Some scholars think that the ancient Israelites were Hyksos. Others say Israelites were slaves to them. They claim the Israelite enslavement in Egypt and their exodus under Moses’ leadership never happened.   Israelites The Hebrew Bible called the Torah, states that the Bnei Yisrael, translated as “children of Israel” and “Israelites,” were enslaved in [...]

  The Romanian-American writer and professor Eli Wiesel (1928-2016), who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald, where his parents and a younger sister died, was an excellent writer who authored 57 books. His first book, Night, is a memoir of these experiences. His 1973 novel   The Oath is brilliant. Everything about it is fantastic. The Chicago Tribune [...]

  The Shabbat meal contains significant items, including zemirot, which are medieval songs and ancient biblical psalms. They are a powerful means of preserving and showcasing Jewish culture's rich and diverse nature. These sacred, secular, serious, and playful lyrics praise God and the Shabbat, transforming the meal into a time of joy and inspiration. They [...]

  The Nuremberg Nazi Doctors' Trials, called United States of America v. Karl Brandt et al., occurred from December 9, 1946 to August 20, 1947. There were twenty-three defendants. Twenty were medical doctors. They were accused of performing Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia. The trials resulted in seven acquittals and seven [...]

  Eli Wiesel is an excellent writer. His novel The Testament is brilliant. Everything about it is fantastic. The plot is interesting, enlightening, and engaging, a delight to read. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 because of what he wrote about the horrors of the Holocaust, Russia, and other subjects.  He paints his [...]

    Since childhood, one of my life guides has been “Always act with a goal in mind.” Later, I saw that Friedrich Nietzsche put the idea this way, “Humans need a goal to live,” and Andrew Carnegie wrote, “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, [...]

    My friend Raphi Jospe, an Israeli philosopher, recently wrote that Israel has no state religion. Most people do not know this. This is what he wrote:   In that regard it is the only “secular democracy” in the Middle East, in sharp contrast with many Arab/Islamic countries, and also differs from the UK [...]

  Many reviewers found Elie Wiesel's 1999 book "The Judges" difficult and abandoned it before reaching the end. They enjoyed the dozens of this Nobel Peace Prize winners' books but dismissed this one, although it is in easy-to-read English, because they could not understand what was happening. Who were the seven people in the drama? [...]

                All Jewish biblical holidays and most Jewish non-biblical holy days are associated with the number seven. The non-biblical holy day Tisha b'Av, a fast day, is one of the exceptions.   The number seven The number seven is connected to Jewish holidays and practices in over a hundred instances. Seven has a religious implication [...]

  Under current Jewish Law, as understood by most Orthodox Jews, women have different obligations than men. With just a few exceptions, they do not have to observe positive commands limited to specific times. Wearing tefillin exemplifies this leniency because men do not wear tefillin at night, on Shabbat, and holidays. So are Sukkah, lulav, [...]

                               There are different opinions regarding how the Torah treats women. Some believe that the Torah needed to accommodate the primitive ideas of the Israelites and allow such things as slavery, sacrifices, the harsh punishment of an eye for an eye, [...]

  T. W. Doane’s “Bible Myths and their Parallels in Other Religions” analyzes the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. One of its chapters compares the stories of Moses with those of the Roman God Bacchus found in the Orphic Hymns. Doanne's work suggests that the Jews copied the biblical story of Moses from the [...]

  "Hillbilly Elegy" is a book written by J. D. Vance before former President Trump chose him as his presumptive Vice President. The team "elegy" describes a poem of serious reflection, typically for the dead. Regarding hillbillies, it denotes a culture where its people are near death and, in a certain sense, already dead, certainly [...]

    I. W. Doane’s “Bible Myths and their Parallels in Other Religions” is a comprehensive exploration of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, shedding light on their similarities with other ancient myths. The book's unique structure, comprising forty chapters with detailed descriptions, footnotes, four appendices, and a list of authors and books quoted, is [...]

  The story of Samson in the biblical book Judges raises many questions. Scholars have given many answers to these questions but do not satisfy all of their readers.   Why is Samson’s story included in the Bible? What did he do that merited the inclusion. Why is he called a judge? Does the biblical [...]

