida Jewish Museum director.36 The unfairness of this gender discrimination began percolating into the social conscience of communities in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries and special ceremonies were introduced in Italy, Eastern and Western Europe, Egypt, and Baghdad. The first American batmitzvah was held by Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan in 192237 and it is now common even among some very Orthodox communities in Israel.

Rev A P Bender started Girls Confirmation Services in Cape Town in 1896,38 reviving them as a batmitzvah in 1936.39 As late as 1953 Rabbi Isaac Kossowsky was grumbling about the practice. In “The Batmitzvah Controversy” in the Zionist Record, he condemned them on grounds of the social aspect, believing they would prove to be the thin edge of the wedge separating the demarcation between Orthodox and Reform services. He also brought mixed choirs into his argument.

“The fact that some Orthodox congregations introduced [batmitzvahs] was no reason. The Yeoville Synagogue which is undoubtedly an Orthodox Synagogue had a mixed choir for many years and consecutive rabbis were powerless to do away with it until an opportune moment arrived for its abolition … [this] should constitute a precedent for doing away with batmitzvahs”.40 Sixty years on, it has become an accepted tradition with no effect on synagogue affiliation.

I must be personal here. I was the first girl in the Northern Cape to celebrate a bat mitzvah.41 My photo appeared in the newspaper “Kimberley girl makes history”. When it came to my daughter’s batmitzvah, the thirteen mothers held regular meetings to discuss important issues such as whether the girls’ white shoes should match and a speech teacher drilled them on enunciating and where to stand. After an Eisteddfod-type production to a packed shul one Sunday afternoon, each young lady in her matching dress went home to her party. A few months later we attended a cousin’s batmitzvah in a Reform shul where she read her parsha and took the entire Shabbat service, as an equal member of the congregation. A far more meaningful rite of passage.

As far as Rabbi Kossowksy’s comment on mixed choirs goes, here the tradition has changed from more lenient to more rigid. In the Shulchan Aruch Rabbi Karo merely stated that it was preferable while reciting the Shema not to hear a woman singing. As the centuries rolled on, the life of Jews in the Russian Empire became more constrained and tradition-bound. Rigidity set in and the religious position of women diminished. Ignored was the exultant song sung by Miriam, Moses’ sister, at the Red Sea. Forgotten was the idea that men might be distracted by hearing women’s voices while reciting the Shema. Instead the blame was def lected onto women whose voices were deemed inherently indecent.42

From the 1890s the pendulum swung. Jews moved into the emancipated West where they were exposed to music and music halls, Mendelssohn and Mahler, opera and Yiddish theatre, organs and mixed choirs, and synagogues started to follow suit.43

I was given a photo of the Claremont Synagogue Choir in 1919. On the front steps stands the cantor in his tallis and ceremonial cap. On his right stand three young men, one still in short pants, wearing hats and talleisim. On his left stand three young women, one in a pinafore, wearing hats and black stockings – including the donor’s husband and his sister.44 The late Advocate Jules Browde was her son-in-law.

The wife of Emanuel Mendelssohn, the founder of Johannesburg’s President Street Synagogue, was a soprano trained at the Berlin Conservatory of Music. They too had a mixed choir, led by Madame Mendelssohn. She sang a splendid aria from the composer Mendelssohn’s oratorio Elijah at the synagogue’s consecration in 1889.45 Rabbi J H Herz, future Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, removed women from the choir in 1898 but never publicly condemned them.46

My great-grandfather, a chazan, who kept a diary from 1892-1893, wrote witheringly of this choir. “The rabbi47 who was also the cantor picked for himself a choir of beautiful girls, one after the other, who sang on the High Holy Days and with their pleasant voices gladdened the heart of the people who came to the ma’ariv prayers on Erev Rosh Hashanah. With this kind of promotion, they did very well and collected riches”. As the opposing Park Synagogue “had not yet paid for the building, so they thought to make a choir of beautiful girls and then they would be saved. The choir was ready and their eyes were looking forward to salvation through the girls, only to their disappointment most of the worshippers in the new synagogue had foreign wives. To look for a great salvation to save Israel from its troubles cannot be done from foreign women and from foreign people.”48

There were ten synagogues in London with mixed choirs in the late 1940s and the chief rabbi attended services there. It has been argued that from the 1960s British Chief Rabbi Israel Brodie was under pressure from an increasingly right-wing Beth Din and began to refuse to attend services with mixed choirs or to appoint rabbis to such synagogues.

