I have changed my mind about Xmas. A few years ago I wrote a piece excoriating those Jews who celebrated it, because it was a Christian festival whose undertones were anti-Semitic. I fancied an exaggerated scenario. In a winter pine tree-clad Bavarian hilltop village, a sweet Aryan couple has been cast out onto the streets by dark-skinned, hook-nosed Jews, who…
Blessings
Everyone seems to have a story to tell about how blessings from Holy Men miraculously changed the course of people’s lives. They rarely tell of the cases where they did not. But what is a blessing? If it were simply a prayer, it wouldn’t have a different name. And both in English and Hebrew the word is good and bad,…
Bad Government
Chanuka always reminds me what a sad record we Jews, Israelites, Hebrews, have of government. Yes, I know we pray for the return of King David, but honestly look at what the Bible itself records of Jewish kings during the first five hundred years of our peoplehood. The good ones were few and far between. As for the Hasmoneans, the…
Chanuka, My Way
It is the evergreen myth that Chanukah records the magnificent victory of Judah Maccabee over Antiochus Epiphanes of Greek Syria in 165 BCE. The truth is not so simple, and it is not without justification that the rabbis of the Talmud focused on the miracle of the oil. It is true that by the time of the compilation of the…
Midrash
My article in support of Esau upset some of my readers. Some seem to think that one may only make use of previously sanctioned official interpretations, and others think it is heretical to disagree with rabbinic interpretation. There is another section of my readership that thinks the opposite. So I think I ought to tackle the issue of Midrash head…
The Esau Fan Club
The rabbis of the Talmud set out to portray Esau as the archetypal baddie. I, on the other hand, have a really soft spot for him. Right from the start, just because he’s born ruddy and hairy, the rabbis have it in for him. They obviously prefer the wan, pale, scholarly types who spend all day long at their books.…