Articles

Would you like to study Torah with a Rabbi who has mastery over the text, depth of understanding, and breadth of knowledge? Do you want a teacher who not only is steeped in classic rabbinic interpretation, but who is aware of and sensitive to the literary features of the text, the relationships of Torah narratives with ancient stories of the Near East, insights of modern biblical scholarship?

All of us should want such a Rabbi and Teacher of Torah.

We have such a Rabbi and Teacher of Torah: Rabbi Moshe Shamah.

“All who are thirsty: come for water…”

—Isaiah 55:1

“It’s strange the way circles hook up with themselves.”

—Bob Dylan, Chronicles, p. 288

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The pattern is much the same everywhere – because the cause and effect is the same everywhere. It's probably true that the new communication technologies are catalyzing the process, but that process existed in ancient and medieval times too, so only the externals have changed, not the substance.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

—Albert Einstein

“Pyramids, cathedrals, and rockets exist not because of geometric theories of structures or thermodynamics, but because they were first a picture—literally a vision in the minds of those who built them.”

—Historian Eugene Ferguson

As the head of the Center for Women's Justice, I encounter on a daily basis the intractable entanglement—the “Gordian knot”—of State and (Orthodox) religion in Israel. This union of religion and state supports a gendered society, infringes on the basic rights of women, challenges the democratic values of the State, and threatens to undermine Israel's integrity as the political expression of the Jewish nation.

On Changes in Jewish Liturgy

Options and Limitations

By Daniel Sperber

Urim Publications, 2010, 221 pages          

Together with some friends, I’ve established an organization called KayamaMoms. I’m religious, 40 years old and unmarried and I would like to have children. Like me, there are thousands of women in Israel and the rest of the world who have dreamed their entire lives about having a family but unfortunately have not yet found the right partner.

An Orthodox synagogue finds itself in an unusual position as an educational institution. Although there are growing numbers of Conservative, Reform, and multi-denominational Day Schools, it is often a synagogue-based religious school that provides the primary Jewish education for non-Orthodox youth.

No issue in Israeli public life arouses the range and intensity of emotions as does anything relating to Hareidim and Hareidism—the terms used for the “ultra-Orthodox” and their lifestyle. [1]  A typical discussion on any Hareidi-related issue is laden with ideology, dogma, and opinion, but short on facts, let alone hard data.