According to the Bible, Noah’s flood destroyed humanity because they were violent. How much have we changed? We seclude ourselves in our protected worlds and often have little idea of what is really going on around us. We who live in Western “civilized” societies and are reasonably well off know about the millions of refugees, or poor exploited human beings…
Karaites
Who are the Karaites, and do they keep Simchat Torah? I have several times in the past come across Jews, invariably thoughtful and charming, who have told me that they are so fed up with the excesses of rabbinic Judaism that they have decided to become Karaites. Only this week a delightful young Israeli woman living in New York told…
Water
Whatever is said about the festival of Sukot, the fact is that water is the most significant subtext. All plants need water, as do humans and all other living things. But the four “kinds of plants” we take and wave are all associated specifically water, whether natural rainfall, irrigation, or oases. Sitting in the Sukah is our farewell to the…
Heidegger
As we meditate this year on the resurrection of anti-Semitism and its new acceptability, let us not forget the role academia, supposedly objective and sane, plays in perpetuating it. Anyone familiar with university politics knows full well the hypocrisy of ideologies, be they Marxist or fascist (even Zionist and anti-Zionist) that can impose themselves on staff and students. Of all…
Who, me?
Another year has gone by. When I was young there was a popular folk, student song that referred to a Kentucky coal miner during the Depression. The refrain went “You load sixteen tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter don’t you call me, ‘cause I cant go. I owe my soul to…
Repentance
When I was a child in England, I often used to see men and women standing at street corners holding placards saying such things as “The End of the World in Nigh–Repent before it is loo late” or some variation on that theme. It struck me as silly. Even in the era of the atomic threat I had much more…