I made the mistake, once, of thinking New York was the best place for Jews outside Israel. This Shabbat afternoon, at 4 pm a group of several hundred Palestinian supporters marched up Broadway waving banners and flags and chanting anti-Israel slogans past the building in which I live. I can’t begin to describe what emotions it aroused. It was as…
Author: Jeremy Rosen
Days of Pain and Joy
We are now in the Jewish month of Elul. In the Northern Hemisphere, we say goodbye to the ‘lazy hazy crazy days of summer’, as the song goes. Pleasure is over, back to business. The religious academies re-open. We blow the shofar every morning and say an extra Psalm as we start preparing for the heavy atmosphere of the Yamim Noraim,…
Sadness and Joy
Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of Av, reminds us of the greatest catastrophes in our history. Yet five days after the fast, we have Tu B’Av, the 15th day of Av (yesterday), which according to the Mishna, together with Yom Kipur were the happiest days of the year. Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said: There were no days as joyful for the Jewish people…
Messianism and the 9th of Av
Regardless of how well or poorly Jews have integrated into their host societies, in each generation, they have fasted over the two destructions of Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 BCE and 70 CE. And have prayed to be able to return. But there remains a division between those Jews who see the return as a miraculous manifestation of Messianism…
Jewish Torquemadas
Of all the Roman emperors, I would say that Constantine more than any other, was responsible indirectly for the two thousand years of Christian oppression of the Jews. If you are interested in the facts, I heartily recommend Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, by James Carrol. But I want to focus just on one serendipitous item. Constantine was an…
Fast of Tammuz
We have just had the Fast of the Seventeenth of Tammuz. It commemorates the Roman siege of Jerusalem and the moment at which the Romans destroyed the walls and a prelude to the destruction of the Second Temple. Whereas the Fast of the Ninth of Av (in three weeks) the actual destruction of the two Temples, is the most important fast after Yom Kipur, the Fast of…