Nathan Lopes Cardozo

 

Some time ago, I had a long talk with Dr. Jacques Lopes Cardozo, my only brother, age 66 and two years my junior. We spoke about our early years, growing up in our parents’ home in the Netherlands. Although we were children of a mixed marriage (Jewish father, non-Jewish mother), we took a keen interest in Judaism. Our father was a very proud Jew, and our mother was raised in a strong Jewish cultural milieu in Amsterdam where she felt completely at home. If not for her “Jewishness,” my father would probably not have married her. In fact, our mother was in many ways more Jewish than some members of my father’s family who were halakhically Jewish but completely disconnected. I decided to do giyur[1] at the age of 16, and my mother followed suit many years later. Read more

 

 

What makes one a Jew? Being born to a Jewish mother? Converting to Judaism? Not really. It is living by the spiritual order of Judaism that makes one a Jew; living through the Jews of the past and with the Jews of the present and future. We are Jews when we choose to be so; when we have discovered Jewishness on our own, through our search for the sacred; when we fight the never-ending spiritual struggle to find God, realize that the world needs a moral conscience, and carry that exalted burden so as to save the world and provide it with a mission. Read more

 

 

Whenever I think of the huge demonstration of Hareidi yeshiva students at the beginning of this month, I think of Gateshead Yeshiva in England where I spent many years studying Talmud. It is Europe’s most famous yeshiva and a bastion of Torah study in the Hareidi world. Paradoxically, I also think of Spinoza’s incomparable masterpiece, the Ethics, written in a small room in Voorburg, the Netherlands. Read more

 

 

Preface: It is with great hesitation and trepidation that I write this essay. I do not want to be misunderstood. I am in love with Judaism, rabbinic tradition, and halakha. I regard them as holy, and they are at the very core of my existence. Nonetheless, I am concerned about the future of Judaism and its impact on our young people. Read more

 

 

In his magnum opus, Ha’amek Davar, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Berlin, (also called Netziv, 1817-93), the last leader of the illustrious yeshiva of Volozhin, Russia, asks why the first book of the Torah, Bereshith is also called: Sefer Hayashar, “the book of those who are upright”. In his own unusual way, Netziv responds that this is due to the fact that the three patriarchs, Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaacov, the main figures in this book, were men of uncompromising straightforwardness, justice and mercy. Read more