PULSA DE NURA AND MEGILLAT HASHOAH: This miscellany in Ha'aretz discusses two newsworthy innovations in Judaism, both of which draw on ancient themes. First, there is the Pulsa de Nura cursing ceremony that, as has been noted here before seems to have been created in the early twentieth century.

The two researchers reached the conclusion that the pulsa denura invoked today is merely a new and particularly frightening version of an excommunication edict, a ceremony that also incorporates extinguishing candles, blowing shofars in synagogue and reciting a curse. Excommunication does not really frighten secular Jews. In the final analysis, what do they care if the Haredim ostracize them? After Israel's establishment, the term pulsa denura replaced excommunication.

The researchers did not identify who gave excommunication its new name. But so as not to hold the reader in suspense, we will note that use of the curse in the early days of the state was usually attributed to religious struggles in Jerusalem that involved the leader of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta movement, Amram Blau.

"Pulsa denura is not a kabbalistic ceremony," they concluded. "Kabbalists do not take part in it, it is not done at midnight but rather at midday - not after a fast of three days, not to the light of black candles, the text is not read seven times, and the persons do not necessarily stand facing the east."

The second (last item in the article) is a new Conservative liturgy for Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah, which starts today at sundown [but is observed a day early this year because of proximity to Shabbat -- I think I have this straight now!]).

One group that has adopted Holocaust Day and is proposing a unique liturgical text is the Conservative movement, which this year published Megillat Hashoah (the Shoah Scroll), composed by literature professor Avigdor Shinan. The scroll completes the Conservative initiative to formulate an order of unique prayers for Holocaust Day. The introduction to the Shoah Scroll states, in the spirit of the Passover Haggada, that, "The new commandment of Jewish life is that each of us must see himself as if he has witnessed the Shoah with his own flesh."