Every time we sit down to a meal, according to the Talmud, it is an act of religious celebration. The ancient Temple sacrifices were not just a matter of formal communal gifts to God. They were also a system of getting everyone, priest and lay, rich and poor, to share food. Originally all slaughter for food was sacrificial. Only later…
The Cost of Religion
I love Pesach with all its laws and customs and even the preparation of cleaning out rooms, purging the kitchen, unpacking the special crockery, and pots and pans. But one thing really upsets me, and that is the cost! My issue is that well over half the Jewish people are of very modest means and struggle to make ends meet.…
Israeli Elections
The first Israeli election I experienced was in the summer of 1961. I was in Yeshivah in Jerusalem and heard both Ben Gurion and Begin campaign. There was no comparison. Ben Gurion was dull and uninspiring. Begin was magnetic and charismatic. But Ben Gurion won more than twice as many votes as Begin did. The left-wing socialist monopoly of power…
Marc Shapiro
If I say that Marc Shapiro is one of the most important and influential committed religious Jews alive today, you might think me guilty of hyperbole. I assure you I am not. He has a Ph.D. from Harvard and directs the Weinberg Judaic Studies Institute at the University of Scranton, and he is the author of various books and articles…
Purim Torah
In my student days, when I used to campaign for women’s rights, I thought that the Purim story was about the suffering of women. That drunk male numbskulls who got boozed up on excessive amounts of alcohol forced their smelly, priapic, testosterone-fueled bodies on unwilling, disadvantaged women. King Achashverosh was a typical male chauvinist pig. A lazy slob, a sybaritic…
Purim or Munich?
Purim is this coming week. It’s a story that can be read as being about an ineffectual, drunken leader, a disaster just waiting to happen. Here is a king manipulated by his advisors into making disastrous decisions. Weakness always allows either dangerous, proactive demagogues to emerge or self-interested vipers to step into the vacuum. This is a lesson the USA…