The Don Pacifico Affair

As diplomats shuttle to and from the Middle East and countries threaten each other, the USA has sent its navy to the Mediterranean. It is worth going back to look at the Don Pacifico Affair 176 years ago. Read more

Shabbat Toldot: Esau or Ishmael

Last week, we read about how Isaac and Ishmael came together to bury their father. And in fact, they lived together at the same place, Be’er Lechai Roi. Their coming together seems to have been complete. Read more

Unimaginable pain

The unimaginable pain on seeing the evidence of children tortured, limbs cut off and burnt to death, screams for an explanation. Why did God let this happen? Read more

Shabbat Chayey Sarah: Mind Your Language

The reading from the Torah this week starts off with Avraham burying Sarah his wife in “The Cave of Machpelah” which he buys from the Hittites who were living there at that time. Read more

Hostages

We are in the midst of a horrendous hostage crisis. Kidnapping is such a fundamental crime that it is one of the Ten Commandments. Read more

Shabbat Vayeyra: Who is Sodom today?

Can a whole society be corrupt? Surely, some people must be able to see when things begin to go wrong, or peer pressure is just too powerful to resist. Read more

Universalism and Tribalism

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Shabbat Lech Lecha: Bad people and good

We are living under conditions that remind us of how much we Jews can be hated and to what extremes our enemies can go in order to express such hatred. Read more

Noah, Hamas and Evil

Why did we celebrate Simchat Torah? Read more

Shabbat Bereishit: United We Stand

We will start reading the Torah from the beginning again this week. Read more

Benjamin Disraeli and Sucot

I have always admired Rabbi Marc Angel. He is the Emeritus Rabbi of Congregation Shearith Yisrael, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue in New York a position he has held since 1969. Read more

Succot: Fun or Politics

Succot is the most innovative and multifaceted of all our Festivals. Coming after the solemn Holy Days it is the most fun, too. And it concludes with a day of national unity, something that seems as unlikely and remote now, as it ever did in the past. Read more

Jonah

The Book of Jonah is only forty-eight verses long, but it is one of the most popular books of the Bible. Read more

Days of pain and joy

We are now in the Jewish month of Elul. In the Northern Hemisphere, we say goodbye to the ‘lazy hazy crazy days of summer’, as the song goes. Pleasure is over, back to business. Read more

Shabbat Nitzavim and Vayeylech: Secrets

This week’s Torah includes this sentence. “The hidden ( secrets) belong to our God and the revealed things are for us and our children forever. To carry out all the words of this Torah” (Deuteronomy 29:28). Read more

Clive Marks ז״ל Lamed Vavnik

In my long life in Jewish affairs, I have met very few prominent public figures who were or are righteous in the true sense. Read more

Shabbat Ki Tavo: The Land of Israel

“When you enter the land that your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take the first fruit of the soil, which you harvest from the land that your God giving you, and put them in a basket and go to the place that God chooses and to the priest in charge at that time and say to him, “I acknowledge this day before your God that I have entered the land that swore to our fathers to assign us.” ( Deuteronomy 26:1-2). Read more

Holocaust trauma

We all experience traumas of different kinds. Some are obviously far more serious than others. Read more

Shabbat Ki Teytsey: Long Life

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The British Mandate

The British Mandate of Palestine was established on July 24^th, 1922. Read more

Shabbat Shoftim: Kings and Judges

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Synagogue or Temple

This month of August is the season of travelling, going on vacation in the northern hemisphere. Read more

Shabbat Re’eh: Adding or Subtracting

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Shabbat Eykev: Chosen People

It still amazes me how often I hear non-Jews claim that we Jews are so arrogant and exclusive because we claim to be the Chosen People. And they happily ignore that Christianity and Islam proudly claim to be the Chosen People of God or Allah. Read more

Sadness and Joy

Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of Av, reminds us of the greatest catastrophes in our history. Read more

Messianism and the 9th of Av

Regardless of how well or poorly Jews have integrated into their host societies, in each generation, they have fasted over the two destructions of Jerusalem and the Temple in 586 BCE and 70 CE. Read more

Shabbat VaEtchanan: Law or Lore

The reading from the Torah this week is remarkable in that it combines the two most important texts in the Torah. Read more

Shabbat Devarim: The books of the bible

Why do we call the fifth book of the Torah that we start this week Devarim but non-Jews ( and some Jews) call it Deuteronomy? Read more

Utopia

In 1551 the English diplomat and scholar Sir Thomas More, living in the reign of King Henry 8^th, wrote a book called Utopia. Read more

Constantine or Licinius

Of all the Roman emperors, I would say that Constantine, more than any other, was responsible indirectly for the two thousand years of Christian oppression of the Jews. Read more

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