His attitude was followed in South Africa, which has historically observed British practices – at one time the British Chief Rabbi was responsible for appointing rabbis to the British Colonies – until the Eastern European Jews arrived. They did not respect the concept of a Chief Rabbi or his authority and appointed their own rabbis from Europe. When Tikvath Israel was established in Cape Town in 1841, and wanted to import a Sefer Torah, they discovered that the permission of the Chief Rabbi was required. As Dr Solomon Herschell had recently died, they had to wait until a new one was appointed.49

With Britain ruling most of Southern Africa, it did not take long for the Anglo-German Jews and then the Eastern European Jews to adapt British synagogue practices. Sermons, clerical dress, choral services, even the siddurim were those of Anglicized Judaism.50 Likewise were mixed choirs, until the British Chief Rabbi, in what was considered a turn to the right, changed that tradition and banished the voices of the female majority, and the South African rabbis followed suit.

The last mixed choir in London was disbanded in 1986. In an article on the mixed choir controversy, Benjamin Elton argues that the laws on mixed singing contain f lexibility that can and have been used when rabbis felt the situation demanded it. He believes there is considerable scope for re-assessment of the religious policy of the Chief Rabbis across a range of issues and Anglo-Jewry’s religious development and the Chief Rabbinate’s place in that development might require reconsideration.51

Traditional attitudes to art also veered between acceptance and prohibition. The Torah52 forbids making images,53 although the text implies that this only applied to objects of worship.

Our traditions depend to a large extent on the environment in which the Jewish community lives. Where the social environment allowed representational art, Jews created it. Jews in Mediaeval Europe surrounded by Catholic neighbours with their multiplicity of icons and Holy Family statues opposed the creation of such images, although Jewish artists manufactured them and 13thCentury Christian manuscripts have pictures referring to Midrashic legends indicating that the artists were Jewish.

In such an environment Judah the Pious (1140-1217) strictly prohibited any image making. R. Meir of Rothenberg (1215–1293) regarded illustrations as distracting from the text.54 In the German Bird’s Head Haggadah (c. 1300) Jews have birds’ heads while non-Jews, like Pharaoh, are face-less.55

Rabbinic Judaism’s belief in that prohibition was shattered by the discovery in one of the oldest synagogues in the world, the Dura Europos synagogue, completed in 244 C.E., of figurative wall paintings. There, in vivid Technicolor, was the Binding of Isaac, Moses in the bulrushes, Moses receiving the Tablets of the law, Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt, the vision of Ezekiel and other images.56 If human figures appeared on synagogue walls, they would have been permitted in houses and manuscripts.

As more and more mosaic synagogue f loors were uncovered in Israel it was realised that figurative representations were a normal feature of synagogue decoration. The f loors at the Huqoq synagogue (4th-6th Centuries) shows Samson; the Tzippori (late 5th or early 6th Century) and the Beit Alfa synagogues (6th Century) portray the Binding of Isaac.

Even in Mediaeval Europe, such prohibitions were ignored because Jews were to some extent culturally assimilated and began to share in the artistic outlook of their neighbours. Glückel of Hameln (1646-1724) described the long-running legal battle her father-in-law had with his son-in-law‘s stepfather, Feibisch Gans, over missing documents. Feibisch put her father-in-law in prison, and he did the same to Feibisch. When they ran out of money, they went to the Beth Din.

“The rabbis… came”, wrote Glückel, “they pondered the case at due length, but they accomplished nothing – except to depart with fat fees. One of these rabbinical judges from Gelnhausen made off with enough to build for himself a handsome study-room; and he had painted on its wall three or four rabbis in their clerical hats, plucking the feathers from a goose.”57 (Gans is Yiddish for goose.)

The Muslim world banned all representational art. Jews living among them followed suit and their art was non-representational. Spanish rabbis prohibited art. The Sefer HaChinnuch58emphasised that it was forbidden to make likenesses of a human being, even for ornament. Maimonides forbade three-dimensional humans – but not animals – and allowed two-dimensional humans in painting and tapestries.59

The prejudice against representational art dwindled, and in the end almost disappeared.Rabbi Kook believed that Van Gogh reached spiritual achievements when he painted.60Portrait painting and photography have come to be generally – though not quite universally – tolerated. In the 1990s, Jerusalem streets were plastered with images of the late Lubavitch Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, proclaiming him Messiah.61

However, for some groups, change is slower. After all, if a woman’s voice is dangerous to men, how much more so is a woman’s picture? The New York Haredi newpaper Yated Ne’eman which does not sully its pages with pictures of women, finally buckled in 2016 when it came to Hilary Clinton. They published a photo of her arm.62 As she did not become president, there will be no need to show both arms.

