A few months ago, a brilliant philosopher named Peter Lipton died suddenly at the age of 53. Outside of Cambridge University, where he was professor of philosophy of science and a major figure in the Reform Jewish community, he was not well known in wider Jewish circles. I contend that his contribution to the philosophy of religion directly, and to…
General Topics
All Politics Stinks
All politics stinks. In London, Mayor Ken Livingstone has been distributing excessively overpaid jobs and freebies to his buddies and placemen. In the USA, politics functions on a national, federal level and is virtually duplicated at state level, so there is added room for monkey business. Wherever it is, the whole system is predicated on “You scratch my back and…
Merkaz HaRav Kook
The terrible massacre in Merkaz HaRav Kook last week plumbs new depths in depravity. Teenage kids sitting studying Torah, gunned down in the name of what? God? Allah? Palestine? Islam? Were they combatants? Were combatants making and firing rockets from within the yeshiva itself? Of course not. Then to see the celebrations in Gaza only confirms, even to my liberal…
Shakespeare Protest
Here’s a report that has recently hit the headlines: Teenagers at a Jewish comprehensive school have refused to sit a Shakespeare test because they believe the Bard is anti-Semitic. Nine students at the single-sex Yesodey Hatorah Senior Girls’ School in Hackney, east London, took their stance as part of a protest against the portrayal of Shylock in The Merchant of…
Jimmy Carter
I have never admired Jimmy Carter, but I tended to want to give him the benefit of the doubt. I thought he might be a decent, if naïve, man who really wanted to try to bring peace to the world. I began to think otherwise when he used the emotive term “Apartheid” to describe Israeli policies. I abhor occupation on…
Residents of Sderot
According to the Jerusalem Post (Itamar Sharon, Feb.27), residents of Sderot, the town continuously under attack from Palestinian-fired rockets from Gaza, have gone to the Israeli Supreme Court to ask why the army refused to buy the proven Nautilus anti-rocket defense system, which is readily available in the US. The fact that the army makes decisions in Israel that override…