7 07, 2022

What we don’t know about Sodom and Gomorrah

By |2022-07-07T07:14:03-07:00July 7th, 2022|Thoughts|

  The destruction of the cities of Sodom, Gomorrah, and neighboring towns is a well-known tale filled with obscurities that people often fail to notice. When they do, they stop thinking about the story and fail to learn from it. Here are some of the many obscurities. Was the destruction of the cities a natural event or [...]

30 06, 2022

A Must See Movie!

By |2022-06-30T07:53:41-07:00June 30th, 2022|Thoughts|

The movie "Ben is Back" is about drug addiction. It is excellent. The acting by both Julia Roberts as a mother of a drug addict son who she loves unconditionally and Lucas Hedges as the 19-year-old son is also excellent. The film shows the dreadful destructive effects of drug addiction. Parents should acquire it and [...]

26 06, 2022

What many do not know about Bible chapters

By |2022-06-26T06:12:00-07:00June 26th, 2022|Thoughts|

    Whatever one believes, it is widely agreed upon that God did not divide the Bible into sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. So what happened to make the reading and understanding of the Bible easier?   Masorites The division between sentences and paragraphs as well as punctuation signs were initiated by a group of people [...]

10 06, 2022

What do we know about Dinah?

By |2022-06-10T08:31:42-07:00June 10th, 2022|Thoughts|

  Aside from the terrible tale of the kidnapping and apparent rape of Jacob’s daughter Dinah in the biblical book Genesis, we know very little about Dinah other than the usual obscurities which the Torah does not explain, which prompt us to think of what is happening and why, some of which we list below. [...]

18 05, 2022

An Orthodox Jewish female professor explains the New Testament

By |2022-05-18T07:38:56-07:00May 18th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

  Amy-Jill Levine tells us why Jesus's teachings in the New Testament, can be seen to be sensible and acceptable to people of all religions, even Orthodox Jews, even Jewish women like her who attends an Orthodox synagogue and sits behind a segregated mechitza, separation, for women. She does so for teachings she considers authentic, [...]

12 05, 2022

Halachic advice for women

By |2022-05-12T08:20:50-07:00May 12th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

Yoatzot Halacha, an organization that is Advisors of the Law, has published this 376 page book Nishmat Habayit, The Soul of the Home, by Maggid Books, Nishmat, and OU Press. It contains a collection of 63 common questions that Yoatzot Halacha have been asked. The goal of the book "on taharat ha-mishpahah [is] fortifying the [...]

28 04, 2022

Centuries of Despicable Behavior against Jews

By |2022-04-28T07:32:44-07:00April 28th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

    Dr. Emily Michelson, senior lecturer in history at the University of St. Andrews, describes the over two and a half centuries when the Roman Catholic Church in Rome, Italy, forced Rome’s Jews to attend weekly hostile sermons. The Church’s aim was to convert the Jews to the Catholic faith. In the easy to [...]

14 04, 2022

Are Jesus’ parables Jewish?

By |2022-04-14T08:22:41-07:00April 14th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

  The renowned Jewish scholar Dr. Amy-Jill Levine tells us the truth about the parables associated with Jesus in her “Short Stories by Jesus.” It is an excellent, eye-opening, and thought-provoking easy to read book. She is a University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School, Department of Jewish Studies.   [...]

10 04, 2022

A new traditional Haggadah with photogrphs

By |2022-04-10T10:05:18-07:00April 10th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

Passover, coming in the Spring with the reopening and budding of nature, not only recalls the beginning of the Jewish people when they left Egyptian slavery and went to the desert to learn laws and then to Israel and final freedom. It is also a time when Jewish law tells Jews to think about the [...]

8 04, 2022

Narrative of the Life of an American Slave

By |2022-04-08T11:36:57-07:00April 8th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

“Narrative of the Life of an American Slave” by Frederick Douglas, written in 1845 with a preface by Wendell Phillips is a brilliant book by a brilliant former slave in Maryland that everyone should read. It is a short, easy to read report of Douglas' early life, something we should know. In addition to much [...]

4 04, 2022

To whom was the promised land promised?

By |2022-04-04T07:12:03-07:00April 4th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

      Professor Abraham A. Sion, the author of “To whom was the Promised Land Promised?” this interesting, significant, and eye-opening book, knows the subject of the Israeli and Arab claims to the land of Israel better than most people. He served as Deputy State’s Attorney for Israel. He is Professor Emeritus at Ariel [...]

15 03, 2022

Purim is praticed today different than the biblical requirement

By |2022-03-15T09:03:00-07:00March 15th, 2022|Thoughts|

   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 [...]

7 03, 2022

The Hidden Saint

By |2022-03-07T14:22:31-07:00March 7th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

           The popular best-selling author Jonathan Kellerman is right to call “The Hidden Saint,” “ingenious” and “compelling.” Many ancient Jews and non-Jews, as well as many modern people are convinced that the world is filled with evil-producing demons of many types. The most acclaimed Bible and Talmud commentator, whose commentaries on [...]

2 03, 2022

A scholarly rabbi comments on the book of Esther and more

By |2022-03-02T15:32:43-07:00March 2nd, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

      Urim Publications in Jerusalem and New York has just published “Faith Fulfilled, Megillat Esther and The Maariv Evening Service for Purim with Commentary from the Writings of Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits.” It is compiled and edited by Rabbi Dr. Reuven Mohl. The book is excellent. Rabbi Berkovits’s comments are very thoughtful, well-worth reading and [...]

