Rabbi Professor Dr. Daniel Sperber is a leading scholar of Jewish law and customs and the author of many books on these subjects. Citing many fascinating examples and the rulings of highly respected rabbis that often read like short stories, he shows that the view of ultra-Orthodox Jews that an ideal rabbi is a man [...]
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 [...]
Samson among the rabbis Maimonides wrote in his “Chelek” that people who accept rabbinical imaginative Midrashim as being true are fools, those who reject Midrashim entirely because they are not true are also fools. The proper approach to Midrashim is to realize that they are not true and were not meant to be [...]
By Israel Drazin This essay is adapted from my book Maimonides: The Exceptional Mind. Maimonides[1] describes how one should understand rabbinical tales and Midrashim,[2] and declares that most people do not deal with rabbinic Midrashim[3] correctly. According to Maimonides, three clusters of people exist, each taking a radically different approach to [...]
The Koren Ethiopian Haggada Journey to Freedom Edited by Rabbi Menachem Waldman Koren Publishers, 2011, 229pages ISBN 978-965-301-292-9 This is an interesting book that introduces readers to the history of Ethiopian Jews,[1] the brutal treatment they endured for centuries, their culture, and the remarkable fact that they maintained the Jewish religion as mandated by [...]
Review by Israel Drazin Marriage and Divorce in the Jewish State Israel’s Civil War By Susan M. Weiss & Netty C. Gross-Horowitz Brandeis University Press, 2013, 218 pages In 1953, the Israeli government acquiesced to far right religious elements in the state and enacted the restrictive Rabbinic Courts Jurisdiction Law, [...]
By Israel Drazin No Jewish holiday is practiced today as the Bible mandates. Shavuot, called Pentecost in English, is a good example. The current observance of the holiday has no relationship to its biblical ancestor and doesn’t even occur at the same time.[1] Very few people know the truth about [...]
By Israel Drazin Rabbis who offer legal decisions frequently say that customs that have been practiced for some time have the same power as laws, but actually some do and some don’t. Traditions are a twin sister to customs. Generally customs refer to behaviors and traditions to ideas, but people use the terms interchangeably. [...]
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 [...]
