The New York Review of Books has recently devoted a lot of space to a review of “The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King” by Peniel E. Joseph. In the current context of Black slavery and its ramifications, I found some interesting parallels (and differences) between the Jewish and the American Black…
General Topics
Who is a Jew?
Why is there such a fuss over the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to allow converts to Judaism, as defined by the Reform and Conservative movements, to qualify for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return? It makes no sense to me at all. It is a conflation of two quite separate issues, the Civil Law of the State of Israel and…
Mr. Cohen of Ballachulish Ferry
A week ago, I gave a Zoom talk for the Scottish Jewish Archive center. I spoke about my experiences as the rabbi of the largest Jewish Congregation in Scotland, the Giffnock and Newlands Hebrew Congregation, between 1968 and 1971. It was my first full-time position as a rabbi after I returned from my studies in Jerusalem, and it was an amazing…
1848
The course of human civilization, if one can use that term, has progressed and continues to, in a series of slow cycles. The German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) introduced the now well-known process of change. A thesis, a positive step forward in human affairs that always provokes an antithesis, a reaction, a step backward. Then comes a synthesis, the fusion of the two…
The Lost Ark
So many people love conspiracy theories, fantasies, and lost causes. Best-selling books and movies focus on myths of missing people, cities, and treasures such as Atlantis, Treasure Island. And going further back in time, to the Golden Fleece or the Ten Lost Tribes. Christianity of course is the champion of fantasies and relics. For centuries they searched for the Holy…
Purim or Poor them.
Purim is the happiest and craziest day in the Jewish calendar and the only festival that celebrates an event in the Diaspora. But is it really? According to tradition, the story of Purim and the Book of Esther date to the early Persian period somewhere in the 5th century BCE. The story is of a naïve, drunken, male chauvinist, incompetent Persian…