What is religion to you? Pleasure or pain? We are in the fasting season. We started with the Seventeenth of Tamuz, a full day from dawn till dark. Next week we move on toward the Ninth of Av (Tisha B’Av), a 25-hour marathon in the height of summer. I am intrigued by the role of fasting in Judaism. In theory…
Not Rabbis
A New York court has decided that a rabbi who has had a sexual affair with a congregant cannot be sued for betraying his professional standards, because rabbis are not proper professionals!! In a unanimous verdict, judges dealing with a claim against an Orthodox rabbi for sexual abuse said that rabbis do not have a fiduciary duty as with professions…
Superstition
Where does superstition end and religion begin? Or are they same? My late father had no patience for spells, curses, or any kind of superstition. He always quoted to us the famous line from Numbers 23:23, “There are no charms in Jacob, no magic in Israel.” The most he conceded to us as kids was that if we were frightened…
Hezbular
Before you point out my apparent spelling mistake, may I say that I refuse to use a name which incorporates God’s, even in Arabic, when talking about such savages who desecrate the Divine name. The return by Hezbular of the corpses of Israeli soldiers Goldwasser and Regev , captured alive, murdered in cold blood, in contravention of the Geneva Convention,…
What is modesty?
Summer time. Swimming time. Bikini time? “In olden days, a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking; now, Heaven knows, anything goes,” wrote Cole Porter over seventy years ago. And if it was bad then, it is worse now. Nowadays on home television, let alone computer, one can see all there is to see. It is hardly surprising…
Religious Violence
Even readers of the New York Times are now familiar with the battles going on amongst Satmarer Hasidim (actually the biggest and most powerful of all Hasidic movements) over the succession. It is about money and power, of course. Hasidic dynasties are hereditary aristocracies (no meritocracy here, heaven forefend), and they are now very wealthy ones, too. A similar battle…