Posts Tagged: Jeremy Rosen
Examining the Zohar
The festival of Hanukkah (however you spell it in English), in addition to its historical origins, is also a celebration of the long mystical tradition...
Sukkot and the World
Rituals, laws, and customs exist to reinforce the fact that ideas are all very well, but we need actions to bring about change within ourselves...
Judaism in a Divided Society
The culture wars are raging around us. Anything or any person who is unacceptable to the culture police on either side is to be banned,...
Finding Love on Tu B’Av
Did you know that there was an ancient tradition that on two days of the year, unmarried girls used to go out dancing in the...
Why We Fast: To Learn the Dangers of Jewish Division
On the Seventeenth of Tammuz, we began the period known as the Three Weeks that culminate in the fast of the Ninth of Av (this...
Learning From the Past: Reckless Jewish Kings Through the Ages
The Fast of the Seventeenth of Tammuz that we have just passed initiates a three-week period of mourning for the loss, twice, of Jerusalem and...
Should Statues Have Been Erected in the First Place?
All of a sudden it has become fashionable in the US to take down or demolish some statues. There is a case to be made...
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...
Wellesley Tudor Pole and Living Our Best Lives
Plagues often bring out soothsayers and those who predict the end of days. Why else is Nostradamus still popular? Every culture has its unusual characters...
The Passion and Modern-Day Christian Antisemitism
What does primitive medieval antisemitism have to do with us here and now? The Passion Play, or Easter pageant, is a traditional Christian drama about the...
World War II and the Post-COVID World
May 8th is the anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe in 1945. It marks the final defeat of the Nazis,...
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....
The Need for Jewish Proofreaders
I read The Economist religiously every week. Its coverage of world affairs in a concise and readable form, combined with its cultural, scientific, and review articles,...
A Response to COVID-19
Friends, we are living under conditions that we have never experienced before. It is not a Holocaust of course. But it is akin to the...
