The story of Chanukah we hear year in and year out is about the triumph of the gallant few Maccabee rebels against the might of the Syrian Greek Empire. There’s a political narrative and a religious narrative that seems as vivid, as relevant, and as disturbing now as it was then. The political narrative includes several elements. A small determined…
General Topics
Hillary Clinton & Modesty
Hillary Clinton, bless her, chose to berate Israel at a closed conference recently for its attitudes towards women. She specifically mentioned segregated seating on buses serving Charedi neighborhoods and recent decisions limiting the role of women in the armed forces in combat. I’m not sure if her objection to recent moves that permit male soldiers to opt out of mixed…
Can Mir survive?
The Mir Yeshivah that I went to in the 1960s was an intimate place, as indeed was Jerusalem itself–still divided, and small enough so that everyone seemed to know everyone else. After the Six Day War it all changed. Suddenly Jerusalem opened up and the Old City was like a magnet that drew everyone into its secret passages and ancient…
The Passing of Mir – Part 1
Mir Yeshivah today is probably the largest and most famous yeshivah in the world, with some 6,000 students scattered over numerous campuses and buildings. Its head, Rabbi Natan Tzvi Finkel, died recently, and tens of thousands turned out for his funeral. Yet most of the Jewish world, and certainly the non-Jewish world, have no idea who he or Mir is.…
The Chosen
I cannot begin to tell you how much I dislike the expression “The Chosen People”. It is not that I have any problem with what the Bible says. To me it is the most essential text (and also its Talmudic expansion). But the fact is that some of its ideas and laws have fallen by the wayside, even as it…
Jewish Writers
In 1970, when I was living in Glasgow, a close friend suggested I read Saul Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet. I went right out and bought it. But to my chagrin I just could not get through it. I agree that Bellow is a more accomplished writer than say Philip Roth, whose Portnoy’s Complaint came out a year before and was…