Today in Israel one will find Catholic shops with framed pictures of Mary or Jesus next door to Sephardic shops with framed pictures of long-dead Sephardi scholars and R. Schneerson’s photo adorns practically every Chabad household – not to mention pizza parlours, barbershops and mom-and-pop stores run by admirers or followers”. 63 Is there any difference?

Changes are slow but they do happen. Women have traditionally been responsible for preparing food for the family, yet could not serve in Israel as kosher supervisors. In 2014 the Chief Rabbinate allowed this after a petition by the Emunah advocacy group to the Supreme Court.64 Women may now say kaddish for their deceased parent following a halachic ruling from Rev Ovadia Yosef revealed by his grandson (2011)65 and from the Orthodox rabbinical organisation Beit Hillel (2013).66

To quote Tevya again, “Traditions, traditions. Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as… as… as a fiddler on the roof! Because of our traditions, we’ve kept our balance for many, many years. Here in Anatevka, we have traditions for everything: how to sleep, how to eat… how to work… how to wear clothes. For instance, we always keep our heads covered, and always wear a little prayer shawl that shows our constant devotion to G-d…. and because of our traditions… Every one of us knows who he is and what G-d expects him to do”.

Life in the 21st Century has altered dramatically since the days when the rabbis in Babylon and Mediaeval Europe, faced with other dramatic changes, modified traditions to suit the period in which they were living.

One of the reasons why the Jewish community has kept its identity as a people for so many centuries is that we have been able to adapt our traditions to the current reality while keeping our core beliefs intact. Those changes helped to keep our faith relevant.

Change still happens – it just takes time.

Gwynne Schrire, a veteran contributor to Jewish Affairs and long-serving member of its editorial board, is Deputy Director of the Cape Council, SA Jewish Board of Deputies. She has written, co-written and edited numerous books on local Jewish and Cape Town history.

