On March 22nd1144, in Norwich, England, Jews were first accused of killing a Christian child because, it was claimed, they needed its blood for the Four Cups of Wine at the Passover Seder. In Gloucester in 1168, in Bury St Edmonds in 1181, Bristol in 1183 and most notoriously in Lincoln in 1255, Jews died as the result of this…
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Masks
In Biblical Hebrew there is no word for face. The Bible uses the word Panim, which literally means, faces. It is an example, like Mayim, water, of a noun refers to a singular in English but sounds plural. It makes a lot of sense. We all have “faces.” The face we show to our parents, our children, our friends and our work…
Martina Naratilova and transgender
Last week I allowed a careless error to evade my scrutiny when my blog accused the Jewish Week of being pro-Kahane. I had meant to say the Jewish Press. I must apologize unreservedly to the Jewish Week for the distress it will have caused its staff and readers. In my younger days, Martina Navratilova was considered one of the very best female tennis…
Kahane
To me, the name Meir Kahane conjures up an aspect of the Jewish people that I deplore. A racist, violent strain of narrow-minded primitive Jewish jingoism. His coarse, brutish language ignited hatred. And to try to justify him as a proud, committed Jew only makes his poison even more dangerous and morally dangerous. To generalize and call any group of…
Abortion
New York’s Reproductive Health Act was signed into law by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Jan. 22, to a standing ovation and acclaim by State Legislators. This new law allows abortion on the basis of “reasonable and good faith professional judgment based on the facts of the patient’s case” — “the patient is within twenty-four weeks from the commencement of pregnancy, or…
Jewish Political Theory
It is often said that neither the Bible nor Judaism has a theory of politics or, indeed, of political systems. Neither is true. For two thousand years, Jews lived under political systems where, even when they had a degree of communal political self-rule, it was always subservient to the ruling powers and systems of their host lands. After all this…