When a young ultra-Orthodox man admits to biting and beating his handicapped infant to death, how is it possible that the greatest rabbis of our generation publicly declare that this is a blood libel on the part of the secular Israeli authorities and that the man is innocent, before any trial or complete investigation? This is what happened recently in…
The Road to Jerusalem
Passover is a pilgrim festival. For thousands of years Jewish pilgrims have been making their way up to Jerusalem. It is a very special route. After a recent short visit, I turned up a piece I wrote home to my parents over forty years ago after the very first time I went “up” to Jerusalem: The Central Bus Station in…
Human Rights
Recently, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that a woman left infertile after cancer treatment cannot use her frozen embryos to have a baby. Natallie Evans started IVF treatment with her then partner Howard Johnston in 2001 following a diagnosis of ovarian cancer. The embryos were created and placed in storage. After the couple split up, Johnston withdrew consent…
Rabbis and Imams in Seville
Just got back from Seville in Spain where I attended a the Second World Congress of Imams and Rabbis for Peace. Strange that it was the first time I had ever been to Spain. It had nothing to do with the ban on returning to the land that expelled the Jews in 1492 (most halachic experts believe it has lapsed).…
Corruption
There is a spat going on in England over the fact that some gentlemen, amongst them a Jew or two, have given loans to the Labor Party and apparently, but not necessarily, have been given titles and honors in return. Let’s deal with the “honors” bit first. Titles have a highly disreputable past. Under the Saxons they went to whoever…
Happy Purim!
At the very end of the Megillat Esther (the Book of Esther we read on Purim) there is an amazing line that almost passes unnoticed. Here’s the context. The Jewish people were under sentence of mass annihilation, initiated by Haman and agreed to by a drunken monarch whose brains had clearly sunken to another part of his anatomy. Mordechai had…