Shabbat Chukat Friday, June 18th Numbers/Bamidbar 19-22 The idea of purity in the Torah is a very complex one. In Western society, we associate purity with physical purity. Impurity means dirty or unclean. But this is not how the Torah sees the idea. The Hebrew words are Tahor and Tamey are spiritual and mental states, not physical ones. Appropriate would be a better translation for the word Tahor, or…
Hate Signalling
I have added a PS on the Weekly Torah Reading. I have a love-hate relationship with the New York Review of Books. I love the range of articles and reviews on literature and culture. They provide me with a feast of information and ideas. But I hate the political biases of many of its writers. It might have the best…
Shabbat Korah
Parshat Korah ( Numbers 16-19). Shabbat in New York starts at 8.08 pm. Playing Politics When Korah and his group protested against Moses, they threw back at him the words he had used when confronted by Eldad and Medad who were prophesying outside the Tabernacle )Numbers Chapter 11). He said, “If only God would give everyone the gift of prophecy and His…
Philip Roth
Philip Roth (1933-2018) was one of the most successful American novelists. He was born into a modest, secular Jewish family in Newark. Despite having been awarded almost every single literary award in the USA and around the world, he was denied a Nobel Prize for literature. Although this might only reflect the culturally constipated, humorless Swedish judges. His biography, by Blake…
Conversion
The Bible nowhere explicitly talks about conversion, only about taking care of, and not oppressing the stranger, the Ger. Much later, the term was divided into the Ger Toshav, the strangers who entered the community and choose to give up paganism. They were given equal civil rights so long as they adhered to the Seven Noachide commandments. And, on the other hand,…
Whose Side Are You On?
The latest round of fighting between Palestinians and Israel continues what has been a Hundred Years’ War and will in my opinion continue possibly for another hundred. The reason I say this is a conference I attended in Chatham House in London, twenty years ago. It included the UK Foreign Office, Anglo Jews, Anglo Palestinians, and representatives of both Fatah…