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If there is any truth to the mounting rape and misconduct charges facing Israeli President Moshe Katzav, it will be a sad day not only for Israel but all religious Jews. The truth is that at this point there is not much to say. Katzav is innocent until proven otherwise. That said, it does not…

Idolatry as “Bad habits,” “addictions,” “kissing Torah scrolls”: Weren’t these the kind of things pulpit rabbis spoke about in the 1950s on Shabbat when they couldn’t think of anything else to talk about? Both Rabbi Waxman and Rabbi Grossman fail to address the searing social and religious issues regarding idolatry and Torah today. As I…

I don’t share Rabbi Waxman’s ambivalence about whether kissing the Torah smacks of the very idolatry Judaism has always been so vigilant against. I think of it more like kissing a love letter: a physical expression of a passion for the writer, in this case God. Idolatry is when something takes the place of God…

The Torah scroll is taken out of the ark. The rabbi walks in a procession around the synagogue holding the Torah as congregants reach out with their tallises (prayer shawls) or siddurim (prayer books) to touch the scroll and then put the tallis or the siddur to their lips, thus giving the Torah a kiss.…

It’s ironic that Rabbi Grossman sees Sukkot as an enjoyable holiday. In its essence, the holiday is meant to make us feel uncomfortable and challenge our sense of rootedness and complacency. Yes it might say in Scripture that you should feel a sense of happiness and perhaps socially for some that does happen, but Rabbi…

I’m inclined to agree with Rabbi Grossman about the virtues of Sukkot relative to Yom Kippur. Too many American Jews are “twice-a-year Jews,” meaning they show up at synagogue for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Now granted, these are extremely important holidays, but they also give a skewed picture of what Judaism is, with their…

I don’t mean to sound heretical, but if given my druthers, I would rather Jews observe the seven days of Sukkot than the 25 hours of Yom Kippur. (Of course, I would prefer they do both, but this is one of those hypothetical conundrums.) It is more than an issue of the seven-to-one-day ratio. Yom…

It’s fascinating to see the wide range of intense emotions that fasting has generated on Virtual Talmud, from gratitude and appreciation to distaste, even disgust. I think one of the reasons we may have such strong feelings on the subject is that fasting stands outside of much of our day-to-day experience of Judaism, with its…

Rabbi Grossman seems to fast on Yom Kippur for reasons ranging from something to do with snapping at her son to not being in the Holocaust. This is all very nice. I, too, don’t like snapping at children. And boy, am I happy I am not in an Auschwitz gas chamber this September. But what,…

For Rabbi Stern, fasting on Yom Kippur is sociological and familial. He does it because the people around him are doing it. That may be enough of a reason for him, but it is certainly not for me. I fast because the Torah tells us to afflict ourselves on Yom Kippur and as far back…
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