Most people need to realize the profound difference between law and justice. The difference also exists between ethics and thinking and other matters in this world, such as human habits and the active forces of nature. I will describe the difference by focusing on the 2024 movie “The Beekeeper.” In “The Beekeeper,” Jason Statham [...]

  German Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen (1842-1918) was a neo-Kantian philosopher. Jewish Virtual Library describes him as “probably the most important philosopher in the nineteenth century.” His book “Religion of Reason: Out of the Source of Judaism” has been praised by many thinkers. He agreed with Emmanuel Kant (1724-1804) that ethics must be universal, a [...]

                            The following essay was written by our friend Turk Hill. I made some changes.   The concept of revelation is captured beautifully in Psalm 19. It is a lovely poem praising God as the creator of the universe who gave the Jewish people commandments to help them and [...]

     A reader of my writings raised some thought-provoking questions about the book of Genesis. These questions, which delve into the actions of certain biblical figures, are not only intriguing but also relevant to our understanding of the text. I am sharing the answers on my website to ensure that others who share these [...]

  Henry David Thoreau advised people not to work.  The Decalogue, commonly mistakenly called Ten Commandments, a title not in the Bible, is called Ten Statements in the Bible. This is the meaning of the word Decalogue. The title Ten Commandments is wrong because the Decalogue contains more than ten commands. Exodus 20:9 and 10 [...]

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) was indeed a profound thinker, but his ideas on self-reliance, while compelling, are not without their flaws. In his book “Self-Reliance,” he emphasized self-reliance, self-culture, and individual expression. He wrote that we praise Moses, Plato, and Milton because they did not accept what they read in books or taught as tradition [...]

     A rabbi in the Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 88a praises the Israelites who said at Mount Sinai naʿaseh ve-nishma, “let us do and let us hear” in Exodus 24:7. He claims that the Israelites showed a “leap of faith.” They accepted God's commands even before they heard what God was demanding. The Talmud states. [...]

Tuvia Tenenbom's "Careful Beauties Ahead!" is very funny. He achieves his humor by mocking the religious practices of very pious Jews as well as sometimes those of Judaism generally. For example, he recognizes that Jews prefer to respect God and do not mention the divine name, even use G-d instead of God, and many substitute [...]

                                                                                 In my first essay on Shavuot, I pointed out that the Hebrew name “Shavuot” means “weeks” and that the command to observe it as a holiday is in Exodus 34:22; Deuteronomy 16:9, 10, and 16; and Leviticus 23:15 and 16, where the Bible tells the Israelites to count seven full weeks [...]

                                                                                    Many people have wrong ideas about Shavuot. It is almost like the truth was held as a secret.   The current holiday called Shavuot is not a biblical holiday No Jewish holiday is practiced today as the Bible mandates. Shavuot, called Pentecost in English, is a good example. The current observance [...]

  Today, June 3, 2024, is Franz Kafka’s Yahrzeit. It is precisely one hundred years since Kafka, born in 1883, died on June 3, 1914, of tuberculosis at age forty while his parents were still alive. His three sisters survived him but were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian-Jewish [...]

  Most people, even scholars, do not understand the Hebrew Bible correctly. They think the Bible, called Torah in Hebrew, a word that means instruction, contains stories of people living proper lives that should be an example for all who read it. This is not entirely true. Virtually every significant person mentioned in the Torah [...]

     Yiddish writer Isaac Leib Peretz’s short story, “Bontshe Shvayg,” generally translated as “Bontshe the Silent,” was first published in 1894. It is one of the most widely known, anthologized, and translated Yiddish stories. Bontshe is a poor man who never complains, no matter what pains the situation gives him. And there are many. [...]

   The Polish Jewish writer and playwright I. L. Peretz (1852-1915, died at age 62), who wrote in Yiddish, is considered by many to have been one of the three great classical Yiddish writers with Mendele Mokher Seforim and Sholem Aleichem. I place him as number one because his short tales were well-crafted, enjoyable, dramatic, [...]

   My friend Turk Hill, who generally agrees with me, requested that I place his views about Spinoza on my website, booksnthoughts.com. I am doing so and putting it in my book Philosophical Ideas. We differ primarily in what we emphasize. He agrees that Maimonides was brilliant but thinks Spinoza was equally so. I do [...]