Why do miracles happen sometimes and not others? Is it because we deserved them? Many rabbis like to claim that when bad things happen it is only because we have done something to deserve it. So why do horrible things happen to, say, newly born children who couldn’t possibly have done anything to deserve it? Why are millions of innocent…
General Topics
The violinist: Saul Milevsky, 1926-2006, Birkenau
The Jewish community of Antwerp, Belgium is unique in that it is the most predominantly Orthodox, Chasidic, and Yiddish-speaking community in Europe. But it is also unique in that its Jewish life centers on the diamond industry. Jewish life in Antwerp is very concentrated, intense, and convenient, with both the residential and commercial located in about one square kilometer stretching…
Studying Torah is the Answer to Creating Jobs
There has been a lot of debate in the USA and elsewhere about jobs, or rather the loss of them and what to do about it, particularly since recent plebiscites have largely been won on this issue. Although on paper unemployment is relatively low in advanced economies, a growing number of workers are being made redundant either by jobs moving…
Elie Jesner
I want to tell you a story of Chelm (the mythical community of Jewish fools) that is, in fact, true. True of Anglo-Jewish establishment Orthodoxy. I have known the Jesner family, the pillar of Orthodoxy in Glasgow, since 1968. They, as a successful business family, took responsibility for Jewish life in Glasgow, supporting its rabbis and yeshiva and contributing handsomely…
Election 2016
All complex societies are fragmented. Democracies particularly so. Dictatorships and autocracies act as if they were not. They try to suppress dissenters, which they can often do in the short term but not forever. Consider the autocrats from China to Russia to Turkey. Would you bet on their lasting? Ask most human beings where they would prefer to live. The…
She Is My Sister
The fundamentalist position on the Bible—Jewish and Christian—is that every word comes directly from God on Sinai 3300 years ago. The “critical” or the skeptics’ position is that it is all a man-written compilation of various authors and traditions, the process took an extended period of time, and the text we have today was only finally compiled by the Masoretes…