On Sunday is the fast of the Seventeenth of Tammuz. It is a minor fast that lasts from dawn to dusk and ushers in a period of mourning that leads up to the 9th of Av when we commemorate the loss of two Temples. These Three Weeks of mourning are an Ashkenazi custom. They are not mentioned in the Talmud and most Sephardim…
General Topics
Religious Politics
The personal attacks on Naftali Bennet coming from the Charedi parties in Israel because he has been instrumental in excluding them from power and has stood up to their blackmail are disgusting. They offend every principle of Jewish morality. But it’s not surprising. This is why I am delighted they have been removed from positions in government in the latest…
Hate Signalling
I have added a PS on the Weekly Torah Reading. I have a love-hate relationship with the New York Review of Books. I love the range of articles and reviews on literature and culture. They provide me with a feast of information and ideas. But I hate the political biases of many of its writers. It might have the best…
Philip Roth
Philip Roth (1933-2018) was one of the most successful American novelists. He was born into a modest, secular Jewish family in Newark. Despite having been awarded almost every single literary award in the USA and around the world, he was denied a Nobel Prize for literature. Although this might only reflect the culturally constipated, humorless Swedish judges. His biography, by Blake…
Conversion
The Bible nowhere explicitly talks about conversion, only about taking care of, and not oppressing the stranger, the Ger. Much later, the term was divided into the Ger Toshav, the strangers who entered the community and choose to give up paganism. They were given equal civil rights so long as they adhered to the Seven Noachide commandments. And, on the other hand,…
Whose Side Are You On?
The latest round of fighting between Palestinians and Israel continues what has been a Hundred Years’ War and will in my opinion continue possibly for another hundred. The reason I say this is a conference I attended in Chatham House in London, twenty years ago. It included the UK Foreign Office, Anglo Jews, Anglo Palestinians, and representatives of both Fatah…