Religion and COVID-19

There has been a great deal of negative publicity which religious communities in Israel and the United States were disregarding state and medical laws about social distancing. Read more

Pesach was always intended to be a challenge – To our way of life and our values.

Egypt, the most advanced civilization of its time, was being challenged by a single man with a different way of looking at things. Read more

A walk in the park

This past Shabbat, I went for a walk around Central Park. It was a beautiful day. The air was cool and fresh.  The sun was out and I was feeling good. Read more

The Economist

I think there’s been enough written about the virus crisis. Here is something less serious, to relieve the tension. Read more

Covid? Don’t Despair!

We are living under conditions that we have never experienced before. Read more

Eating an idol

Eating plays a very important part in Jewish rituals, every day of the year. Read more

Poor Him

Purim. Poor Him. But “poor” who? Ahasuerus the drunken incompetent sop of a passive king? Vashti the deposed queen? Perhaps all the virgins corralled into the king’s harem? Esther, the Metoo# nice Jewish girl who had to sleep with the king and face the chance that if she failed to please him she would be denied the starring role and end up an extra in the King’s seraglio? Or Mordechai whose refusal to bow to Haman (thus offending the express command of the King) and disobeying the king’s command not to appear at court in sackcloth, put the whole of the Jewish community at risk? Should we feel sorry for Bigtan and Teresh the incompetent plotters? Or is Haman, who overreached in his quest for power, driven by ambition and hatred, ended with his ten sons strung up on a scaffold? Take your pick. And people do. Read more

Vilem Flusser

I met the Jewish Czech philosopher, Vilem Flusser, at a conference on Contemporary Judaism and Zionism convened by Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jackobovits in London in 1980. He stood out in a gathering of rabbis and academics. Despite the differences in our backgrounds, age, and religious commitment, I felt a very strong bond with him.  His eyes sparkled with delight in challenging accepted ideas. Like me, he was a maverick. Read more

Jewish Names

We Jews are hyper-sensitive. Recently, several people have told me how embarrassed they are that Jewish names are so prominent in the current spate of legal cases involving sexual abuse. Read more

Deborah

I have always been fascinated by the Biblical Deborah. Not the one in Genesis, but the most impressive one in the Book of Judges. Read more

Jewish Tree Huggers

 On Monday we celebrate the New Year for trees! Yes, we were tree huggers long before it became fashionable. Where did we get it from? Read more

My problem with religion

Marx was right. Religion is the opiate of the masses. And Freud was right, too, that religion is wish-fulfilment and satisfies the need for a father figure. Read more

Erich Fromm

Erich Fromm, was one of the most influential psychiatrists of the last century. He was educated in Germany. When the Nazis came to power in 1934, he moved to Switzerland and then on to New York. Read more

Genius & Anxiety by Norman Lebrecht

Genius and Anxiety: How Jews changed the World 1847-1947 by Norman Lebrecht, is the best, popular Jewish interest book in years. Read more

Antisemitism

The Bible says that poverty will never cease from the earth. Sadly, hatred and prejudice will never cease either. Some hatreds are more widespread and persistent than others. Of these cultural and religious hatreds, antisemitism has always been the most persistent and widespread. Read more

Bulawayo

In the summer of 1966, I was studying in the great Yeshiva of Mir in Jerusalem. One day, I received a call from Rabbi Professor Dr. Louis Rabinowitz, former Chief Rabbi of South Africa and then Vice Mayor of Jerusalem.

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Chanukah and Xmas

To the memory of Dr. Daniel Cammerman, a good, brilliant person, and a much-admired and respected pediatrician, taken tragically too soon from us. May his memory be a blessing.

This week I was asked by a non-Jewish friend, whether atonement plays a part in Chanukah as it does in Xmas. At first, I did not understand the question. But then it got me thinking of the differences between the two festivals. Read more

Better angels

Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg said that “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Read more

Capitalism

The popular narrative of the moment is that Capitalism has failed. Read more

Pompeo’s gift

Good news. Bad news. Read more

Truth

“What is truth?” is the question Pontius Pilate, the governor of Judea, asked two thousand years ago. Possibly the most famous question of all time! Read more

Maimonides

It is a well-known saying that “ From Moses to Moses, there was no one as great as Moses.” The second Moses the saying refers to is the Moses known as “Rambam”. Which is an acronym of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon. Or, in secular usage, Maimonides. Read more

The Balfour Declaration

The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, was the first recognition for two thousand years that Jews had as much right to a homeland of their own as any other nation or people. Read more

Impeachment

In 1599, a group of London merchants got together to petition Queen Elizabeth 1^st to grant a charter to “trade on wares, jewels or merchandise in the East Indies.” A year later, it was granted. And so began the life of the East India Company (EIC). Read more

Sin? Not such a big deal

Next week we will restart the annual Torah reading cycle and that always reminds me of Sin! Adam and Eve and all that. Read more

Succot and the World

Every Jewish festival has several different levels of significance. There are always personal, national, agricultural and universal themes. Read more

Why do bad things happen

For thousands of years, we have been asking why God lets bad things happen to good people and good things happen to very bad ones. Read more

Remember

The occasion that we now call Rosh Hashana, is referred to in the Bible only as Zihron Teruah – the Day of Remembering with Sound. One is bound to ask: “remembering what? And what does the sound of the Shofar have to do with it?” Read more

The Jews of Mashhad

History is going out of fashion. It is declining as a subject taught at universities. It is seen as irrelevant to the great surge of technology and finance and out of favour with the politics of “me” and “now”. Read more

Evolution

In a recent article, Yale University computer science professor, David Gelernter, said that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution has too many holes and is now too old to be a probable scientific theory. Read more

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