Galut, return, and the meaning of leaving.
Chabad is a diverse, complex, and trans-dimensional organization. I have personally had great experiences with Chabad rabbis and families. I greatly respect their community building and social work, and I find their Torah to be very thought-provoking, even when I disagree with specific claims they may make or conclusions they may reach. (For example, the … Read more
Allahu Akbar. But also: “A strong atheistic explanation has to work without invoking chosenness, providence, metaphysics, or teleology, while still accounting for the extraordinary empirical fact-pattern: a tiny, dispersed, repeatedly targeted ethnocultural group not only survives but regenerates political autonomy, cultural creativity, and demographic continuity over multiple millennia. The best explanation in secular scholarship combines … Read more
Elephantine. Idumea. Himyar. Kaifeng. Samaritans. Bené Anusím. Bene Israel. Beta Israel. Bene Menashe. Igbo. Qaraites. Amazighs. Palestinians. Ashkenaz. Sepharad. Teiman. Paras. Jewish Studies is an outdated discipline. It’s time to get serious about Israelite Studies.
The Igbo culture always surprises me. Today I learned that those Igbos that still pray according to the ways of Omenana, convene an additional service steeped in tradition (after they recite together the tephilloth that they have learned from Jewish sources) with the invocation: “Whom do Igbos serve?” “Yah!” I don’t think we’re talking about … Read more
“My dearly beloved fellow New Yorkers, It’s an honor and privilege to not only be one of you but to fight for this opportunity to represent and lead you – all of you. New York is a city that is strong because of its diversity, not just in terms of of culture – although we’ve … Read more
The racing of Jewish people as “white” has a lot to do with developments in American racial politics over the course of the 20th century and little to do with contemporary or historical Jewish people. In actuality, Jewish people are of West Asian descent and have since absorbed the genes of other human communities on … Read more
Everyone’s entitled to their personal opinion but people who fetishize exile do not and can not represent the Jewish nation, in any serious context. Whether in the faculty of Harvard, the administration of the Rabbanut, the opinion pages of major media outlets, or wherever else Jewish representation matters and has meaningful consequences for Jewish autonomy.
Being Jewish in an unredeemed world means living under essentially unfair conditions stacked against you, where you are the least understood yet the most well-known in the international room. Where a magnifying glass is held to your every deed solely because you insist on your difference, and where your own perspective is neither acknowledged nor … Read more
“My language is [American English]. My culture, my attainments are [North Eastern American]. I considered myself [American] intellectually, until I noticed the growth of anti-Semitic prejudice in [the United States]. Since that time, I consider myself no longer a[n American]. I prefer to call myself a Jew.” Truth be told, I noticed the trend towards … Read more
I was concerned about the welfare of American Jewish communities when the level of antisemitism was holding at semi-random vandalism, physical assaults, and widespread bloodlibels about Israel. The people at the top occasionally repeated some of those bloodlibels, it’s true, but at least it was clear that they weren’t going to oversee the mass disenfranchisement … Read more