Gil Ebrahim Raisolsadati (Raisi) שם רשעים ירקב was known as “the Butcher of Tehran” for his tenure on the government’s prosecutorial committee, in which he was responsible for the deaths of thousands of political prisoners (that’s totalitarian-speak for dissidents). His fundamentalist politics represented the betrayal of the ostensibly liberal student movement which won the Iranian ayatollahs … Read more
I’m raced as White by American cultural standards. My rabbi is raced as Black. In reality, that pesky intruder into social fantasies, neither of us is either White or Black. Not just because both of us are Jewish by birth and American cultural standards have nothing to do with our traditional culture. But because race … Read more
I’m sorry your grandparents lost their house. Their orchard. Their field. I’m sorry if it was my grandparents who drove them out, I’m sorry if they fled, willingly or unwillingly, away from advancing armies and militias, deep into the fog of war. I’m sorry that their home, that they built with their own hands or … Read more
What do we call this state, when we pray for its survival? Even when I was anti-Zionist, the words still caught my ear and made me think: ראשית צמיחת גאולתנו Not yet the final liberation from the idolatrous world of hierarchy, empire, and colonialism… Not even the full blossoming of that liberation, a bright dawn … Read more
Diaspora Judaism is an anachronistic extension of the experience of exile, and lacking both a stable national existence (let alone the social institutions of a nation) and a coherent collective identity, can not hope to adequately address itself to the full condition of humanity. Land Judaism was revived in the image of Diaspora Judaism and … Read more
This should go without saying but given what I’m seeing shared these days (to be fair, after six months of warfare, psychological and actual, and antisemitism erupting worldwide, but nonetheless): Palestinians are not The Enemy. Arabs are not The Enemy. Muslims are not The Enemy. Hamas is The Enemy. Hezbollah is The Enemy. Khomeini and … Read more
Unconventional advice: For beginners looking to learn Mishne Torah in order to understand how to practically observe the law, reading the book straight through from the beginning can be a mistake, especially for the modern reader. As fundamental as philosophy is to the Maimonidean system – and I don’t mean to undermine that centrality in … Read more
Morning thoughts on Zionism and the Hebrew Bible: The European Zionists of the 19th century did not invent Zionism. They merely took the banner of Zion that the prophets had first raised and that the sages then passed down from generation to generation in all our prayers and in all our rituals and in all … Read more
I thankfully was able to obtain a copy of R Moshe Shamah’s “Recalling the Covenant,” which includes his commentary on the biblical censuses as well as an appendix on biblical number symbolism and the usage of numbers in the Hebrew Bible, apparently based on the theories of the polymath R S D Sassoon (whose only … Read more
How did the physical constants of the universe become fine-tuned to support stable and ordered complexity in the universe? How did the first DNA replicators form and allow the diversity of life as we know it to evolve? How did the first members of the human species develop the linguistic units and structures necessary to … Read more