Inspiration Faith & Prayer Health & Wellness Entertainment Love & Family
Newsletters Special Offers

Virtual Talmud

I understand Rabbi Grossman’s discomfort with including a person in Israel’s government who isn’t committed to the notion of Israel as a Jewish state, but I also think that the term “Jewish state” is so vague and amorphous that it makes a dangerous litmus test. If “Jewish state” means religiously Jewish, then we should kick…

As we prepare to celebrate Yom Haatzmaut the question brewing around many political circles is: Is there a Muslim partner even worth dialoguing with? Recently Gary Bauer, the one-time Republican presidential candidate and Christian activist, and Mort Klein, the head of the Zionist Organization of America, wrote an op-ed that appeared in The New York…

I applaud Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for appointing a Muslim Israeli Arab to the Cabinet. What a contrast to the surrounding Arab nations, many of whom refuse to allow Jews to be citizens. However, I disagree with Rabbi Waxman that this is a position to applaud. Why? Because Olmert should never have accepted into…

Recently Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert created a controversy by naming Raleb Majadele, an Arab-Israeli Muslim, to his cabinet – the first time a Muslim has held such a high-ranking position in Israel’s government. Predictably, reactions were strong. Many moderate and liberal Israeli leaders praised the move, the right condemned it as undermining the nature…

I agree with Rabbi Waxman that there can be no real restitution for the horrors of the Holocaust. However, restitution is important for another reason: the agreement by Germany to pay restitution signified that Germany publicly accepted responsibility for its role in the destruction of European Jewry. There is a form of justice in such…

In response to Rabbi Stern’s post, it is impossible to think about righting the wrongs of the Holocaust because the cruelty, barbarism, and evil on such an unimaginable scale preclude any talk of justice. The work of the Claims Conference should be recognized as an attempt to assist aging survivors in need and not as…

In 1952 the Prime Minster of Israel, David ben Gurion made one of the gutsiest and hardest political decisions ever to have been made, he accepted restitution funds from West Germany –a country that had just murdered six million Jews. Many objected including future Prime Minister Menachem Begin. Ben Gurion held firm and saw the…

Rabbi Grossman writes movingly about the reasons she abstains from chametz on Passover. As a Reconstructionist Jew, I too believe that God doesn’t intervene in the world to punish wrongdoers or those who violate the commandments, and yet I still place great importance on them. When we choose to observe Passover by abstaining from bread…

Rabbi Grossman asserts that she does not eat bread on Passover because she “loves God.” Her metaphor pulls at my heart but it also pulls on my brain. Do we really believe that God asks us to practice mitzvot in the same way a lover asks us to take out the garbage? Is God that…

The Torah prohibits eating bread or any form of leavened product, chametz, during Passover. The penalty for eating or even owning chametz is severe: being cut off from the people Israel (Exodus 12:15). Such a punishment sounds descriptive rather proscriptive: those who wantonly eat bread on Passover are certainly making a statement of disengagement from…
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners