I shall be delivering a memorial lecture next week for Rabbi Dr. Louis Jacobs, a very controversial figure in Anglo-Jewry in my youth. He was the Gateshead-educated, academically rigorous senior lecturer at Jews College, now defunct but then the training ground for British rabbis that combined Torah with academic study. He was expected to succeed Isadore Epstein as principal, but…
Guns
I know I am expected to write about Brexit this week—-a classic conflict between a great concept and a corrupt, incompetent, bureaucratic misexecution of it. But I won’t, because it’s too early to know how it is going to play out. Instead I turn to another issue of conflicting worldviews. I have written before that I simply do not understand…
The Devil and The Jews
In 1943, even before the full story of Nazi inhumanity was revealed, Joshua Trachtenberg published The Devil and the Jews, a brilliant analysis of how the Christian world turned Jews and Judaism into a version of evil totally detached from reality. People who had never met Jews believed they poisoned wells, killed children for their blood, spread diseases. By dehumanizing…
Tolerance
Tolerance only works if it goes both ways. At Muhammad Ali’s funeral, Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder of Tikkun Magazine and the Network of Spiritual Progressives, gave a stirring speech that was roundly applauded. I agree with almost everything he said. We must stop victimizing, generalizing, and hating people who are different in color, creed, and practice. We live in a…
Shavuot 2016 – Torah
It was the genius of Babylonian Jewry to meet the challenges of exile 2,500 years ago. Originally Judaism was a fragile community of rival tribes settled in a specific land. Its public religious rituals were based on its agricultural seasons and tithes. It had a central sanctuary, with its priests and sacrifices, and a system of ritual purity. It had…
Al-Farhud
This week we recall the tragedy of al-Farhud. The pogrom against the Jewish population of Baghdad, Iraq, on June 1 and 2, 1941. The riots followed the collapse of the pro-Nazi government of Rashid Ali. Over 180 Jews were killed and 1,000 raped and injured. Nine hundred Jewish homes were destroyed. Al-Farhud was just one more example of the way…