There are two broad approaches to Orthodox Judaism, each taking an opposite view as to what Judaism requires. Each feeling certain they know what God wants them to do. Modern Orthodox Judaism is convinced that Jews must learn secular knowledge. It is as Maimonides, Judaism's greatest thinker taught, "the truth is the truth no matter [...]
Professor Chaim Waxman, a prominent and highly respected sociologist of contemporary Orthodoxy, has made a superb assessment of the history, development, and current and future situation of Orthodoxy in his relatively short but comprehensive 178-page book, “Social Change and Halakhic Evolution in American Orthodoxy,” with 48 additional pages of bibliography and index. Readers will receive [...]
Some Jewish philosophers and rabbis and non-Jews disagreed over what exactly the Bible was saying in the Ten Commandments. The philosopher Philo who lived during the beginning of the Common era is an example. There are not ten commandments. The oft-used term “Ten Commandments” is incorrect. Scholars and clerics know there are more than ten commands [...]
Many Jews see Maimonides (1138-1204) as the greatest Jewish personality and sage since the biblical Moses, quoting the maxim “from (the biblical) Moses to Moses (Maimonides) there has been no one like Moses.” These people recognize that all of the rabbis, sages and philosophers who lived since the first Moses – including the writers of [...]
In the beginning, the people later called Jews were called Hebrews in the Bible or Bnei Yisrael, which is translated as Children of Israel or Israelites. When the Israelites broke into two kingdoms after the death of King Solomon, the northern kingdom was called Israel, after the ancestor Jacob, who was also called Israel. The [...]
The current practice is that Purim is celebrated 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, as a commemoration of the end of hostilities in the walled city of Shushan, where the battles occurred on Adar 13 [...]
Koren Press, a prestigious publishing house, has published “The Koren Rav Kook Siddur.” Rabbi Abraham Isaac haKohen Kook (1865–1935) was the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the British Mandate for Palestine He was the founder of the Religious Zionist Yeshiva Merkaz HaRav. He was a Torah scholar, a decider of halakha (Jewish law), a mystical [...]
Sometimes, we say things we wish we never said. The following are some examples from some famous people. "Half this game is ninety percent mental." --Philadelphia Phillies manager, Danny Ozark ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, "It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it." --Al Gore, Vice [...]
*WE ALL GET OLD IN THE END....* I changed my car horn to gunshot sounds. People get out of the way much faster now. Gone are the days when girls used to cook like their mothers. Now they drink like their fathers.. I didn't make it to the gym today. That makes five years in [...]
Michael Kaufman’s “Am I My Body’s Keeper?” is an important lifesaving book. He states that the Bible tells people to exercise and do other acts to assure their health. God did not create humans to sit and deteriorate. The book is easy to read. It focuses on the Jewish view toward taking care of our [...]
Aharon Appelfeld, author of more than 40 books in Hebrew, winner of Israel Prize and other prizes, died last week on January 4, 2018 at age 85. The noted critic Irving Howe once wrote that he “is one of the best novelists alive.” Here is a summary of several of his tales. To the [...]
Many concepts have crept into mainstream Judaism through the persistent teachings of mysticism. While average Jews do not always understand the concept they are accepting, mystics repeat new notions in a manner that causes non-mystical Jews to believe that the concepts must have been ancient tradition. At times, mystics have taken ideas that originally had [...]
Ecclesiastes is a controversial book. It has radical ideas that are contrary to today’s Orthodox Judaism. It contains verses that seem to contradict other verses.[1] The opening two verses and at least half of the final twelfth chapter were added to the book by an editor apparently with an attempt to make it fit better [...]
Today is mom’s yahrzeit. Mom, like dad, was a Renaissance person. Dad was born in 1906 and mom in 1908. Unlike most women of her age, she had an extensive Judaic education, attended a teachers training school, and secured a diploma in teaching. Her siblings included community leaders and educators, the world-renowned biblical scholar and [...]
Sara Japhet and Robert B. Salters, two highly respected scholars’ editing and translation of Rashbam’s commentary on Qoheleth (also spelt Kohelet, Ecclesiastes in English) is excellent. Rashbam was one of Jewry’s most supreme rational Bible commentators, part of a trio of top Jewish medieval rationalist, along with Maimonides and Abraham ibn Ezra. He was the [...]
