A story about beards By Israel Drazin This is a true story about Baltimore, Maryland, during the mid-twentieth century and my dad’s feelings about beards. Dad, Rabbi Dr. Nathan Drazin, was the highly respected rabbi of Shaarei Tfiloh Congregation in Baltimore, from 1933-1964, one of the largest Orthodox congregations in [...]
Review by Israel Drazin The Eternal Wonder By Pearl S. Buck Open Road, 2013, 252 pages Most readers know of Pearl S, Buck only because of her 1932 masterpiece The Good Earth, but the Nobel Prize winning author, who died in 1973, wrote forty-three novels, twenty-eight nonfiction books, 242 short [...]
The two greatest Bible secrets - 2 By Israel Drazin God was not directly involved in the Bible The following is from my book Maimonides: The Exceptional Mind One of the most overlooked revelations of Maimonides, one that profoundly affects how the Bible should be interpreted, is the clarification that he [...]
The two greatest Bible Secrets - 1 By Israel Drazin Many Torah teachings are not the ideal Maimonides (1138-1204) was Judaism’s greatest thinker. Many people are afraid to read his Guide of the Perplexed because it contains rational ideas that do not conform to the teachings they received in [...]
The following is a brief version of an excerpt from “Beyond the Bible Text” by Rabbi Dr. Stanley Wagner and me that was published in September 2013. We usually put three articles for each biblical portion, generally discussing thought-provoking subjects that people will not find elsewhere. This week’s essay is from lech lecha (chapters 12:1-17:27) [...]
Review by Israel Drazin Believing and its Tensions By Rabbi Dr. Neil Gillman Jewish Lights Publishing, 2013, 113 pages After teaching religion at The Jewish Theological Seminary for some fifty years, and serving as chair of its Department of Jewish Philosophy, Dr. Gillman retired and summarized his views on [...]
By Israel Drazin Yoshe Kalb By I. J. Singer Israel Joshua Singer (1893-1944), the older brother of the Nobel Prize Winning author, Isaac Bashevis Singer (who was born in 1902) wrote two great novels, two masterpieces: The Brothers Ashkenazi and The Family Carnovsky. Yoshe Kalb is not as good, but it is [...]
By Israel Drazin “My Lady’s Money,” by Wilkie Collins (1824-1889, a friend and oft-collaborator with Charles Dickens, is another book that readers can acquire for free from sources such as amazon because its copyright has expired. It is a good book, not as good as his “Moonstone” and “Lady in White,” or [...]
By Israel Drazin I was in the lavatory of an Orthodox synagogue recently – I am an Orthodox Jew – and I saw a man exiting a stall where he had defecated, walk to the sink, and take a cup set near the sink for hand washing. He filled [...]
Joshua Chapter 1 By Israel Drazin Having completed 54 Unusual Bible Interpretations on the Pentateuch, I have begun this series on the next biblical book Joshua. I will focus on one chapter every week. The Book Joshua The first chapter of Joshua presents its history using the number three.[1] [...]
By Israel Drazin The biblical flood and the Gilgamesh myth - 3 There are remarkable similarities between the biblical story of the flood and the more ancient version of Gilgamesh. The Babylonian epic Gilgamesh was written on twelve tablets around 2000 BCE and has survived in several versions. It [...]
By Israel Drazin The biblical and Babylonian flood stories - 2 There are three diverse Babylonian tales of a world-wide flood that have endured until today. One is a Sumerian version that survived only in fragments. Another is the rather famous Gilgamesh epic in which Utrapishtim tells his descendant Gilgamesh [...]
By Israel Drazin The biblical and a Greek flood stories - 1 Judaism is far from alone in chronicling the flood that covered the entire earth. Virtually every culture had the story, including the ancient Mesopotamian Gilgamesh epic, several Greek versions, and even one among the American Indians. The tales [...]
The following is a brief version of an excerpt from “Beyond the Bible Text” by Rabbi Dr. Stanley Wagner and me that was published in September 2013. We usually put three articles for each biblical portion, generally discussing thought-provoking subjects that people will not find elsewhere. This week’s essay is from Noach (Genesis 6:9 [...]
