Articles

Many Jews in our day, like many of our brethren of other tribes, are seeking
to mend the fractures that divide us from ourselves and from others, and to
find ways to heal the wounds that afflict us only six decades after the
Holocaust and the rebirth of Israel. Amid these efforts, an idealistic,
scholarly nineteenth-century rabbi from Livorno seems,
to some, to provide a beacon of hope and humanity.

One of the great rabbinic sages of the 20th century was Rabbi Benzion Meir Hai Uziel (1880-1953). A profound scholar from a distinguished Sephardic rabbinical family, Rabbi Uziel served as Israel’s Sephardic Chief Rabbi from 1938 until his death in 1953.

The Shulhan Arukh, composed by rabbi Joseph Caro in the 16th century, is a canonical code of Jewish Law. In this work, rabbi Caro writes that a ceremony of Giyyur (=‘conversion') is valid only if it includes Qabbalat Mitzvot. Rabbi Caro does not explain what this phrase means.

Question: May women recite Kaddish in the synagogue?

The problem of the agunah—the woman whose husband refuses to give her a Jewish divorce—challenges the viability of Orthodoxy in a modern world that stands, if I may be given some poetic license, on the three pillars of equality, human rights, and the autonomy of the individual. How can it be that a Jewish woman in the twenty-first century is still dependent on the whims of her husband for her marital freedom?
In this article, I have three goals: