The Talmud primarily discusses the concept of Sinat Chinam (baseless or senseless hatred) in Tractate Yoma 9b. It states that Sinat Chinam is the primary cause for the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. Surprisingly, it highlights that while the people of that era observed the study of Torah, the divine commandments, [...]
The remarkable book If You’re Reading These Words: Last Letters from Heroes of the October 7th War is one of the most moving and unforgettable books to emerge from the trauma of October 7 and the war that followed. Toby Press that publishes it is the Jerusalem-based publishing house, founded in 1999, that specializes [...]
My friend Stephen I. Ternyik posted the following very complementary and very nice article about me on the internet in Academia, Edu. Academia’s mission is to accelerate the world’s research and to share important information . Today 266 million users have joined Academia.edu, and around 140,000 people join Academia.edu each day. It believes that [...]
Amos: The Genius of Prophetic Rhetoric Yitzchak Etshalom, the author of Amos: The Genius of Prophetic Rhetoric, received rabbinic ordination from the Chief Rabbinate of Jerusalem and is an educator and a leading teacher of Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) in North America. He is the author of Between the Lines of the Bible: Exodus [...]
I Samuel: A King in Israel Rabbi Amnon Bazak’s book I Samuel: A King in Israel (2024) is a thoughtful study of one of the most dramatic books in the Hebrew Bible. He is known for his work in biblical interpretation and his teaching at Yeshivat Har Etzion and Herzog College. He edits the weekly [...]
Joel, Obadiah, and Micah: Facing the Storm Rabbi Dr. Yaakov Beasley presents readers with a delightful, thoughtful, enjoyable, and learning experience in Joel, Obadiah, and Micah: Facing the Storm, three of the so-called “Minor Prophets” of the Hebrew Bible. Although brief, the books of Joel, Obadiah, and Micah contain powerful messages about justice, [...]
Exodus: The Genesis of God’s People, published in July 2025 by Zvi Grumet, is a thoughtful and engaging study of the biblical book of Exodus that illuminates how the Israelites transformed from families of enslaved people into a nation following their understanding of God. Rabbi Dr. Grumet, a veteran educator and scholar of the [...]
The recently produced film Immigrant Songs: Yiddish Theater and the American Jewish Experience depicts one of the most delightful yet often overlooked chapters of American Jewish cultural history. While giving viewers a pleasurable 46 [...]
The Hebrew word seder (סֵדֶר) literally means "order" or "arrangement." During Passover, it refers to the ritual dinner and service held on the first or second night of the holiday. Jews in Israel observe the seder on one night; Jews outside Israel observe it on two nights. The name highlights that the evening follows a very specific structured sequence of 15 ceremonial steps—including storytelling, [...]
My dad, Rabbi Dr. Nathan Drazin (1906-1976), was a brilliant man. Unlike virtually all other rabbis, he not only earned rabbinical ordination at Yeshivah University in New York but also a Yadin Yadin degree, thereby qualifying him to serve as a judge. Because he wanted to be as helpful as possible to fellow Jews, [...]
There are two questions we can ask about the matzah, unleavened bread, whose answers reveal the basis of Judaism and offer an important life lesson. The first is why do the siddur and machzor, the prayer books, call Passover Chag Hamatzot, the holiday of matzot (plural of matzah), and not Chag Pesach, the holiday [...]
Dr. Steven Nadler, professor of philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is the author of numerous publications, including works on Spinoza, Descartes, Leibniz, and medieval and Jewish philosophy. He published the brief 136-page book Why Read Maimonides Today in 2026. He was born on November 11, 1958, and is an American academic and [...]
Publisher : Maggid Publication date : February 10, 2026 Language : English Print length : 456 pages ISBN-10 : 1592646905 ISBN-13 : 978-1592646906 Hardcover price : $34.95 II Samuel by Amnon Bazak Rabbi Amnon Bazak’s second volume on the biblical book of Samuel is [...]
ASIN : B0FHT9M1D3 Publisher : McGilligan Publishing Publication date : July 15, 2025 Print length : 549 pages Paperback : $25.99 Review of Kabbalah Demystified Rabbi Dr. Michael Leo Samuel’s book, “Kabbalah Demystified: A Comprehensive Resource,” is brilliant. I enjoyed it immensely. I have been a follower of [...]
