Articles

Book Review

Sukkot: Insights from the Past, Present, and Future (The Habura, 2022)

We should work toward a society that repudiates hateful words and deeds, where the haters themselves will come to see the error of their way. Those whose words are hateful generate darkness, mistrust, societal disintegration.
Those whose words bring light to the world are humanity’s only real hope.

Rabbi Shalom Carmy discusses the nature of intellectual inquiry within a religious framework.

Freedom in world history and American history is tied to slavery. Slavery and the exodus from slavery are central to Judaism. Many cultures, do, or have, celebrated emancipation. But only Jews have a major religious holiday that is focused on enslavement and an escape from enslavement.

Judaism, let it be stated unequivocally, has a different view of guilt: Guilt is a healthy part of who we are. This sounds absurd, even crazy. But give the thought a chance to develop.

The terrorists were murderers, hateful and misguided individuals who believed that they would be rewarded in heaven if they murdered Americans. They were willing to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of inflicting damage on the United States. But, there were those who justified the wicked and who condemned the righteous. They described the murderers as “martyrs.”

Cantor Philip L. Sherman was trained as a mohel by Rabbi Yosef Hakohen Halperin in 1977 in Jerusalem, Israel. He served as a cantor and mohel for many years. He had written this article that appeared in issue 6 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. We re-post it today (August 10, 2023) in his memory.

In the earlier parts of David’s reign, he was famed for executing “true justice among all his people” (II Samuel 8:15). Now, however, his listening to patently unequal narratives to act “even-handedly” dealt a profound injustice to Mephibosheth, rewarded the dishonest Ziba, and, according to Rav, sowed the seeds for the nation itself falling apart.

Dr. Irene Lancaster, who has long been involved in dialogue between Jews and Christians in England, shares her thoughts on a complicated topic.

Orthodox thinkers are faced with the task of resolving the conflict between the modern moral outcry against slavery and the Bible’s obvious sanction of the institution. Among Orthodox Jewish thinkers of the modern period, several creative—and sometimes mutually exclusive—approaches to this contradiction have emerged.