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Kingdom of Priests

Here’s a poignant footnote to our discussion of whether, for atheists, there can be meaning in life without reference to a transcendent reality.  Jewlicious praises a rebranding campaign by the Los Angeles Jewish Federation, quoting in turn a Jewish Telegraphic Agency blog, the Fundermentalist, about Jewish philanthropy. This enormous community organization, the L.A. Federation, canvassed…

Melanie Phillips has another terrific post about the “Secular Inquisition” being waged on behalf of Darwinism. When will they start stoning Intelligent Design advocates? She begins this way: The response to my post below on Intelligent Design has provided illuminating and revealing evidence of the ignorance, confusion, distortions, irrationality and malice that characterise this debate.…

From Iran comes news that a 30-year-old man convicted of adultery has been stoned to death while his partner in “crime” was spared on account of her having repented. The Reuters story notes: According to Iran’s Islamic penal code, men convicted of adultery should be buried up to their waists and women up to their…

Something that’s surprised me about blogging on Beliefnet is how many atheists seem drawn to a website devoted specifically to spiritual expression. One commenter told me to “Go away!” A little bit ironic, don’t you think? Anyway, I have a challenge for atheists and secondarily for agnostics. From where do you derive meaning in life?…

Over the Sabbath, my wife and my mother-in-law and I had the chance to hear a Torah discussion by Rabbi David Lapin, visiting from Toronto. A very understated and informal lecture on Jewish marriage law, but what charisma! You can hear him too on a huge number of recorded Torah lectures available entirely free at his website,…

On the Darwin debate, minds are opening in England in some very prominent places. First, A.N. Wilson affirmed the Darwin-Hitler connection. Now at the London Spectator, Melanie Phillips, author of Londonistan, rebukes Darwinists for deceiving the public by persistently conflating intelligent design with Biblical literalist creationism. She quotes Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller’s statement that ID…

A number of readers asked for it. My source is a midrash (that is, a work of Biblical interpolation) called Sifra that elaborates on Leviticus. The reference to same-sex marriage is unmistakable. Coincidentally, this particular note on the text comes in the context of this week’s Torah reading, Acharei Mot-Kedoshim.  Sifra is ancient and authoritative. A common traditional…

This started with a query from my Beliefnet editor, noting that Bnet readers have been searching for an answer to the question “Which book in the Bible is the most erotic?” The easy answer is the Song of Songs, but the more I thought about it, the more dissatisfied I became.  When you consider the…

Jay Michaelson has an interesting column in the Forward about the flood of recent books by Jews seeking to argue with Jesus and Christianity: [T]hese past few years have seen a small mountain of Jesus books arrive on my desk, most of them not worthy of review. Screeds about how Jesus got Judaism wrong, or…

An ancient Biblical tradition, a midrash, relates that the Canaanites wrote marriage contracts between man and man and woman and woman, and that this was one reason the land “vomited” them up in favor of the Israelites who took their place. The historicity of this isn’t the point. It’s the moral that matters, having to…
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