This week we celebrate Tu BiShvat, the New Year for trees. TuBishvat as we celebrate it today is a post-biblical creation of the great sixteenth-century mystic Isaac Luria of Safed and is concerned with life and nature. Its origin lies in the Biblical laws of tithing produce and not eating the fruit of a tree for its first three years of growth. All of…
A Different Generation
At a recent family gathering, I was surprised to hear how a negative image of my maternal grandfather had been passed down to some of his great, grandchildren. Moses Jacob Cohen, known as M.J., certainly was a strong, opinionated, and demanding man. He was of course a product of his times. And the negative was certainly not the only aspect…
National Anthems
There is something so dated, archaic, and non-sensical about National Anthems, and indeed flags, that takes us back to a world of ancient tribal warfare, conquests, and long-lost identities. One might understand the need to have means of identification both in war and peace. But anthems seem to me to be particularly problematic, archaic, misguided, and often offensive. I remember…
Where does Charity Begin?
We are all being bombarded constantly with requests for money, at home, at work, on the streets, and on the internet. And all religions emphasize the importance of charity. But the real problem is one of the priorities. One cannot give in any significant way to all of the requests even if it may hurt to have to say no…
What is Wrong in Israel
Corruption is an evocative word. Its original usage in Latin was something spoiled or ruined, mainly comestibles but in Christianity, the human flesh. Now it has come to refer to financial dishonesty and a political degradation of one’s original moral ideals. It is a universal curse that no society is free of. However much I love Israel and support it, the…
Sylvester
I only became aware of the controversy surrounding the New Year when I was in Israel as a young man and discovered that the rabbinate was refusing to give kashrut certificates to hotels that held New Year’s Eve parties. Angry rabbis made typically hyperbolic statements about the profound disasters that celebrating something called Sylvester would wreak on the Jewish world. …