Many people think that Judaism is so conservative that it simply doesn’t change, and we are still rooted in a tradition that is 3000 years old. The reality is that Judaism is constantly changing. Not always in the same direction and not always as quickly or as dramatically as we might like. And a great example is the period of…
Hypocrites
We Jews have always been outliers. Now it seems everyone else wants to catch up with us and claim victimhood, discrimination, abuse, and alienation and the only way to cope is to be mean to everyone else. We are admired and despised, and we are our own worst enemies. We are commanded to love each other, to be responsible for…
Israel at 75
I have recently read two great books. “Israel’s Declaration of Independence: The History and Political Theory of the Nation’s Founding Moment” by Neil Rogachevsky and Dov Ziegler (Cambridge University Press). Just published. And the 2019 “A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion” by Tom Segev (Picador). Both are essential for anyone interested in the mechanisms of establishing…
Memorials to the Holocaust
This week we witnessed another impressive Holocaust Memorial Day in Israel when the country came to halt to remember. As well as the return of the annual March of the Living pilgrimage to Auschwitz. Elsewhere? Hardly anyone noticed. The Holocaust is unique in the history of humanity for the sheer size manner and process of the aim and execution, to…
Firstborn
I am a First Born. And I fast on the eve of Pesach because all the Egyptian firstborn were struck down by the tenth plague and I (metaphorically) survived! Usually being a firstborn is regarded as a privilege. But perhaps it ought not to be. I have always had an issue with the preferential treatment firstborn are given. It is…
Passover or Passout?
Moses had trouble understanding Rebbi Akivah who lived about a thousand years later (according to the Talmud). How much more so, if he were alive today, would he have absolutely no idea how we could have taken a simple festival of liberation and freedom and turned it into the complex conglomeration of rituals and procedures we observe today? As he might…