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Bimah

A raised platform in the sanctuary from where the service is led, and the Torah is read.

Baraita, Baraitot

Baraitot- statements quoted in the Gemara from the same historical group of rabbis whose teachings are compiled in the Mishnah, which is the earliest part of the Talmud. A baraita [singular] is a teaching which has the same historical origins and authority as a teaching from the Mishnah, but which didn't make it into the "official" Mishnah itself. The Mishnaic period ends around 200 C.E, but the entire Talmudic period ends around 400 years later.

Breastplate

An ornamental shield that decorates the Torah. It often contains a plaque to indicate where the Torah scroll is rolled to.

Brit milah (Bris)

The ritual circumcision performed on the 8th day to welcome Jewish boys into the Jewish people.

Buber, Martin (1878-1965)

Best known for his "dialogic philosophy," set forth in his "I and Thou." Buber distinguished between two ways of being. One, in which the world about one is treated as a collection of objects which might be used, he referred to as "I-It." The other way of being, called "I-Thou," involves a true, complete, open relationship, in which the one (be it human, tree, or God) related to is not defined or used, but merely responded to. It is inevitable that we live most of our lives in the I-It mode, but, says Buber, life is not life without I-Thou. Buber was also an intellectual and political leader of a strand of Zionism that sought to be spiritual, democratic, and socialist.