Publisher : Maggid Publication date : October 28, 2025 Language : English Print length : 428 pages ISBN-10 : 1592646859 ISBN-13 : 978-1592646852 Hardcover : $37.39 The Jewish Journey Through Loss: From Death to Healing Both Jews and non-Jews will derive a wealth of important [...]
New-Russia: Images from a Journey This book by I. J. Singer was translated by Joshua A. Fogel in 2026. Israel Joshua Singer was a Polish-Jewish novelist who wrote in Yiddish. He was born on November 30, 1893, and died on February 10, 1944, at age 50 in New York City. He was the brother [...]
Readers of The Gavriel Tirosh Affair will find that the book increases their understanding of the history of the reestablishment of the State of Israel in 1948, why despite the multiple advantages the small Jewish population in Palestine in the 1930s gave to the Arab population the Arabs could not accept Jews in the [...]
Albo: Collected Writings, edited by Shira Weiss, is an important and welcome contribution to the study of medieval Jewish philosophy, making the thought of the Spaniard Joseph Albo (1380-1444) newly accessible to contemporary readers. Bringing together a full presentation of Sefer ha-Ikkarim along with Albo’s lesser-known responsum, this volume offers both breadth and depth, [...]
The Hebrew phrase ezer kenegdo (עֵזֶר כְּנֶגְדּוֹ) appears in the Torah, the Hebrew Bible, in Genesis 2:18 and 20, when the Bible speaks of the creation of Eve, the wife of Adam. The words are not mentioned again. They describe the Torah's view of the proper relationship between a man and his wife. Verse 18 depicts God [...]
Viktoria helped me to redo our website. Now at age 90, I no longer feel the need to see my books published in hardcover. I stopped sending books to Gefen Publishing House to publish after I finished writing them, and Darlene Jospe edited them, created an index, and a list of sources. Among other [...]
The fifth weekly biblical portion in Deuteronomy is Shoftim, “Judges.” The rabbis who were descendants of the ancient Pharisees viewed this portion as supporting the Pharisees’ views, rather than those of the Sadducees. The ancient Sadducees ceased to exist after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, and were later followed by the [...]
The current practice is to celebrate Purim as a one-day holiday. Cities that were walled at the time of Joshua’s conquest of Israel – most notably Jerusalem – celebrate Purim on Adar 15 to recall the end of hostilities in the walled city of Shushan, where the battles occurred on Adar 13 and [...]
Passover is one of the most significant holidays of Judaism. Many Jews consider it second to the Shabbat. It is the first command given to the Israelite ancestors during the period when Moses was rescuing the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. It teaches that Judaism stresses the need for all people, not only Jews, [...]
Many philosophers contend that only the body dies at the end of life, while human intelligence endures. They differ on what happens to intelligence after the body’s death. Some argue that it is not intelligence that survives death, but the soul. Others reject the idea that there is a soul. For example, the Hebrew [...]
Most people believe they can know the truth about many things, such as what is right and wrong, what God is, and that science is correct. They are wrong. This is the view of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), a German philosopher of the Enlightenment, renowned for his discussions of logic and empiricism and for his [...]
Maimonides (1138-1204) listed thirteen fundamental principles of Judaism in his Introduction to the chapter Chelek. Many scholars feel sure that he wrote them for uneducated Jews, who needed to think that all of these principles are true, as “necessary truths,” what the Greek philosopher Philo called “noble lies,” even though they are not all [...]
Charles H. Freundlich's books are outstanding. He began writing his short stories when he was eighty and published a volume of them each year. Now, at age ninety-two, he is gifting us with his twelfth book, "Summing Up." There are seven tales in the 155-page volume. Each is charming, easy to read, fascinating, and [...]
I think that William Shakespeare was stating what I consider to be true, and it is possible, but doubtful, that he was Jewish. Shakespeare wrote, "This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man." The [...]
There is an interpretation of the Garden of Eden episode in Genesis three that I like. God placed the first human in a paradise where they would live with a gift of intelligence, eating fruits and vegetables, not needing to work, and never harming any living being. However, the humans failed to use the [...]
Many people in many cultures feel it is good to change their behavior at the beginning of a new year, to make it a better year for themselves and their families. This makes sense. The problem is that they do not know how to make the change. As a result, most of these people [...]
