Talmud in Korea

It's a little more complicated than that, but still quite interesting...

Just when you thought that you saw it all in the Jewish world.   Talmud Study is now Mandatory in South Korea   The following fascinating article was translated by The Muqata from YNET.   Close to 50 million people live in South Korea, and everyone learns Gemara (Talmud) in school. "We tried to understand why the Jews are geniuses, and we came to the conclusion that it is because they study the Talmud," said the Korean ambassador to Israel. And this is how "Rav Papa" became a more well known scholar in Korea than in Israel.   It is doubtful if the Aramaic scholars, Abbaye and Rava, imagined their discussions of Jewish law in the Beit Midrash in Babylon would be taught hundreds of years later in East Asia. Yet it turns out that the laws of an "egg born on a holiday" ("áéöä ùðåìãä áéåí èåá"), is actually very interesting to the South Koreans, who have required that Talmud study be part of their compulsory school curriculum.   Almost every home in South Korea now contains a Korean-translated Talmud. But unlike in Israel, the Korean mothers teach the Talmud to their children. In a country of close to 49 million people who believe in Buddhism and Christianity, there are more people who read the Talmud-or at least own their own copy at home- than there are in the Jewish state of Israel. Much more.   "So we too will become geniuses"   "We were very curious about the high academic achievements of the Jews," explains  South Korea's Ambassador to Israel, Young Sam Mah, who was recently a host on the program "Culture Today."   "Jews have a high percentage of Nobel laureates in all fields: literature, science and economics. This is a remarkable achievement. We tried to understand what is the secret of the Jewish people? How they-more than other people-are able to reach those impressive accomplishments. Why are Jews so intelligent? The conclusion we arrived at is that one of your secrets is that you study the Talmud."   "Jews study the Talmud at a young age, and it helps them, in our opinion, to develop mental capabilities. This understanding led us to teach our children as well. We believe that if we teach our children Talmud, they will also become geniuses. This is what stands behind the rationale of introducing Talmud Study to our school curriculum."   Young says that he himself studied the Talmud at a very young age: "It is considered very significant study," he emphasized. The result is that more Koreans have Talmud sets in their homes than do the Jews in Israel. "I, for example, have two sets of the Talmud: the one my wife bought me, and the second was a gift from my mother."   Groupies of Jews   Koreans don't only like the Talmud because they see it as promoting genius, but because they found values that are close to their hearts.   "In the Jewish tradition, family values are very, very important," explains the South Korean Ambassador.   "You see it even today in your practice of the Friday evening family meal. In my country we also focus on family values. The respect for adults, and respect and appreciation for the elderly, parallels the high esteem in my country for the elderly."   Another very significant issue is the respect for education. In the Jewish tradition, parents have a duty to teach their children, and they devote to it lots of attention. For Korean parents, their children's education is a top priority.

 

 

Screened out and isolated - FT.com

There were no copies of the FT and no magazines, just angled titanium and back-lit Apple logos punctuating the café

Screened out and isolated

Tyler Brule

FT.com

When a journalist from the German newsweekly der Spiegel recently told me how alarmed she was to find that she was the only person reading off a piece of paper in a Los Angeles café I thought she was overdoing it. “I really felt like some kind of martian, reading my newspapers while everyone else was just staring into their iPhones and gazing at screens,” she said.

I had almost forgotten our conversation until I found myself walking around Abbot Kinney in Venice Beach last week and wandered into a café. As I entered down an open boulevard-cum-corridor, men and women were perched on stadium-style seating (as if attending a lecture) and all were tapping away on MacBook Airs.

The men were in faded T-shirts, with slightly rolled sleeves that revealed well-toned biceps and the odd tattoo, and skinny black denim, rolled just-so to reveal scuffed Alden boots. The women were in similar get-ups with the boots replaced by ballet slippers or some version of a Keds-style sneaker.

Inside the café I approached the counter and ordered a coffee. As I waited for the barista in his artfully groomed beard to artfully pour my flat white into a cup, I glanced around the room. One, two, three, four ... six, seven ... 12 people with their titanium screens flipped open and six of them wearing headphones large enough to cancel out the sound of a 747 at close range. Everyone looked extremely serious – no sunny smiles on this stretch of the California coast. There was little looking up from their screens, a lot of manic typing and even more twisting of stray locks.

