Posts Tagged: Jeremy Rosen blog
God Can’t Answer the Question of ‘Why’
Innocent worshipers were shot outside a synagogue in Israel. Children were mowed down intentionally at a bus stop in Jerusalem. Eleven people were shot in...
Rosh Hashanah and the Shmitah
Our New Year starts on the evening of September 6 (year 5782 in the Jewish calendar), and ushers in the new Sabbatical year. In Hebrew...
COVID-19, Haredi Jews and the Error of ‘Piety’
One of the most disturbing features of the pandemic has been the behavior of huge swathes of the Haredi community across the globe. There have, thank...
Why Do Some Jews Still Believe the Messiah Is Coming?
Whenever a major crisis hits, I encounter people who love to talk about the Messiah. Originally, the Messiah was simply an anointed king who would...
The Experience and Meaning of Prayer
We are living in a fraught, unpredictable world of conflicting values and policies -- so I am returning to an earlier post about prayer. What...
Israel and the Diaspora
As we approach Israel’s Independence Day, the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora remains ambivalent. Israel is faced with constant existential threats and low-grade warfare....
Is the Torah ‘True’?
“What is truth?” is the question that Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea, asked 2,000 years ago. It's possibly the most famous question of all...
Judaism and Evolution
In a recent article, a Yale University computer science professor, David Gelernter, said that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution has too many holes and is...
Shavuot and Cheesecake
Shavuot is the poor relative of the three pilgrim and harvest festivals mentioned in the Torah. It has none of the range of special rituals...
The Holocaust and Remembering Ben Hecht
Yom HaShoah is an appropriate time to remember Ben Hecht. Colin Shindler has an excellent piece on him in The Jewish Chronicle, and two weeks...
Why Asking Questions Is Good
The Haggadah that we read on Pesach was a response to the tragic loss of the Temple and Jewish political autonomy some 2,000 years ago....
Jewish Political Theory
It is often said that neither the Bible nor Judaism has a theory of politics or, indeed, of political systems. This is untrue. For 2,000 years,...
Forget Saying ‘Sorry’ — Just Be Honest
You are walking down a crowded New York street minding your own business, careful to avoid bumping into anyone else. Then someone smashes into you....
When Jewish Law Is Taken Too Far
"Halacha" is often translated as "Jewish law." But that is inadequate and misleading. Nowadays, we usually use the word law to mean jurisprudence. Halacha, however,...
