Those who follow me will know how much scorn I pour on abuses of religion and religious authority. I despair at the pettiness and outright vindictiveness of the Chief Rabbinate in Israel and its utter refusal to follow the Biblical exhortation to “understand the soul of the stranger”. I am alienated by extremism of all kinds, religious and political, including…
General Topics
Spinoza
Baruch (Benedict) Spinoza (1632-1677) was one of greatest of philosophers. Not only, but he was possibly the most honest and moral of them all. He was a gentle, if prickly, principled human being who led an ethical, modest life unaffected by money or fame. He won a court decision over his father’s estate and promptly handed it all over to…
Side Effects
We humans have always needed cures, whether they are of the body, the mind or the soul. And in our desperation we have turned to the most unlikely of sources and placebos. The Talmud, for all its weight of law, ideas, and debate, lists the most unbelievable, improbable, and weird cures you could imagine: the burnt placenta of black cats,…
Marc Shapiro and Jewish Censorship
Human beings have always told lies. The purpose of lies, of course, is to try to cover up truth. It is just that some lies, under certain conditions, are considered less morally evil than others. All ethical systems have grappled with whether it is ever permissible to lie, and they have come up with range of possibilities, such as white…
New Book – Commitment and Controversy: Living in Two Worlds. Collected essays and blogs
I have been blogging for ten years to my “select” audience, on anything that tickled my fancy or felt appropriate in any week. Sometimes the blogs were theological, sometimes political, often historical, or even serendipitous. It wasn’t always clear if I was flying a kite. Sometimes my readers thought I was angry, when I was just sad at the abuses…
Bad Decisions
“Those who cannot learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” George Santayana was not referring to Israel, but he might have been. When all is said and done, the fast of Tisha B’Av, the Ninth Day of Av, is a fast that symbolizes and commemorates bad decisions. The Israelites were always very good at that. The wonder is that…