Even readers of the New York Times are now familiar with the battles going on amongst Satmarer Hasidim (actually the biggest and most powerful of all Hasidic movements) over the succession. It is about money and power, of course. Hasidic dynasties are hereditary aristocracies (no meritocracy here, heaven forefend), and they are now very wealthy ones, too. A similar battle…
General Topics
Candidates and God
Several months ago a friend referred me to a website that asks you a series of questions and then tells you which candidate for president of the USA was closest in opinions to yours. When I looked at the questions I saw that I would not fit any stereotype. I may follow restrictive Jewish Law, but I am a complete…
Daniel Sperber
I find lists of the great or the famous such a silly waste of time. I never take them as anything more than journalists’ fluff. Whatever the criteria, they are bound to be subjective and superficial. By most standards of fame, singers, soccer players, and starlets are the best known and most popular. So what? Qualities of leadership are bandied…
Bush, Obama, and the Europeans
In an op-ed piece in the NY Times, Maureen Dowd asserts, like a dog returning to its sick, that the Europeans hate the US because of George Bush. Ever since I was a kid, Europeans have always hated, envied, and at the same time longed for the products of, the USA. They envy the fact that the USA sorted out…
Elgar
If anything will emphasize my heterodoxy, it is my taste in music. Jewish music, or what passes for it, really does not grapple with spirituality to anything like the extent, the profundity, and the passion (oops, wrong word) of classical music. However much I may enjoy Hasidic music, folksy Carlebach, pop Mordechai Ben David or Avram Fried, or the new…
Jewish Ethics
I am a great fan of the Business Ethics Centre of Jerusalem (www.besr.org). Firstly because it was founded by a man I greatly admire and respect, Dr. Meir Tamari. Secondly because a former pupil of mine, one of the best, Rabbi Pinchas Rosenstein, is involved, and thirdly because of articles like this one by Rabbi Joel Domb on the treatment…