NOTES

1. Said by Woody Allen’s character in the film Deconstructing Harry.
2. According to the Merriam-Webster definition.
3. Yigael Yadin, Bar Kochba: The rediscovery of the legendary hero of the last Jewish Revolt against Imperial Rome, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1971, p73.
4. Fettersmar, Ashley, ‘Chinua Achebe’s Legacy, in His Own Words’, The Atlantic,22 3. 2013.www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/…/03/…achebes…/274297.
5. Anthony Giddens, Runaway world: how globalization is reshaping our lives. Taylor & Francis. (2003). p39. Retrieved 5.2. 2011.
6. Shils, Edward (1.8. 2006), Tradition, University of Chicago Press, Retrieved 5.2.2011 (from Wikipedia article on tradition.
7. Bermant, Chaim, The Walled Garden: The Saga of Jewish Family Life and Tradition, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 1974, p82 Shulchan Aruch in Even Ha’Ezer 15. Talmud Yevamos62b, Rambam Hilchos Issuei Bi’ah 2:14).
8. Herem de-Rabbenu Gershom c.1000 CE.
9. Based on Rabbi Moshe Isserles 1520-1572.
10. Until the 15th Century most Ashkenazim baked their usual rectangular loaves or round loaves for Shabbat. Eventually German Jews began making a “new form of Sabbath bread, an oval, braided loaf modelled on popularTeutonic bread” Gil Marks,The World of Jewish Cooking,Simon and Schuster, 1999, p276).
11. Kaplan, J. (1986), ‘The Portuguese Community in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century’ (Hebrew),Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 7(6), p181 quoted in Lea MühlsteinSermonPurim 5772 at Leo Baeck College, Weekly D’var Torah Archive. 07 March 2012 andRabbi Lea Mühlstein Parashat Shemini / Purim, 21 March 2014;www.lbc.ac.uk › www.liberaljudaism.org/…/45…/890-parashat-semini-purim-2014.html
12. Mahamad or Ma’amad council of elders in a Sephardicongregation in the West, corresponding to the kahal (in the sense of the supreme community council) in Ashkenazicommunities.
13. Picciotto, James, Sketches of Anglo-Jewish history, (1875); Full text of :”Sketches of Anglo-Jewish history”Ballantyne & Co. Edinburgh & London,: (1875) archive.org/stream/…/sketchesofangloj00picciala_djvu.txt‎
14. Samuel, Edgar Roy “Anglo-Jewish notaries and Scriveners” in Transactions Sessions 1951-1952, Vol XVII, The Jewish Historical Society of England, London,1953, p144.
15. Picciotto. James, op cit.
16. Samuel, op cit, pp133-135.
17. D’Israeli, Isaac – Jewish Encyclopedia.com.
18. Herrman, Dr Louis, The Cape Town Hebrew Congregation 1841-1941: A Centenary History, Mercantile-Atlas, 1941 p22.
19. Rabbi Moshe Lazarus, The History of the Haggadah mohr.edu/holidays/pesach/history/835‎
20. Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages, Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, 1919, pp154-155.
21. According to Jewish feminist writer Tamara Cohen.
22. Susannah Heschel is the Eli Black Professor of Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College
23. Heschel, 1907- 1972, professor of Jewish mysticism,Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
24. David Levy, ‘The orange on the seder plate and Miriam’sCup: Foregrounding women at your seder’, JewishWomen’s Archive March 12, 2012.
25. www.theicenter.org/resource/building-storytelling-and-sukkot; jewish-family-in-fischach.html.; www.imj.org.il/eng/exhibitions/2003/movable_feast/index.html;tlwkidsbooks.blogspot.com/…/19th-century;
26. Abrahams, Israel, A Festival Reverie, In Schwartz, Leo, Memoirs of my people through a thousand years, JewishPublication Society of America, 1945, p408.
27. Sue Fishkoff, The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch, New York, 2003 pp 285-300.
28. Schrire, Gwynne, “Celebrating a mitzvah or barmeycelebration”, in Member to Member, Claremont HebrewCongregation, No 54, May 1993, pp17-20.
29. Schauss Hayyim, Originally bar mitzvah meant simply ‘coming of age’. The ceremony developed much later.from The Lifetime of a Jew Throughout the Ages of Jewish History(UAHC Press). www.myjewishlearning.com/life/…/BarBat_Mitzvah.
30. Central body of Jewish authority in Poland from 1580 to 1764 comprised of 70 delegates from Greater Poland,Little Poland, Ruthenia and Volhynia.
31. On the occasion when boys enter their fourteenth year, no entertainment may be given. All that is permitted is to serve coffee and a biscuit to those who go to present their congratulations at the house.” Luxury – decrees against| Fascinating Jewish history;strangeside.com/luxury-decrees-against/.
32. Bermant, Chaim, op cit., p45. He also writes that some boys regard the Bar Mitzvah as a form of moral graduation,others as one of the travails of childhood, something to be got over with, like mumps or chicken pox, but made somewhat more palpable by the compensations – gift-cheques, presents and possibly even a holiday in Israel.
33. The community of Prague included bar mitzvahcelebrations in its sumptuary regulations of 1767. No musicians were permitted to perform. The only fish that could be served was carp. Beef could be served, but not veal, and either chicken or goose but not both. Wine was also prohibited. On the other hand, those who were in the community’s highest tax bracket could serve whateverthey wished. www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Sumptuary_Legislation.