By Israel Drazin The Haunted Hotel By Wilkie Collins This is another of the many books that can be obtained free of charge from amazon and other sources because its copyright has long ago expired. The novel shows Wilkie Collins at his near best, just below his masterpieces The Moonstone and The Woman [...]
Review by Israel Drazin Scenes from Village Life By Amos Oz Translated by Nicholas de Lange Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, 182 pages Amos Oz is a great writer. He writes in Hebrew, and his books are translated into English. He is considered one of the top three Israeli writers. This book, [...]
By Israel Drazin The Magic of Hebrew Chant By Rabbi Shefa Gold Jewish Lights Publishing, 2013, 326 pages I am not into chants, but I recognize that we need to respect all people, and a lot of people like chants. It brings them a sense of calm, otherness, a feeling of holiness, and [...]
By Israel Drazin The Biblical vs. Greek Creation Stories – 2 The following is the second of two comparisons of the Biblical creation story with the accounts of ancient pagan myths. They are slight variations of what I published in my book Rational Religion, which I wrote under the pseudonym Daniel [...]
By Israel Drazin The Biblical vs. Egyptian Creation Stories - 1 The following are two comparisons of the Biblical creation story with the accounts of ancient pagan myths. They are slight variations of what I published in my book Rational Religion, which I wrote under the pseudonym Daniel Diamond. The [...]
By Israel Drazin The following is a brief version of an excerpt from “Beyond the Bible Text” by Rabbi Dr. Stanley Wagner and me that was published in September 2013. We usually put three articles for each biblical portion, generally discussing thought-provoking subjects that people will not find elsewhere. This week’s essay is [...]
A Rogue’s Life By Wilkie Collins This is a book that can be acquired for nothing from sources such as amazon because its copyright has long expired. Collins said he wrote the short novel when he lived next to Charles Dickens and had a very happy life. The novel reflects this joy, but it [...]
By: Israeli humorist, Efraim Kishon (Kishont Ferenc): Israel is the only country in the world where patients visiting physicians end up giving the doctor advice. Israel is the only country in the world where no one has a foreign accent because everyone has a foreign accent. Israel is the only country in the world where [...]
A House to Let By Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Ann Procter This free book – free because its copyright has expired, and it can be acquired at no cost from amazon and similar sources – is a collaborative writing by four Victorian writers (I read novels by three of them and liked [...]
By Israel Drazin Miss or Mrs.? By Wilkie Collins This is a delightful short novel by the famed author of such books as The Woman in White and Moonstone that readers can obtain free of charge from sources such as amazon because the copyright has expired. The book has two principle plots. A young [...]
By Israel Drazin If the Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1138-1204) is correct that the purpose of the Torah is three-fold – to teach some truths, help people improve themselves, and aid them in developing society – and I think he is right - then it would seem to be wrong [...]
By Israel Drazin This essay is adapted from my book Maimonides: The Exceptional Mind. Maimonides[1] describes how one should understand rabbinical tales and Midrashim,[2] and declares that most people do not deal with rabbinic Midrashim[3] correctly. According to Maimonides, three clusters of people exist, each taking a radically different approach to [...]
By Israel Drazin Two views As startlingly as it may appear to many people today, the fact is that many intelligent religious people did not believe that God created the world out of nothing.[1] In fact, they are convinced that the Bible itself states that God formed the world out of preexisting [...]
No Thoroughfare By Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins I have written in the past in my reviews of books by Francis Trollope, the mother of Anthony Trollope, that it is possible today to get classical books for free from sources such as amazon, and many of them are fun to read. I encouraged readers [...]
By Israel Drazin Let’s examine one High Holiday prayer: Unetaneh Tokef. Rabbis and Jews frequently invented stories to help people understand the meaning of some prayers. Rather than analyzing the depth of prayers, which could alienate people who do not want to undertake this exercise and frustrate others who would not be [...]
By Israel Drazin The Torah has no rule forbidding mixing meat and milk products, but the rabbis introduced the law saying that mixing meat and milk makes both foods not kosher. Jews are told they can eat meat products after cleaning their mouths of milk products, but must wait [...]
