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May 4, 2018, 10:36 PM

Torah = search engine optimization

Is life just "happening" to you? Did you wake up this morning, turned your phone on and then just got overwhelmed by the sheer amount of emails and messages you need to deal with? Are you trying to figure out...

May 3, 2018, 3:57 AM

Lag be’Omer: The perfect holiday for our time

I am donning earplugs for the next twenty four hours so that I am spared the annual Lag be’Omer noise pollution. It is tiring to hear people say that Judaism, I mean Lag Be’Omer, is pagan, primitive and an appropriation...

May 1, 2018, 1:03 AM

Lag Ba’omer: A Minor Holiday with Major Implications for Jews and Israel Today

As a kid I always loved Lag Ba’omer. That was the day my Jewish day school would take us to Flushing Meadow Park to play ball and eat ice cream. We were told it was a time to celebrate...

May 1, 2018, 12:04 AM

Today. Everyday. Change and the Challenge of Life

It is told of a king who once offered his beautiful daughter and half his kingdom to anyone who could provide for him something that would make him happy when he was sad and sad when he was happy....

Apr 27, 2018, 5:09 PM

Keep the Fires Burning

Lag B’Omer does not merely hearken an end to the Omer restrictions and the start of the season of s’machot (celebrations such as weddings); rather, in Meron (in Israel) and beyond, Lag B’Omer is synonymous with fires. That’s right....

Dec 24, 2017, 3:06 PM

The essence of Judaism and religion — Orthodox (faith) or Orthoprax (good deeds)

There is an ancient debate in the Talmudic tradition concerning the question as to the essence of Judaism and religion – faith or good deeds. Rashi (the great commentator of the 11th century) cites a debate between two great Talmudic...

Dec 17, 2017, 7:21 PM

The verse ‘I am the Lord your God’

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his blog on the Torah reading of the week (Va’etchanan 5777), presents two arguments in the Jewish tradition regarding the opening verse of the “10 statements” (and the Biblical term is “10 statements” and not...

Dec 10, 2017, 4:17 PM

Heresy and moral atheism

Maimonides (the great legal scholar and philosopher of the 12th century) is the first and only thinker in the Jewish tradition to codify principles of faith within a legal framework as a binding theological dogma in codifying his “13...

Dec 3, 2017, 3:35 PM

The source of authority and sanctity of the Torah (the 5 Books of Moses) and Rava’s anti-theological conception

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel points out (God in Search of Man, P. 257-278), that there is a fundamental difference between the concepts of the Torah (the 5 books of Moses) being from Sinai and being Divinely revealed (and sacred). ...

Nov 26, 2017, 6:00 PM

The interpretation of texts contradicting orthodox dogma

In traditional rabbinic Judaism we as Jews live not by what is written in the Bible (the Written Torah) but by the Bible as interpreted and understood by the Jewish rabbinic tradition (the Oral Torah) - the foundation of...

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