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Rabbi Hayyim Angel's Latest Book

Keys to the Palace

Essays Exploring the Religious

Value of Reading the Bible

I can still hear the voices of my grandparents, parents and elder relatives speaking and singing in Judeo-Spanish. Although they have passed away years ago, I still feel their presence especially on Shabbat and holidays and at family celebrations.

When we think of our religious outlook as capturing truth, we gesture toward something very large, something toward which we can only gesture: toward how deep the religious vision goes, how it underscores, alerts us, sensitizes us, to features of reality that are as significant as they are elusive; how it can play a key role in constructing a life characterized by genuineness, yashrut.

The Deferred Action to Childhood Arrivals program gave about 800,000 young people — individuals who had arrived in the U.S. ten or more years ago at age 16 or younger — a chance to legally study or work here. The President and Congress are in the midst of discussions to legislatively address the status of Daca recipients. Many of these "dreamers" have lived most of their lives in the US and are constructive members of our society.

The Midrash describes the Torah as black fire on white fire (Midrash Tanhuma, Bereishith 1).  On its simplest level, the black fire represents the letters of the Torah, while the white fire is the space between the letters. On a deeper level, the black fire may be compared to the halakha, the formal, clear-cut law that emerges from the Torah. Parallel to the halakha is the white fire, which may represent the spiritual element of the law.

*For Anthony Polimeni, on assuming the Vice Presidency

 of Touro College.

Being Sephardic is one of the most central aspects of my Jewish identity. While there is certainly the ethnic component with family history that goes back to places such as Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Macedonia, there are the equally important dimensions that are philosophical and spiritual.

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