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Jan 26, 2023, 11:18 PM

Benjamin Franklin’s contribution to Jewish practice

Franklin's Chart

Benjamin Franklin’s famous autobiography includes the description of a character improvement method that he invented in his 20s to help him break his bad habits and acquire better ones. The method centers on 13 behavioral traits (temperance, silence, order, resolution,...

Feb 23, 2022, 10:51 PM

RI Jewish Alliance hosting character development course

Character development program to be held at Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island, March-July 2022 Providence's Congregation Beth Sholom, Core Connects Rhode Island, the Jewish Community Day School of Rhode Island, Providence's Temple Beth-El, and Providence's Temple Emanu-El are collaborating to...

Jan 12, 2022, 2:25 PM

A Forgetting of Benjamin Franklin

“I always carried my little Book with me” Benjamin Franklin and his Method for Examination. Digital collage - Shai Afsai

Although the musar (Jewish moral discipline and ethical refinement) classic Sefer Heshbon Hanefesh (Book of Spiritual Accounting) has been reprinted many times and in many places since first being published anonymously in 1808, as far as I know only...

Oct 12, 2021, 6:33 PM

Sigd: Is world Jewry prepared for another holiday?

Until the middle of the 19th century, the Jews of Ethiopia — the Beta Israel (House of Israel) — lived in almost complete isolation from other Jewish communities around the globe. During this prolonged separation, they preserved and developed distinct...

Jun 17, 2021, 7:40 AM

‘The bride is beautiful, but she is married’: An irresistible anti-Zionist story

In the prologue to his popular history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (first published by W. W. Norton & Co., 2000), Professor Avi Shlaim of Oxford University claimed the following (p. 3): The...

Jun 16, 2021, 12:04 AM

Reading Bruno Schulz

Years ago, there was a small bookshop on Thayer Street in Providence, near Brown University’s campus, called College Hill Bookstore. It had late hours — I recall the shop being open until eleven on weekdays and until midnight on...

Apr 20, 2021, 7:08 AM

Benjamin Franklin’s Virtues and Jewish Practice

Benjamin Franklin, who passed away on April 17, 1790, has had a lasting impact on Jewish thought and practice. When Benjamin Franklin (born January 17, 1706) composed his autobiography, he included the description of a self-improvement method he had devised...

Mar 11, 2021, 7:54 PM

I get ideas for articles in Jewish publications: A poem

How latkes reaffirmed my Judaism What matzah ball soup taught me about social justice Lessons I learned from bringing a Christmas tree into my grandmother’s Jewish nursing home Herring was once a household fish — meet the young Jewish women trying to...

Mar 11, 2021, 7:22 AM

The myth of Ben Franklin’s antisemitism

The myth that American founding father Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 – April 17, 1790) was antisemitic first emerged 87 years ago – 144 years after his passing – with the publication of a fraudulent and since then repeatedly...

Feb 7, 2020, 6:36 AM

Rhode Island Jews join in joyous celebration of the 13th Global Siyum HaShas of Daf Yomi

At the First International Congress of Agudath Israel, held in Vienna in 1923, the Eastern European Rabbi Meir Shapiro, then in his mid-thirties, proposed that Jews around the world study one double-sided page (daf) of the Babylonian Talmud together...

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About Me

Shai Afsai (shaiafsai.com) lives in Providence, Rhode Island. In addition to fiction and poetry, his recent writing has focused on the works of Thomas Paine, Zionist historiography, “the bride is beautiful but she is married to another man” stories, Jews and Freemasonry, Benjamin Franklin’s influence on Jewish thought and practice, religious traditions of the Beta Yisrael Jewish community from Ethiopia, Jewish observance and identity in Nigeria, aliyah to Israel from Rhode Island, Jewish pilgrimage to Ukraine, Jewish-Polish relations, Jews and Irish literature, and Judaism in Northern Ireland.

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