34. Michael Hilton, Bar Mitzvah: A History, (2014) books.google.co.za/books?isbn=0827611676.
35. Fleg, Edmond, ‘Israel, Lost and Found’ in Schwartz, Leo, op cit. p544.
36. http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/09/01/3599936_exhibit-at-jewish-museum-traces.html#storylink=cpy
37. Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan (1881- 1983), was a co-founderof Reconstructionist Judaism; Bat Mitzvah – What Is a Bat Mitzvahjudaism.about.com .
38. Abrahams, Israel, The Birth of a Community, Cape Town Hebrew Congregation, 1955, p94.
39. Herrman, Dr Louis,op cit. p118.
40. Schrire, Gwynne, Zionist Record:Rosh Hashanah 1953: One Shilling and Sixpence (Jewish Affairs.68:2, Rosh Hashanah 2013).
41. A tailor made me a white suit. I hated it. When the other two girls dropped out and it was moved to summer, my mother made me a white dress which I disliked only a little less.
42. Benjamin E, ‘Did the Chief Rabbinate move to the right? A case study: the mixed choir controversies, 1880-1986’,Jewish historical studies; Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, Vol 39 2004, p125.
43. Elton, op cit, p137.
44. The singer was Violet, sister of Dr Adolph Meyer. Schrire, Gwynne, The First 100 years 1904-2004: The Story of the Claremont Hebrew Congregation, Claremont HebrewCongregation, 2004, p22.
45. Mendelsohn, Richard, “Oom Paul’s Publicist: EmanuelMendelssohn, founder of the first congregation”:, In, Kaplan Mendel & Marian Robertson, Founders and Followers, Johannesburg Jewry 1887-1915, Vlaeberg, Cape Town, 1991, p77.
46. Benjamin Elton, op cit,, p137.
47. Rev Mark Harris.
48. Reb Yehuda Leib Schrire Diary 1892–1893 Translated by Michal Solomon, in Schrire Carmel & Schrire Gwynne,Jewish Travels and Settlement in South Africa (1892-1913): The Narratives of Reb Yehuda Leib Schrire and Harry Schrire, Kaplan Centre, UCT, Transcribed, edited, and annotated by Gwynne Schrire and Carmel Schrire.
49. Herrman, Dr Louis, op. cit. p10
50. Sher, David, “What we learn from ‘Nusach Anglia’: South Africa and its threatened Anglo-Jewish heritage”, Jewish Affairs,Pesach 2014, Vol.69:1,53-55.
51. Elton, op cit, pp 150-151.
52. The Second Commandment reads”You shall not make for yourself a graven image or any likeness of what is in heaven above or earth below or in the waters under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I the Lord your G-d and am a jealous G-d”.
53. Exodus. 20:4; Deuteronomy. 5:8 and 4:16–18.
54. www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/…/ejud_0002_0002_0_01373.html
55. Richard McBeeBird’s Head Haggadah Revealed – The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative & ReligiousImagination March 29th, 2012, www.jewishpress.com.
56. Blitz, Adam, Jealous Gods: the Fate of the Dura EuroposSynagogue.blogs.timesofisrael.com/jealous-gods-the-fate-of-the-dura-europos-synag…‎ May 12, 2013.
57. The Memoirs of Gluckel of Hameln, Schocken Books,New York, 1977, p30.
58. Attributed to Aaron ha-Levi of Barcelona.
59. Art – Jewish Virtual Library www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/…/ejud_0002_0002_0_01373.html‎
60. Ettinger. Yair. The man and the symbol: The two sides of Rabbi David Stav, candidate for Israel’s chief rabbi. Ha’aretz, 23.6.2013.
61. “A few years after the rebbe’s death, a letter containinga psak halachah [religious ruling] appeared as a paid advertisement in many Jewish newspapers. Signed by numerous rabbis associated with Lubavitch, this stated that according to halachah, all Jews were required to professthe belief that the late Rebbe was actually the Messiah and that the rebbe himself had confirmed that this was so. Since Halachah obligates believing the words of a prophet, every Jew was required to profess the belief that the rebbe was and still is the messiah.” Rabbi Prof Martin I. Lockshin, Centre for Jewish Studies at York University, “Messianism in Chabad-Lubavitch challenges Jews of all denominations to consider the limits of Jewish theology”,Canadian Jewish News, 17.1. 2002..com/history/…Lubavitch/Messianism.shtml‎www.myjewishlearning; Sue Fishkoff , op cit, pp 263- 27562 www.jta.org/…/haredi-newspaper-finds-modest-way-to-show-photo-of-hillary-clintonAug 11, 201663 Heilman Uriel, “Twenty years after rebbe’s death, has Chabad changed?” JTA, 3.7.2014.64 Ben Sales. “Are women kosher supervisors a step toward gender equality?”, JTA, New York, 13.5.201465 “New” Halachic Ruling by Rav Ovadia Yosef on Women;isramom.blogspot.com/…/new-halachic-ruling-by-rav-ovadia-yosef.html; Jerusalem – Rav Ovadya Yosef: A Woman Can Recite; 23.2.2011. www.vosizneias.com/…/jerusalem-rav-ovadya-yosef-a-woman-can-recite. 1,2. 2010.66 Halachicruling: Women may say Kaddish; www.ynetnews.com › Ynetnews › Jewish Scene 25. 6. 2013‘Beit Hillel’ Rules Women Allowed to say Kaddishwww.vosizneias.com/…/jerusalem-rabbinical-organization-beit-hillel-rule… 26.6un 26, 2013 (Beit Hillel is a new national-religious rabbinical group that includes womenin its leadership).