By Israel Drazin It is certainly true that most Jews today, including most rabbis, see a distinction between ritual and social laws. The first focuses on God and the second on people. In the Ten Commandments, for example, the laws forbidding idols and those requiring rest on the Sabbath are seen by most Jews [...]
By Israel Drazin I think that the greatest difficulty that people have in understanding rabbinic literature is that it is hard for them to see what prompted the rabbi to say what he said. I’ll focus on one point. Very soon after the Five Books of Moses was canonized, probably during the time [...]
By Israel Drazin Why do people feel that they should listen to their clergy? There is nothing in the Hebrew Bible, New Testament, or Koran that says that its adherents must obey rabbis, priests, and imams. In fact, Judaism didn’t have rabbis until around the year 70 of the Common Era, after the second [...]
By Israel Drazin There is no religion today where its adherents do exactly what is in their Bible. Let's look at Judaism as an example. Ask many Orthodox and Conservative Jews about the origin of the oral law and they will tell you that God revealed both the written and oral Torah to the [...]
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 [...]
Tolstoy A Russian Life By Rosamund Bartlett Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011, 544 pages Rosamund Bartlett, an authority on Russian culture, describes Lev Tolstoy, as she calls him, the greatest Russian writer, probably a genius, but a failure as a man. When he was young, he drank too much, gambled, and was over amorous with [...]
By Israel Drazin Many scholars are convinced that no book of the Hebrew Bible, with the possible exception of the biblical book Daniel 12:2-3, speaks about life after death, and feel certain that the various ideas about the after-life were taken from pagan notions. Daniel states that “those who sleep in the dust will [...]
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 [...]
By Israel Drazin I think that the messianic age is not a miraculous affair and the messiah is not a supernatural figure. There will be a gradual evolutionary and educative process that will improve people and encourage everyone, or nearly everyone, to live in harmony and work together to improve every individual and society. I [...]
The Elephants Journey By Jose Saramago Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010, 205 pages Anyone doubting Jose Saramago’s right to the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature will rapidly change their mind when they read this superbly written book. Virtually every third sentence, on the average, is filled with clever eye-opening humor. The narrator also interrupts the drama [...]
By Israel Drazin I don’t think that people need to believe that a soul exists. The currently-used Hebrew word for soul is nefesh. Nefesh is in the Torah, but it does not mean soul in Scripture. It means “a person” or “life force.” Thus when Leviticus 2:1 speaks of a nefesh bringing an [...]
Bringing the Prophets to Life By Neil N. Winkler Gefen Publishing House, 2011, 193 pages Many Jews consider the Bible to be the sacred text revealed by God to the Israelites trough Moses. Multiple commentaries were composed on the Torah. Some emphasized the Torah’s literal meaning, such as the commentaries of Rashbam, David Kinchi, [...]
By Israel Drazin As I wrote in my discussion about the origin of evil, I am convinced that God created the world out of nothing or formed it out of preexisting and eternal matter, set the laws of nature in it, and then stopped being involved in the earth and its people. God is [...]
By Israel Drazin Contrary to the belief and hopes of most people, but consistent with the thinking of people such as Maimonides and Yeshayahu Leibowitz (1903-1994), I don’t think there is a personal God. I am convinced that God is transcendent: God created the world out of nothing or formed it out of preexisting [...]
By Israel Drazin I dislike and reject the notion of “faith,” which is the acceptance that an idea is true even though the idea is clearly shown to be false by science, the use of our five senses, or reasoning. I accept as true only facts that are rational. I am not an atheist [...]
By Israel Drazin Many rabbis have, in effect, abandoned Bible study to fundamentalist Christians. Very few of their books that ostensibly address the Torah actually do so. Instead, usually without disclosing the fact, the rabbis who composed these volumes and the rabbis who deliver synagogue sermons focus on the midrashic versions of the biblical [...]
The First Ten Days By Rabbi Yaacov Haber Torah Lab, 2010, 88 pages There are essentially four different ways that people use to try to learn the truth about the world: religion, mysticism, philosophy and science, and a mixture of two or three of the previous methods. All should be lauded, for people should try [...]
The Gospel According to Jesus Christ By Jose Saramago The reviews of 1998 Noble Prize winner Jose Saramago’s brilliant book on Amazon and elsewhere have generally been quite comprehensive, very well written, and informative. Therefore I will not delve again into the aspects of the novel that they discussed, such as the book’s plot; [...]
Some Thoughts about God By Israel Drazin The popular view that God is ever present and meticulously involved, such as making detailed decisions about and controlling every raindrop and every falling leaf, and counting and recording the good and bad deeds that humans perform, is so well known that it doesn’t bear repeating. So [...]
What are we Expected to Know about God? By Israel Drazin I am more inclined to accept the Maimonidean position. The term “tradition” is used frequently in discussions about Jewish values and practices. Maimonides warns us to be skeptical of traditions, no matter what their source and no matter how many people insist [...]
Kissing Holy Objects By Israel Drazin A significant number of people are unable to identify a religious practice as being nothing other than superstition, especially when the practice has existed for generations, they feel good about doing it, it gives them a spiritual uplift, and their religious leaders are performing the act. One [...]
All These Vows Edited by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman Jewish Lights Publishing, 2011, 264 pages Remarkably, very few people understand the content, purpose, and history of what many consider Judaism’s most important prayer, a recitation embroiled in controversy, a legal document that the rabbis tried to expunge from the high holiday Day of Atonement [...]
Rasputin and the Jews A Reversal of History By Delin Colon CreateSpace, 2011, 110 pages This eye-opening book relies on dozens of sources, people close to Rasputin, friends and enemies, and reveals the truth about him. Delin Colon is the great-great niece of Rasputin’s Jewish secretary. Grigory Rasputin (born around 1870, died by [...]
Love and Terror in the God Encounter The Theological Legacy of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik By David Hartman Jewish Lights Publishing, 2001, 219 pages Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903-1993) was and still is the leading rabbinical figure of Modern Orthodox Judaism. He was the Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshiva University, the senior lecturer on Talmud. [...]
Jose Saramago’s (1922-2010) last book Cain is a delightful, frequently funny, heretical, mocking, feverishly anti-God, retelling of the early books of the Hebrew Bible. He is the 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Adam and Eve’s son Cain kills his bother Abel after God accepted the latter’s sacrifice and ignored Cain’s, despite Cain’s [...]
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 [...]
Maimonides’ Confrontation with Mysticism By Menachem Kellner Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2011, 343 pages Anyone, of any religion, agnostic, or atheist, wanting to understand the truth about life, the ideas taught by the great philosopher Moses Maimonides (1138-1204), should read this splendid easily comprehensible book first published in 2006, reprinted because of its [...]
The Life of David By Robert Pinsky Nextbook, 2005, 217 pages Was King David pious? Was he a holy man who was divinely inspired to compose the biblical book of Psalms, the charismatic ideal leader whose offspring would never cease to lead Israel because he was so good, whose descendant would be the [...]
Maimonides the Rationalist By Herbert A. Davidson The Littman Library, 2011, 318 pages Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) criticized most people in his monumental Guide of the Perplexed 3:51 when he wrote that “He who thinks about God and talks about him at length without scientific knowledge…does not truly talk about God and think about [...]
