What we have just seen in the USA is an almost Messianic passion for the person of Barack Obama. Everywhere millions seem to believe he will change America, get everyone to love the “Ugly American”. In America, itself, many think he will radically change the economic and social structures. One cannot help notice how people will believe anything that suits…
General Topics
Greed
What is the cause of the financial “tsunami” we are experiencing? Is it incompetent oversight, dishonesty, or simply unbridled greed? Humans are usually very selfish. That is why all religions put so much emphasis on charity. Yet it is the modern state that supposedly controls excess. It taxes the wealthy more, precisely because rich individuals are usually so loath to…
Sin
It is Adam and Eve time again in the annual Torah reading cycle and that always reminds me of Sin! Original Sin! What unpleasant words. What awful baggage. I won’t deny that lots of people do lots of awful things and the word “sin” often describes these things. But still I find the word in English a very negative word,…
Rav Yossi Raichik
Rav Yossi Raichik, who died recently in Israel, was one of the most impressive human beings I have ever come across. I met him first in 1979. It was the year Khomeini took control of Iran and thousands of Jews were fleeing–to anywhere, just to get out. Chabad Lubavitch, responding to a crisis in the Jewish world like no other…
Jewish Guilt
What is it about Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur that gets hundreds of thousands of Jews who seem to care nothing about their religion all year long, suddenly to feel little twinges of obligation? Is it this the Jewish angst or guilt Philip Roth writes about? There is a joke that a Christian expects that if he is found guilty…
The Ethics of Kosher
There have been in recent years, a series of scandals in the USA over kashrut. The most public have been those that involve the largest provider of kosher meat, Agriprocessors, based in Postville, Iowa, and owned by the Rubashkin family. An undercover video revealed practices that shocked even the most hardened of kashrut experts and raised issues of how animals…