Tuesday Morning Torah – January 21, 2014 | Congregation Torat El - Monmouth County Conservative Synagogue

Tuesday Morning Torah – January 21, 2014

Good Morning! Below are a few snow related announcements. Stay warm and safe in this weather.

1. The office is closed this afternoon due to the storm.

2. There will be no minyan this evening or tomorrow morning due to the snow.

3. Rabbi Schonbrun’s Lunch n’learn on Wednesday has been cancelled.

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A few weeks ago, there was an article about the etymology of the most common Jewish Ashkenazi surnames and their origins. When I looked this morning, the article had over 80 thousand posts on facebook alone. The trouble is, according to the account below- the article is quite flawed. As author   Dr. Dara Horn explains:

…: the immense attention paid to this article reveals the degree to which many American Jews are still fascinated to learn where they came from. Unfortunately, it also reveals how the members of a group so highly educated in other respects know so little about their own history that they will swallow any “fact” from the Jewish past that comes flitting across their screens.

What’s wrong, exactly, with “Jewish Surnames Explained”? In a sentence: despite its quotient of accurate information, its errors are legion…..

To read Horn’s full explanation,   click here.

And why was it so important for Horn to point out these errors. In her own words, she concludes:

We all know that the Internet is full of unintended errors, not-entirely-unintended distortions, and outright malevolent lies. It has that in common with all human discourse. As Jewish content goes, moreover, “Jewish Surnames Explained” is benign compared with what you’ll find if you Google, say, “Jewish lobby.” (Hint: not the reception area of the King David Hotel.) Amid a sea of mendacity and hatred, complaining about this one article feels a bit like clubbing a baby seal.

And yet it is precisely that toxic sea that makes it all the more important to get Jewish history right. When so many, online and off, are hellbent on denigrating Jews, denying their history, and discrediting their traditions and their culture, mindless gullibility about these matters is in itself distressing. It shames me to think that American Jews, 49 percent of whom claimed in the recent Pew survey that an “essential part of being Jewish” was “being intellectually curious,” are so ignorant of their own heritage as to lay eager claim to the most questionable and transparently dubious fluff, and celebrate it as fact.

Horn is reminding us of the importance of taking the time to research our own heritage in a serious and thoughtful way in order to have an understanding of our individual and collective history. She is reminding us to look carefully, using both the internet and our family members as resources as we explore our identity.

I invite you to begin taking a few moments to do this type of research (it’s a great snow day project)!

What do you know about your last name? What do you know about your heritage and where you come from? If you are the keeper of this information in your family- who have you shared your information with?

Below few websites that I enjoy when looking into this are

  Jewish Geneology

  Ancestry.com

  Ellis Island Foundation:

Enjoy the research!