{"id":107319,"date":"2016-09-20T12:16:57","date_gmt":"2016-09-20T20:16:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=107319"},"modified":"2016-09-20T12:16:57","modified_gmt":"2016-09-20T20:16:57","slug":"the-trump-tallis-and-outsider-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=107319","title":{"rendered":"The Trump Tallis and Outsider Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rabbi Yitzhok Adlerstein writes<\/a>: When a black pastor in Detroit draped a tallis around the shoulders of The Donald, Jewish tongues started clucking with disapproval. \u201cCultural appropriation!\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s an anti-Semite!\u201d Notably, the vehemence, as best as I could tell, all came from Jews on the left \u2013 politically and religiously. Perhaps their real discomfort was in the realization that Donald Trump wears a tallis more often than they do. The rest of us were mildly amused (if anything about this strange campaign can be said to be amusing), and wanted to know more about the pastor and his church. (Hint: It is a Pentecostal church. There are lots of black Pentacostal churches, full of people who are pro-Israel, certainly more so than the elites in Haaretz who were quick to condemn the incident.)<\/p>\n

The real cultural appropriation came from Jewish circles, which had to scramble to figure out what a tallis was, why the benighted religious Christians believed that Jesus wore one, and why they had to be wrong. Savor this, from an article in The Forward, authored by a \u201csoferet\u201d and designer of the famous Tefillin Barbie:<\/p>\n

“In the religion known as rabbinic Judaism, rectangular garments are required to have knotted tassels on the corners, following the Torah. According to the scholar Dafna Shlezinger-Katsman, in Jesus\u2019s era, people in the eastern parts of the Roman Empire routinely wore a rectangular thing called a pallium, and therefore people who wanted to observe rabbinic Judaism probably put tassels on their pallia. \u2026A tassel-equipped pallium is what the early rabbis were probably referring to when they said \u201ctallit.\u201d \u2026The tassels on the religious Jews\u2019 pallia probably stood out to those in the know, but those who weren\u2019t savvy to the significance wouldn\u2019t have cared especially\u2026Jesus may or may not have worn a tallit, depending on whether he was the type who wore pallium and whether he was inspired to mark himself as part of the rabbinic in-group by attaching tassels to it. \u2026Quite possibly Jesus, too, thought there were more important issues to focus on. \u2026Having a special rectangular garment with tassels that you wear during prayer seems to have been a late medieval development, according to scholars like Elisheva Baumgarten.”<\/p>\n

Except that it wasn\u2019t. Unless we assume that the Babylonian Talmud is of late medieval development. I can\u2019t tell you how much a tassled Roman pallium would set you back on Ebay in fourth or fifth century Iraq, but they seemed to know about it and its role in davening:<\/p>\n

“R. Yochanan said, \u201cWere a verse not written, it would be impossible to say it. This teaches that the Holy One, Blessed is He, wrapped Himself in a tallis like a prayer leader and demonstrated to Moses the order of prayer.\u201d (Rosh Hashanah, 17B)”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rabbi Yitzhok Adlerstein writes: When a black pastor in Detroit draped a tallis around the shoulders of The Donald, Jewish tongues started clucking with disapproval. \u201cCultural appropriation!\u201d \u201cHe\u2019s an anti-Semite!\u201d Notably, the vehemence, as best as I could tell, all … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-judaism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107319"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107319\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":107320,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107319\/revisions\/107320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}