The Sabbath: The Peaceful Day Provoked Sadducees and Pharisees As I wrote in my recent book “Mysteries of Judaism,” all the biblical holidays were changed by the rabbis because of the conditions of their time, especially because the temple was destroyed in 70 CE and sacrifices, which were an [...]
Eiruv Tavshilin A Seemingly Strange Pre-holiday Practice Some Jewish laws seem irrational at first glance and seem to be rabbinical attempts to evade biblical mandates, but a closer look reveals that the rabbis created laws to aid fellow Jews. Eiruv Tavshilin is an example. When a Jewish holiday is followed immediately by the [...]
Yom Kippur: About a Holiday the Romans Destroyed[1] Like Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur does not exist in the Bible. It replaces another day known as Yom Hakippurim. Yom Kippur is singular, “day of atonement,” while Yom Hakippurim is plural, “day of atonements.” The biblical Yom Hakippurim is mentioned in [...]
Favorable opinions of famous people about Jews:[1] Winston S. Churchill: Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world. John [...]
Rosh Hashanah is not a biblical holiday[1] Rosh Hashanah is not a biblical holiday, although it replaced a biblical one, and is notably different from the holiday it replaced. The biblical holiday, Yom Teruah, had a totally different purpose than Rosh Hashanah, which focuses on the onset of a new year, [...]
The Bizarre Belief in Evil Angels Part 2 Medieval Jewish Bible Commentators Accept the Existence of Angelic Beings Many medieval Bible commentators were not affected by rational philosophy. Principal among them is Rabbi Solomon Yitzchaqi (Rashi), Moses ben Nachman (Nachmanides) and Abraham Saba (born 1407). These Bible commentators accepted the [...]
The Bizarre Belief in Evil Angels Part one[1] Since, as we saw in earlier essays that I wrote, demons and evil angels played such a large part in the lives of many Jews, it is advisable to explore the origin of the belief in some depth. The average Jew today is [...]
Nachmanides on Curses and Magic[1] The biblical portion Nizavim, Deuteronomy 29:9-30:20, offers us an opportunity to observe some problematic ideas of the great thirteenth century Spanish Jewish sage, Nachmanides, ideas common among people of his time, but rejected by many people today. Idolatry, magic, and divination Nachmanides’ view of [...]
Bribing Satan: Part Two[1] The Tashlich service was not the only High Holiday ceremony that the masses felt they must observe to avoid having Satan harm them. The eighth-century Midrash Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer is a rather unusual volume of biblical folk legends that many Jews insisted were true. The Pirkei author believed that [...]
The Tashlich Ceremony: Bribing Satan[1] Tashlich is a rite whose non-rational basis is obvious. It preserves a superstitious belief held by many people in ancient times concerning water and the divine beings that dwell in and around it. The rite has been reinterpreted over time, modified slightly and rationalized, but its original [...]
Strange ideas of Nachmanides His notion concerning the Sanctity of Israel[1] The biblical portion Ki Tavo, Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8, mentions laws that Israelites were expected to observe when they entered Canaan, later called Israel. This affords us an opportunity to discuss the sanctity of the land of Israel. Many [...]
Why Do Women Light the Sabbath Candles Long before the Sabbath Begins?[1] If people would take the time to look at the bulletin of an Orthodox Synagogue, they would find something very curious. The women are instructed to light candles several minutes before the men are scheduled to attend the Mincha service, [...]
The Anti-Jewish Origin of Kapparot [1] The practice of kapparot and tashlich, celebrated by many Jews, is not considered to be rational by many other Jews and Maimonides did not include them in his Mishneh Torah, his code of Jewish law. The term kapparot denotes an offering tendered in the hope of gaining forgiveness [...]
The Shofar Scares and Confuses Satan, Keeping Him at Arm’s Length[1] It is absolutely certain that both the spiritual leaders of Jewry and the masses of uneducated Jews (or at least the majority of these) before, during and after the talmudic period believed that the shofar, the ram’s horn, was blown [...]
Judaism Today is Not Torah Judaism The following are some examples where the rabbis changed biblical commands. This is from my book “Unusual Bible Interpretations: Five Books of Moses,” which will be published in Israel in about a month. The stubborn and rebellious son Deuteronomy 21:18–21 has the baffling law of [...]