28 02, 2022

Forged

By |2022-02-28T06:18:32-07:00February 28th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

  Bart C. Ehrman is a highly respected historian who was once a protestant clergyman who became an agnostic when he saw what biblical scholars consider the numerous errors, inconsistencies, forgeries, and deceits in the New Testament. He offers readers in “Forged” a view of the conclusion of biblical scholars that none of the New [...]

22 02, 2022

Israel’s First Ethiopian Rabbi Speaks to Us

By |2022-02-22T10:11:42-07:00February 22nd, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

    Rabbi Dr. Sharon Zewde Shalom, the author of the very thoughtful book Dialogues of Love and Fear is without doubt what the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks wrote about him, “a shining light of not only Ethiopian Jewry but of the Jewish people as a whole.” He is an Orthodox rabbi, trained at [...]

15 02, 2022

Different Sephardic practices from Ashkenazic ones

By |2022-02-15T07:12:22-07:00February 15th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

    Haim Jachter, the rabbi of a Sephardic synagogue for more than twenty years who is of Ashkenazic descent and trained in Ashkenazic yeshivot tells readers about more than 100 differences in the religious practices between Ashkenazim and Sephardim. Ashkenazim are Jews of eastern European descent. Sephardic Jews are from lands around the Mediterranean [...]

10 02, 2022

The unexpected successes of Satmar Hasidim

By |2022-02-10T06:32:06-07:00February 10th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

    “American Shtetl: The Making of Kiryas Joel, A Hasidic Village in Upstate New York” is a brilliant, eye-opening, thought provoking, easy to read and enjoyable book by two university scholars, Nomi M. Stolzenberg of the University of Southern California, Gould School of Law who has written widely on law and religion, and David [...]

4 02, 2022

Dr. Bart Ehrman lists many inconsistencies in the New Testament

By |2022-02-04T09:55:59-07:00February 4th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

  Many Christians are convinced that God dictated the New Testament, that it has no errors and no contradiction, and that it contains the true facts concerning Jesus and the beginning of Christianity. In contrast, many scholars in America and Europe for at least several hundred years are certain that the New Testament is the [...]

31 01, 2022

Why is there suffering in the world?

By |2022-01-31T10:28:41-07:00January 31st, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

  Bart Denton Ehrman, born on 10/5/55, a PhD American New Testament scholar and author or editor of several dozen very popular, fascinating, and informative books, began life as a fundamentalist Christian, became a minister, and preached in churches. But he gave up Christianity and became an agnostic because of his disgust over the inexplicable [...]

30 01, 2022

Did Mamonides believe that God Produces Miracles?

By |2022-01-30T11:04:24-07:00January 30th, 2022|Thoughts|

      I was requested to write on the question “Did Maimonides believe that God produces miracles?” This question has been debated for centuries. I will give the ideas held by those who state that Maimonides contended that God does not perform miracles. To understand this view, one needs to understand three things.   [...]

24 01, 2022

Did the prophet Elijah act properly?

By |2022-01-24T07:15:40-07:00January 24th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

    The biblical story of the prophet Elijah is interesting, but it is subject to radically different interpretations. A literal reading of scripture, without imagining acts that are not explicit in the verses, yield a negative interpretation of Elijah's behavior with God being dissatisfied with him, criticizing him, and even killing him. In contrast, [...]

20 01, 2022

Maimonides view on the proper way to worship God

By |2022-01-20T06:45:28-07:00January 20th, 2022|Thoughts|

    In his Guide for the Perplexed, book 3, chapter 51, in the easy to read translation by M. Friedlander, Maimonides (1138-1204) tells readers: “The present chapter does not contain any additional matter that has not been treated in the [previous] chapters of this treatise. It is a kind of conclusion, and at the [...]

18 01, 2022

Why do we light Shabbat candles

By |2022-01-18T05:56:38-07:00January 18th, 2022|Thoughts|

Being Jewish, my wife and I light Shabbat candles on Friday evening before the Sabbath begins. This is a long-standing Jewish practice, usually understood to be over 2,000 years old. The usual explanation for the custom is based on a dispute between the Sadducees and Pharisees. The dispute is based on the general philosophy of [...]

11 01, 2022

Addressing why good people suffer

By |2022-01-11T13:40:01-07:00January 11th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

Rabbi Dovid Sapirman, the author of Tranquility and Travail, is a Haredi rabbi. Many Haredi Jews are very conservative and have more fundamental ideas than other Jews. One of Rabbi Sapirman’s views, which many non-Haredi Jews do accept is that God is involved with matters here on earth, and that God knows the details of [...]

10 01, 2022

How Jesus Became God

By |2022-01-11T13:42:20-07:00January 10th, 2022|Book Reviews, Thoughts|

  How Jesus became God by Dr. Bart D. Ehrman is an excellent, comprehensive, easy to read history about the begining of Christianity by a man who was once a very conservative Christian, who is now an agnostic, but who offers readers a non-dogmatic, respectful, historical examination of early Christianity. His ultimate goal in this [...]

27 12, 2021

What we don’t know about Judah – Part Two

By |2021-12-27T07:17:23-07:00December 27th, 2021|Thoughts|

      In Part One, we mentioned the question why Judah’s family merited according to tradition having the messiah come from them and obscurities in the Torah in Genesis 37 and 38. This is a continuation.   Chapter 39 resumes the Joseph story after telling us about Judah in chapter 38. Briefly told, he becomes [...]

26 12, 2021

What we don’t know about Judah – Part One

By |2021-12-26T12:58:37-07:00December 26th, 2021|Thoughts|

    The unclear stories about Judah are significant because Jewish and Christian theology contend that the messiah will be a descendant of this fourth son of Jacob. What if anything did Judah do to merit this distinction? We will address this question and point out many obscurities in Genesis 37 and 38. We will [...]

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