Many, if not most, rabbis, even ultra-Orthodox rabbis, recognize that as Judaism evolved, changes were introduced into the Torah wording for a myriad of reasons. Tikkunei Soferim, which can be translated as “corrections by the scribes,” refers to at least eighteen changes, and probably many more, that were made in the original wording of [...]
Rashi (1040-1105) is considered by many people to be the greatest Bible commentator. It is the first Bible commentary learnt by many Jewish Children. Both children and adults enjoy the commentary because Rashi was an excellent writer, and his commentary is filled with fascinating stories, called midrashim, which Rashi apparently believed were actual facts. He [...]
Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan (1934-1983), the author of the mystical book “Immortality, Resurrection, and the Age of the Universe,” was an American Orthodox rabbi who was acclaimed for his many books, about fifty in all, his knowledge of physics, and Jewish mysticism. He worked initially as a physicist, but in 1965, when he was around [...]
Some years back, my daughter Leba Lieder and I wrote a children's book with drawings about a mouse and Chanukah. Here is the story without the drawings. Moti the Mouse and the True Miracle of Chanukah By Leba Lieder And [...]
The book “The Wisdom of Ben Sira” was composed around the year 180 BCE by Yeshua ben (son of) Eleazar ben (son of) Sira, about a decade before the 167 BCE onset of the Chanukah story. It is a book that the rabbis did not include in the Hebrew Bible despite respecting it immensely [...]
In his very informative 1928 book “Adjustment of Law to Life in Rabbinic Literature,” Solomon Zucrow, shows, as did many others, that current Jewish law is radically different than what is stated in the Hebrew Bible. Many Orthodox Jews say that the differences were ordered by God, that when God revealed the Torah to Moses, [...]
After years of devastating slavery, God aided Moses in leading the Israelites out of Egypt. Several days after the Exodus, the erstwhile slaves reached the banks of the Red Sea, also called the Sea of Reeds. They felt trapped and saw no escape. If they moved forward into the sea in front of them they [...]
Maimonides (1138-1204) wrote his philosophical work Guide of the Perplexed in 1190 to disseminate truths as he saw them to fellow Jews who lacked his knowledge. He was particularly interested in demonstrating that the biblical and rabbinical writings are consistent with the rationalistic philosophy of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.). M. Friedlander, in his [...]
Jeffrey Radon’s easy to read book “Reconciling A contradictory Abraham” introduces readers to an orthoprax view of Judaism, an approach held by many ancient Jewish sages. Orthopraxy is not a water-downed Judaism; Radon is a practicing Jew. Orthoprax Judaism stresses that the Torah contains no philosophy, no system of beliefs, and no requirement to [...]
Joshua 8 tells an unusual tale. Joshua assumed leadership of the Israelites upon Moses’ death. He led them across the Jordan River into the promised land of Canaan. He conducted them in several successful conflicts against the Canaanite inhabitants but lost a crucial battle. He was now worried, and was unsure whether he could be [...]
Shalom Aleichem is the pen name of the famous writer Solomon Rabinowitz, who wrote hundreds of humorous tales in Yiddish, and became one of the three most famous early Yiddish writers, along with Mendele Mocher Seforim and Yitzchak Leib Peretz. He was the only one of the three who wrote in a humorous vein. [...]
I bought a statue of the famed philosopher Aristotle. It is covered in heavy bronze. It is 14.25 inches tall. It looks great. I placed it next to the Maimonides books that I wrote because Aristotle (384-322 BCE) and Maimonides (1138-1204 CE) are my favorite philosophers. Both are rationalists. Socrates taught Plato, Plato taught [...]
James L. Kugel's thesis in his new book “The Great Shift” is that the Bible describes God in different and evolving ways, depending on when the biblical book or section was composed, and this points to a developing idea about what God is and how God functions, as well as what humans thought about [...]
There are remarkable similarities between the biblical story of the flood and the more ancient version of Gilgamesh. The Babylonian epic Gilgamesh was written around 2000 BCE and has survived in several versions. It predates [...]
Trilby is a good novel with many flaws. One is that the author, George Du Maurier, the grandfather of the romantic novelist Dame Daphne Du Maurier (1907-1981), placed French sayings, parts of conversations, and even significant sentences and paragraphs in French, several times on every single page of his tale, making it impossible for [...]
