We have started the annual cycle of reading the Torah. Every year I come to a familiar, beloved text and invariably see something new. The Bible can be read, sung, looked at numerically, literarily, mystically, and academically. In our cultural world we tend to focus on reading a text and we ignore the sounds of the words and the way…
Author: Jeremy Rosen
Hannah Arendt Was Wrong
Hanna Arendt (1906–1975), the German-born American political theorist, was a regarded as a major influential thinker. In her day, she was the symbol of liberal intellectuality, lionized in academic circles. She is now largely out of fashion, because her ideology does not fit into today’s dogmatic and prejudiced liberal, academic world. I admit my bias against her. She was once the mistress of Nazi…
In Defense of the Haredi World
Most of the time, the Haredi world get a really bad press. Extremism. Lack of social responsibility, religious coercion, dirty party politics, and corruption. Everywhere politics are so dishonest, so one-sided, so immaturely simplistic and aggressive. In my opinion there is a great deal in the Haredi world that deserves criticism, even condemnation. Even so, I think the Haredi world…
Who am I?
Our task on Yom Kipur is to spend time thinking about where we stand in this world. Who are we? What are we? Every year we should go through this cathartic experience. This painful process of self-examination. In my case, it is all the more necessary and painful, because I really am a crazy, mixed-up kid. I live in two…
Kaddish as Prayer and Confession
The Kaddish prayer has become popular to the point of cliché in Jewish culture and religious practice. Whether in the original Aramaic and Hebrew or transliterated into English and other languages, most Jews are to some degree or another familiar with its refrains. This is as much to do with its association with the rituals of mourning as it is…
Havdalah: Does It Separate or Combine? A Memoir and a Legacy
Some three hundred of us crowded into the hall of the stately mansion that American railway magnate Jay Gould had built on his estate on the banks of the River Thames, south of Oxford. Since 1953, it had been home to a Jewish Boarding School called Carmel College. Carmel had been founded in 1948 by my father, Rabbi Dr. Kopul…