*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 [...]
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 [...]
October 31 marks the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation started by Martin Luther (1498-1501) who many scholars maintain inspired Nazi anti-Semitism. The October 1, 2017 article in Florida’s Sun Sentinel newspaper on Luther includes the following disturbing paragraph. “‘It is clear that Martin Luther himself was an anti-Semite by the end of his [...]
It is good to be reminded of Maimonides, especially in this time when so many people are influenced by the idea that God wants people to have faith, that faith is all that is important, except, possibly, so some people contend, God created the world so that people can, indeed should, sit back and [...]
Ibn Ezra’s “Secret of the Twelve” Did Moses write the entire Torah? Do traditional Jewish commentators differ on the subject? Who wrote the story of the death of Moses? The twelve verses of Deuteronomy chapter 34 tell the story of the death of Moses. The introductory four verses narrate how God told Moses [...]
Chronicles, books I and II, were originally a single book, but were, like Samuel and Kings, divided into two simply because the books were too long to be held in a single scroll. Chronicles together with the books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of the Jews from Adam down to the fourth [...]
As I watched and otherwise enjoyed the classical 1931 “Dracula” film starring Bela Lugosi, one scene repeated several times, disturbed me. I’m not sure of the meaning of what I saw. In the beginning of the film, when Dracula is first introduced to viewers, we see him wearing an oversized necklace with the star [...]
The renowned Spanish Mystic Bible and Talmud commentator Nachmanides’ view that God is involved in everything that occurs in this world affected his view about doctors helping people. He was generally, with only one exception, opposed to doctors. Miracles occur daily Nachmanides (1194-1270) writes[1]: “And now I shall declare to you a general principle [...]
Most people do not realize that along with other kinds of ancient books that were felt to be religious, some of which were included in the canonized Hebrew Bible, there were books known as “wisdom literature.” Three biblical books are recognized as wisdom literature: Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and Job. Two other early books that were [...]
The biblical book Kohelet, Ecclesiastes in English, is read in synagogues during the holiday of Sukkot. Why? The traditional answer is that a major theme of Kohelet is the futility of mundane pursuits and pleasures. Sukkot demonstrates this theme by the commandment to live in temporary dwellings. We move outside our homes, which provides [...]
A must watch - one brave man. https://www.facebook.com/hillelneuer/videos/10154801000051561/
