Rabbi Jeremy Rosen: Shabbat Balak

It seems strange that the whole Parsha we read this week should be named after a Midianite/Moabite King, Balak, and be devoted to a non-Jewish magician Bilam.
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Thought for the week

On Sunday is the fast of the Seventeenth of Tammuz. It is a minor fast that lasts from dawn to dusk and ushers in a period of mourning that leads up to the 9^th of Av when we commemorate the loss of two Temples. Read more

Religious politics

The personal attacks on Naftali Bennet coming from the Charedi parties in Israel because he has been instrumental in excluding them from power and has stood up to their blackmail are disgusting. Read more

Hate Signalling

I have a love-hate relationship with the New York Review of Books. Read more

Philip Roth

Philip Roth (1933-2018) was one of the most successful American novelists. Read more

Conversion

The Bible nowhere explicitly talks about conversion, only about taking care of, and not oppressing the stranger, the Ger. Read more

Whose side are you on?

The latest round of fighting between Palestinians and Israel continues what has been a Hundred Years’ War and will in my opinion continue possibly for another hundred. Read more

Shavuot, Torah, and Humanity

As rockets continue to rain down on our families in Israel, and a civil war rages with mobs of hooligans attacking peaceful citizens and neighbours, I pray for three things. Read more

Armenian Genocide

April 24^th is the date of the annual memorial that  Armenians observe to recall the horrific massacres carried out by the Turkish Government in 1915. Read more

Meron

This week we celebrated Lag BaOmer, which is the thirty-third day of the Omer that I described two weeks ago. Read more

What’s wrong with us?

Israel’s 73rd Independence Day was an annual reminder of as close to a miracle as it gets. Read more

What is an Omer?

No, not the town in the Negev! The Biblical Omer refers to the sheaf of barley that was brought to the Temple, the day after Pesach, to mark the beginning of the new agricultural year. Read more

Big and Little Lies

The culture we live in nowadays is one of lies. The truth is that it has always been thus even if at certain stages, the lies have been more venal and destructive than others. Read more

Missing Children

One of the darkest episodes in the history of Israel is the ghastly story of the missing children of poor immigrants from Arab lands, airlifted to Israel  (on the Wings of Eagles project) in the early years of the State. Read more

Freedom

The New York Review of Books has recently devoted a lot of space to a review of “The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King” by Peniel E. Joseph. Read more

Who is a Jew?

Why is there such a fuss over the Israeli Supreme Court’s decision to allow converts to Judaism, as defined by the Reform and Conservative movements, to qualify for Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return? Read more

Mr Cohen of Ballachulish Ferry

A week ago, I gave a Zoom talk for the Scottish Jewish Archive centre. Read more

1848

The course of human civilization, if one can use that term, has progressed and continues to, in a series of slow cycles.  Read more

The Lost Ark

So many people love conspiracy theories, fantasies, and lost causes. Read more

Purim or Poor Them

Purim is the happiest and craziest day in the Jewish calendar and the only festival that celebrates an event in the Diaspora. But is it really? Read more

Darkness

It is almost a year since we first got an inclining of the disastrous Covid19. No one, not even the holy World Health Organization had any idea of how serious it was or how it would spread with it so much death, pain, and gloom. Read more

The greatest rabbi in the West

In the latest edition of the Brooklyn Jewish journal  Hakirah, there is a fascinating article on Rav Joseph Ber Soloveitchik (1903 -1993) by David. P. Goldman entitled The Rav’s Uncompleted Grand Design. Read more

Louis Jacobs

Any Anglo Jew from the 1960s will be familiar with the “Jacobs Affair” that divided the Jewish community more than any other religious debate in its history. Read more

Hard-hearted

My last blog was intentionally controversial. The aim was to point out that people rarely seem capable of hearing, let alone absorbing another point of view. Read more

The cuckoo coup

What a year America has had. To add to the scourge of Covid19, we have seen the self-destruction of a President and we are witnessing a serious degradation in the values of American society. There is no humility, no grace, no dignity, and no sense of humanity. Read more

Modesty

Democracy is the best form of government we have because it tries to resolve issues through respectful debate and dialogue, not through violence or coercion. Which of course applies equally to the Left and to the Right. Read more

Twelfth Night

As a child, I liked to feel how fortunate I was to have eight days of Chanukah, whereas the non-Jews only had one day. But then I learned that was not quite correct, they had twelve. In theory at least. Read more

Hasmonean Women

I realize what a patriarchal society we, like the rest of the world, have been until very recently. Read more

The Zohar

The Festival of Chanukah (however you spell it in English) in addition to its historical origins, is also a celebration of the long mystical tradition in Judaism. Read more

Obama and Israel

Former President Obama is regarded as something of a saint. His voice is the gospel of the Democratic and academic constituency of the USA. Read more

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