May 107 minFreedom, climate change and the Pandemic“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” So begins Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s book “The Social Contract.” I’ve been thinking abou...
Dec 19, 20195 minLanguage, Prayer, Compassion, Interpretation Happy Chanuka! What follows are some words of Torah that I offered on Saturday night in honor of the 25th anniversary of the passing of m...
Dec 5, 20194 minNetanyahu Blames everyone but himselfOne well-known example of “chutzpah” is someone who murders his parents, then pleads for mercy from the court because he is an orphan. Wa...
Sep 1, 201914 minThe Great Fake Imagine a shiny Cadillac pulls up to your house and a guy in a fancy suit, smelling of cologne, knocks on your door. “Just sign this,” he...
May 11, 20193 minLurking within is the Holy Urge Parshat Toldot 1 F WE COULD X-RAY OUR HEARTS — NOT THE fist-sized muscle, but the pulsating center from which our dreams and desires emer...
May 11, 20193 mina SLOW bURNING eXPLOSION LIKE THE sUNParshat Shmot SOMETIMES, THINGS GET WORSE before they get better. Sometimes, things get worse even as they are getting better— as realit...
May 11, 20193 minWar DamageParshat Naso Who fought the first religious war? The answer, according to Genesis, is Cain and Abel: "Cain brought an offering to the Lor...
May 11, 20194 mingATEWAY OF THE pERSECUTEDParshat Vayetze Jacob, escaping his murderously angry brother, more or less stumbles unto "the gates of heaven," described laconically in...
May 6, 20197 minPower to the PeopleTorah' for Israel's Jubilee May 1998 (first published Jerusalem Report) For 50 years, Israelis have allowed the state to shape their iden...
Apr 29, 20194 minJewish Intimacy: Nitzavim VaYelechLosing God and Finding Him is Part of What it Means to be a Jew GOOD NEWS: WE ARE NOT THE FIRST generation to be fraught with alarm over ...
Apr 4, 20191 minparshat hashavuathis is about the Torah portion of the week So here will be all kinds of writings from the Torah portion of the week.
Mar 27, 20193 minReturn to the Garden of Eden Paashat Shlach Lecha. Originally published in "The People and the Book", Jerusalem Report, June 15 1995. The unfinished story of the Gard...
Mar 26, 201917 minMasters of the Universe Israel's economic planners have fallen under the sway of the International Monetary Fund, and are hypnotized by the Credit Rating Agencie...
Mar 25, 201910 minWhy Has Social Justice been Written out of the Torah? We are faced with a religious leadership that is largely indifferent to the economic gaps that have opened up in Israel, or the neo-liber...
Mar 17, 201916 minRabbi Yitz Greenberg: Profundity and CourageYitz Greenberg, 73 years old, is arguably the most important rabbi that American Jewry has yet produced, and the most profoundly American...
Mar 7, 201911 minInside Out In the past, those figures who most represented the Jewish people’s universalistic thrust, such as the Pauline Jesus and Marx, soundly re...
Feb 28, 201915 minShlomo's TorahShlomo’s Torah transported listeners emotionally and imaginatively, connecting them to inner states of longing and healing — to a differe...
Feb 28, 201913 minMessiah Now Chabad Messianists, the Rebbe, and the Future of Judaism On April 9 this year, some four thousand men and women crammed into Yad Eliyahu,...
Feb 27, 201910 minיד לא נעלמהברדיפה אחרי כסף וכוח הולכים ומשתלטים כמה תאגידי ענק על משאבי הטבע והכלכלה של העולם כולו. התהליך, אשר גורם להרס חייהם ותרבותם של מאות מילי...
Feb 25, 201914 minThe Brutal Regime Across the Red Sea Eritreans in Israel claim they are refugees from a murderous regime. In their thousands, they have braved Sudan and the Sinai desert in ...