Rabbi Dr. Nathan and Celia Drazin My dad passed away in 1976 at age 70, but his story remains. He was a remarkable man. Nathan Drazin was one of eight children, including an adopted son taken in by his philanthropic parents. Grandfather and grandmother had a successful real estate business in Canada. [...]
Accept the truth no matter what its source[1] After devoting three chapters in the book of Numbers with ninety-six verses to the story of the non-Israelite prophet Balaam, Scripture adds another two verses In Deuteronomy 23:5–6 to remind us that God refused to listen to Balaam and turned his planned curses into [...]
Do we want a king?[1] Deuteronomy 17:14-20 contains laws concerning kings, specifically what a king should not do. The royal power brings to mind the ridiculous belief once held by many people, and still held some today, people who don’t know they are retaining this ancient idea. It is the [...]
Significant words with no meaning People use many words that have no meaning. Two such words are “religious” and “spiritual.” The words are usually used in a negative fashion, as in “she is not religious” and “that pastor is not spiritual enough.” The problem is that we have no idea what makes [...]
The Obligation to learn Hebrew Should Jews and non-Jews learn Hebrew? Rabbi Evan Hoffman of Congregation Anshe Shalom in his always learned weekly column emphasizes the values of learning Hebrew and decries the view of Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum (1887-1979), the Grand Rabbi of the Satmar Hasidic sect who was the foremost ultra-Orthodox [...]
Should we act to get a reward?[1] Deuteronomy details the rewards that one can expect to receive for obeying God’s laws. There are many similar biblical sections. In Deuteronomy 7, the gains will be children, fruit, grain, wine, oil, cattle, flocks, goats, no infertility, no illnesses and no enemies. In Deuteronomy 11, [...]
The evolving law of levirate marriages Although the Bible mandates levirate marriages, and although the rabbis believed Scripture was revealed by God who knows everything and makes no mistakes, the rabbis changed the Torah law; in effect nullifying what the Torah states and creating an entirely new law. The practice of levirate marriage [...]
When were the Jewish temples destroyed? The Jewish fast day of Tisha[1] B’Av, the ninth day of the Hebrew month Av, occurring in 2014 on the eve of August 4 and the day of August 5,[2] commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples. However, neither temple was razed on [...]
Did God write Deuteronomy?[1] Bible critics, as is well known, insist that neither God nor Moses wrote Deuteronomy. Many of them contend that the essence of the book originated during the first Temple period in the reign of King Josiah (640–609 B.C.E.) and that it was organized into its final form during [...]
What does Shema say? Deuteronomy 6:4–9 contains the shema, which is recited by many Jews two or three times a day, as an affirmation of their relation to God. The first two verses are translated in the 1955 version of The Jewish Publication Society (JPS) as follows. “Hear, O Israel: the [...]
The truth about conversion Many rabbis insisted that the biblical Ruth and perhaps even Orpah converted to Judaism. There are good reasons to think that the concept of conversion did not exist at the time and was only introduced into Judaism around 125 BCE. Until that time, the Israelites thought of themselves as [...]
Chapter 21 More rapes and a third civil war The author or authors of Judges emphasize the Israelite depravity four times[1] in the final five chapters by stating “In those days there was no king in Israel; each man did what he felt was right.” Chapter 17 tells about a [...]
The rabbis changed a Torah law Numbers 30:3 contains the divine command, “A man who vows a vow to the Lord or swears an oath, to bind himself with a binding obligation, must not nullify his word; he must do all that goes out of his mouth.” This biblical law clearly [...]
Why do Israelites kill women and children in the Bible? Many people prefer to believe that every event and law mentioned in the Bible is true, perfect, and the highest level of morality, since it is divine. Moses Maimonides taught the opposite: the Torah had to deal with the often primitive mind-set [...]
Chapter 20 Another civil war Chapter 20 describes another Israelite civil war, all of Israel against the tribe of Benjamin. However, if our supposition mentioned in the last chapter is correct, it is the tribe of Ephraim alone or as the lead tribe that is fighting against the tribe of Benjamin. This [...]
