Gil “A person can read their own life talmudically as such.
Hawa amina: “I thought I would be this kind of person.”
Qushya: Life challenged that assumption.
Teruṣ: I adapted, reinterpreted.
Masqana: My present self is temporary, provisional, awaiting new challenges.”
What I learn from my teacher.
Barukh Hashem.
Shabbath Shalom from the once and future city of Zion
“To be Jewish is to be modern, and vice versa.”
– R. José Faur z”l
Understood correctly, Jewish ideas are at the forefront of human development and are produced by a forward-thinking, pro-social outlook that sees law as an instrument of social perfection, both directly and by creating the conditions in which individual spiritual perfection can be obtained. Jewish civilization is nomocratic and egalitarian, based on reason and conscience, and founded upon the principles of social autonomy, rights, and responsibilities.
This naturally aligns with social progress and the concerns of political progressives.
There is also a strong conservative dimension to Jewish culture and society – after all, we are the people of tradition. But the essentially progressive nature of Judaism gets underplayed, misunderstood, and distorted in today’s discourse.
Light. What is light? Illumination of things. What is illumination? The alleviation of darkness. What is darkness? Absence. Absence of what? Light.
Statement on the Tiktok Discourse of Genocide in Gaza
The Mt. Zion Bureau of Public Affairs affirms the responsibility of every sovereign state, including Israel, to conduct military operations in accordance with international humanitarian law. We recognize that the current war in Gaza has caused profound suffering and immense civilian loss of life. Allegations of war crimes—including disproportionate use of force, attacks in densely populated areas, and restrictions on humanitarian aid—must be addressed with seriousness and transparency. We call for rigorous review and accountability where violations may have occurred.
At the same time, we categorically reject the accusation that Israel is engaged in genocide against the Palestinian people. Genocide, as defined by the 1948 UN Convention, requires intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Israel’s stated and operational objective is the destruction of Hamas as a terrorist organization responsible for the October 7 massacres, kidnappings, and continued rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. The tragic civilian toll of this war reflects the brutal reality of combat against an enemy deliberately embedded in civilian areas—not an exterminatory policy against Palestinians as a people.
We further note that Israel remains home to nearly two million Arab citizens who participate fully in the civic, political, and social life of the state. Their continued security and integration stand in stark contradiction to claims of genocidal intent. Where inflammatory rhetoric by individuals has strayed into language suggestive of extermination, such speech has been condemned within Israel’s political and legal system and does not reflect state policy.
The charge of genocide is not simply a legal question. It carries with it a historical echo. For centuries, Jews have endured false collective accusations—blood libels, deicide, dual loyalty—meant to strip them of legitimacy and justify violence against them. To misapply the label of genocide to Israel’s self-defense risks repeating this pattern: collapsing the distinction between the Israel Defense Forces, the State of Israel, and Jews worldwide, and recasting Jewish survival itself as a crime.
We therefore call upon the international community to distinguish between legitimate investigation of alleged violations of the laws of war and the politically weaponized discourse of genocide. The former is essential for the integrity of international law. The latter undermines it.
Israel will continue to defend its citizens against genocidal threats, as it has since its founding, while striving to uphold the standards of law and morality upon which its legitimacy rests.
– Mt. Zion Bureau of Public Affairs
The devastation of Gaza can still shock and pain me, as a thinking and feeling human being and as a religious Zionist, and pose a collective challenge to Israeli society that demands a coherent answer, without any need to redefine genocide in order to make it fit the horrific impact of this war on the lives of ordinary Gazans.
Is this how we want to wage war, as a nation?
And what does God say??
If the settled law is not enough, if the poseqim have no creative vision for this day, then Elul is here – according to kabbalistic legend, the transcendent king is accessible in the field of the heart’s imagination.
Pray on this then, and hear what our Creator speaks unto your heart.
NGL I kinda want to have open, honest, soulful conversations with people about Zionism in today’s world and the shared future of Palestinians and Israelis, and record them and release them as a podcast The Z Word.
Welcome, my dear
Daughter of many worlds
Dropped into this thin plane
Of cells and stardust
Across invisible bands
Beneath the rainbow
Form made flesh
Revelation of the obsidian light
Here, my dear
All is always new
Embracing the seed of your soul
Cosmic soil for your mind’s flower
Ever growing
Ever reaching
Back through the stars themselves
Tracing memories of the forest’s mystery
In ever wider circles of the known
Believe, my dear
In the deep roots
In the rising trunk
In the fruitful limbs
In the soaring canopy
Of your sacred destiny
In your own space
In your own time
You will know
You are home
A rough sketch of the ‘amida:
Through systematically developing a concept of the Creator and making that concept real through the act of dialogic address to the Creator, we bring about the redemption.
First, we establish the grounds for the encounter – praise: the ancestral relationship, the omnipotence, the transcendance.
Then, with those principles in mind, we address the Creator as the provider of, and beseech the Creator to bless us with, the following, in this specific order:
Awareness/Knowledge
Rethinking
Forgiveness
Liberation
Health
Prosperity
Ingathering
Lawful leadership
Punishment of the unjust
Reward of the just
Establishment of the perfected city
Emergence of the messianic archetype
…the whole ‘amida is a step by step process of actualization, each step is made possible by and builds upon the previous, culminating in:
Answered prayer
And then, we are ready for the ‘aboda of gratitude, concluding with the blessing of peace.
The merit to fulfill even a small precept (מצווה) is truly great, because no divine precept is truly small. 😀
I would like to suggest a new halakhic category of war.
We are familiar with:
– Mandatory war (מלחמת מצווה) – with the aim of clear self-defense (still applicable) or of defeating the violently oppressive nations identified in the law (no longer applicable).
– Discretionary war (מלחמת רשות) – with the aim of expanding the political jurisdiction of the Torah (only applicable with an active National Court).
To these I would add:
– Forbidden war (מלחמת איסור) – with any aim other than the above two.
I believe this third category of war is implicit in the biblical precept of “You will not murder” (לא תרצח) and is not explicit in the halakhic literature or discourse primarily because historical and material circumstances did not previously allow for the conditions in which it would need to be so pressingly articulated, and secondarily because it took millennia for humanity itself to recognize war as the (necessary?) evil it is and for this moral growth to natively and organically develop within the Israelite psyche.
However, we find ourselves in the present circumstances, and I believe the hour requires us to include the category of “forbidden war” in our halakhic calculus.