By Israel Drazin   Maimonides wrote his Mishneh Torah, his code of Jewish law. About a century after his death in 1204, Jacob ben Asher (1270–c. 1340) composed a code of Jewish law that he called the Tur. Roughly two centuries later, Joseph Karo (1488–1575), compiled his law books, which he named the Shulchan Arukh. More [...]

By Israel Drazin   The humorist Ambrose Bierce wrote in his The Devil’s Dictionary that faith is: “Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.” Unlike most people, I agree with Bierce. I am convinced that religion should be based on reason, not faith. People should [...]

A Daughter’s Recitation of Mourner’s Kaddish By Rahel Berkovits JOFA, 2011, 93 pages   Orthodox Judaism, like American and other judges, makes legal decisions based on precedences, not only on what modern people think is correct. When a question arises, Orthodox rabbis examine what has been said about the matter in the past, and scrutinize [...]

               One of the great tragedies of Judaism is the way that it handles divorces. The rabbis interpreted the Torah to state that only men can initiate marriages and divorces. Thus if a woman wants a divorce but her husband refuses to give it to her, she is chained (Hebrew, aguna) to her husband forever. [...]

The God Who Hates Lies Confronting & Rethinking Jewish Tradition By David Hartman with Charlie Buckholtz Jewish Lights Publishing, 2011, 192 pages               David Hartman points out that Modern Orthodox Judaism has in many respects been frozen in suspended animation, refusing to budge and grow despite moral imperatives and logic, resulting in many people [...]