What were they all doing? Was everyone working on a script? Were they polishing (embellishing) CVs for upcoming interviews? Were they updating profiles on various social networking sites? Did they have jobs? And why were two people in opposite corners of the room holding their phones horizontally in front of their mouths and chattering into them while also gripping their massive headphones like they were recording a song? Was this some affectation picked up in Taipei or Hong Kong that had now hit southern California? Heavens! I hope not.

While giving my coffee a good stir, the conversation with the der Spiegel correspondent flashed up in my mind and I spun around to see if she was right. Up and down, left and right I scanned the room and the seating area outside. The only paper in sight was a fluffy stack of dollar bills in a glass jar on the counter – there were no copies of the LA Times, no FTs, no magazines and no printed Powerpoints, just angled titanium and back-lit Apple logos punctuating the industrial space. Curiously, the only texture in the whole space was provided by the metalwork and reclaimed wood in the café interior and perhaps the odd choppy haircut: everything else was crisp and sharp and angular and perfect and boring.

I perched outside to study the scene and shake things up. I pulled out my Friday edition of this newspaper and unfolded it across my lap – a girl perched above without headphones looked up, seemingly half startled. I then picked up the paper, gave it a good yank to fold it over and then folded it again to quarter-page size to read the Companies & Markets front page. This stirred more of the titanium set out of their uploading/surfing/ chatting to look around and figure out what that sound was and if it was going to stop. I could see why the der Spiegel correspondent had felt somewhat martian-like – while she was tucking into her daily papers and magazines and exposing her media tastes, her fellow coffee-drinkers were cloaked behind their screens keeping to themselves and revealing little, immune to the clatter of finger nails on a keyboard but so easily disturbed by a newspaper unfurling before them.

I ordered another coffee to go and as I walked out noted that it wasn’t only paper that was absent; there wasn’t an iPad or reading device to be seen either. As I debated whether this was a good or bad thing I went in search of a bookstore. The best I could find was a spiritual bookshop that hardly passed for what I had in mind. There were no magazine kiosks or used book sellers, no chains and no independents. I felt sad for the local residents.

An hour or so later I arrived at LAX’s international terminal and was happy to see some effort was being made to improve the experience. The chirpy lady from Lufthansa suggested I shouldn’t get my hopes up. “They can spend all the money they want on design but it’s not going to change the people working at security or how you’re treated when you enter the country,” she said breezily as we walked to the gate. I grunted in agreement.

Upstairs on the 747 I was greeted by a friendly attendant with an armful of newspapers. “I’m sorry but we don’t have internet connection on today’s flight but would you like a FAZ, Handelsblatt, FT or IHT?” she asked. Around the cabin my fellow passengers were all manipulating their favourite dailies and the world sounded just right.

Tyler Brûlé is editor-in-chief of Monocle magazine

tyler.brule@ft.com

More columns at www.ft.com/brule

Screened out and isolated - FT.com

How many Stephen Colberts are there?

How many Stephen Colberts are there?

BY CHARLES MCGRATH

From The International Herald Tribune

There used to be just two Stephen Colberts, and they were hard enough to distinguish. The main difference was that one thought the other was an idiot. The idiot Colbert was the one who made a nice paycheck by appearing four times a week on ''The Colbert Report'' — pronounced in the French fashion, with both t's silent — the extremely popular fake news show on Comedy Central. The other Colbert, the non-idiot, was the 47-year-old South Carolinian, a practicing Catholic who lives with his wife and three children in suburban Montclair, New Jersey. One of the pleasures of attending a live taping of ''The Colbert Report'' is watching that Colbert transform himself into a Republican superhero.

Suburban Colbert comes out dressed in the other Colbert's guise — dark two-button suit, tasteful Brooks Brothersy tie — and answers questions from the audience for a few minutes. Then he steps onstage and turns himself into his alter ego. His body straightens, a self-satisfied smile creeps across his mouth and a fatuous gleam steals into his eyes.

Read the whole story here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/magazine/stephen-colbert.html