Any education is replete with those who urge students to discard their ethical sensitivities in favor of what are termed the hard truths of human nature. More often than not, this approach conceals a fear of truly facing what trouble one’s hard truth is causing others, and goes hand-in-hand with limitations in one’s ability to help others wisely.
The Jewish Press newspaper has a bi-weekly feature in which questions are asked to a group of rabbis. One of the respondents is Rabbi Marc Angel, and here are his replies to several of the recent questions.
Our religious consciousness may essentially involve, not an ability to find internal consistency between contradictory understandings, but the mental versatility to accommodate inconsistencies. We have warrant to sanctify our world with make-believe, carefully measuring that make-believe against a humane, responsible code of conduct.
Our lives should not be viewed as a contest to take as much as we can and to give as little as we can get away with. Rather, life is an adventure of human interrelationships where we all win when we all do our share. To walk in freedom and dignity, we need to avoid eating "the bread of shame".
Many of the central themes in the Haggadah are rooted in biblical thought. Among other teachings, the exodus forms the basis for the singular covenantal relationship between God and Israel; it highlights God’s greatness in history; and it serves as the model for the future redemption. In this essay, we will survey examples from various sections of Tanakh to see how these and related themes are developed.
With Hashem’s help, this crisis too shall pass. Until it does, your health care workers are all braving this pandemic to treat the ill. So too everyone must do his and her part to protect the most vulnerable among us. In this pursuit, we are all healers and partners with Hashem in saving the world.
Self-initiated directed travel can be undertaken whenever decision-making is needed on a pressing matter, or when feels chronically bored, stagnant, or emotionally adrift. One chooses an unfamiliar location at least several hours
away by transportation, preferably where extended strolling or hiking is possible, and goes there alone.
Rabbi Keith Flaks has been teaching at Yeshivat Orayta for the last number of years. Several years ago, he spent Pessah with the "lost tribe of Ephraim" in Southern India...and they learned a lot from the experience.
For democratic Orthodoxy, the ideal Jew is a moral agent who knows how to determine “what is right and good” (Deut. 6:18), who is prepared to hold Jewish leaders to account, and who is faithful to Torah’s norms and to one’s own Torah informed moral compass. The democratic Orthodox Jew challenges human authority when that authority conflicts with Torah’s norms.
There are practices and some beliefs in Judaism that most people today would define as superstitions. My aim here is to investigate some of these in order to see to what extent these practices or beliefs are coeval with what was considered science at the time of our Sages.