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Jewish Religion

Jewish Holidays

Measure for Measure

April 12, 2025 No Comments

Pessah is more than only the Jewish people’s longing to be free to serve the world by finding treatments for diseases, water for drought-stricken areas, and so on. Pessah is also meant to bring to the forefront of Jewish consciousness the belief that human actions have consequences.

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Pride, Humility and Compassion

October 2, 2024 No Comments

Pride, Humility and Compassion For Jews who do not live within the “four cubits” of the Halakhah[1], the High Holidays are an opportunity to bring family members together, dust out a few traditional culinary recipes, and contact

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The Passover Message

April 11, 2024 No Comments

The unpredictable, inexplicable help that we encounter   With the exodus from Egypt, something radically new happened: history took an unexpected turn, and the world suddenly changed. Exodus, the book that recounts this event, tells us that

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תנ׳׳ך

TaNaKh

The purpose of the present TaNaKhic reflections—which somehow follow the weekly portion read at the synagogue- is to open a discussion about the foundational literature of the people of Israel, a literature without which no Judaism is possible.

Reading the Book of Genesis בראשית Today

Survival, Deterrence, Honor, Vengeance?
December 13, 2024 0Comments

This is such a terrible story that one has to ask what is the purpose of keeping its memory alive. And from all places, nowhere else but in Israel’s formative literature: the TaNaKh.
There are two possible answers to this question:

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Jews Don’t Do This
December 6, 2024 0Comments

Traditionally, Jews have been highly conscious of their behavior as a group, as “am Israel,” as the people of Israel. Unity and solidarity have been distinctive aspects of that behavior.
If the idea of “Jews don’t do this” doesn’t keep on coming up every time Jews misbehave among themselves and toward others, Erich Fromm’s rumination that we will still have an ethical heritage, but it will soon be spent could become true.

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Isaac’s Wells
November 28, 2024 0Comments

Even though I approached chapter 26 with an open mind and wide eyes, I had to ask why this particular sentence was written. Surely, the author must have understood that for a story to be passed down through the generations, it needed to be current.

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Reading the Book of Exodus-שמות Today

Line- by- line Biblicaltext and commentaries: https://www.21stcenturyjudaism.com/the-book-of-exodus/
https://www.21stcenturyjudaism.com/the-book-of-exodus/
Moses: The Man
April 11, 2024 0Comments

Starting with the Book of Exodus (Shemot)- and throughout the following three remaining books of the Torah- the figure of Moses is the guiding force. He is, in fact the single most central figure in the TaNaKh.

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God’s “Absence” in Egypt
April 11, 2024 0Comments

“The four centuries in Egypt pass without a tale worth telling. As with much of Israel’s desert period and the later Babylonian captivity, the Bible considers this sojourn devoid of noteworthy events.”
This kind of historical “blackout” has driven critics to ask: “What was God doing during those years the Israelites suffered under the Egyptians?”

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The Hyksos
April 11, 2024 0Comments

“…we cannot ignore the possible inclusion of the expulsion of the Hyksos in the source materials which was available for literary activities. One may assume that the Hyksos experience was retold in different ways and in different circles through time. This is not to say that the Hyksos experience should be identified with the story about the Israelites living Egypt. However, the Hyksos event could have been part of the … common tradition which the biblical narrator used for background […] exodus and the consequent wanderings in the wilderness are part of a historical chain of happening and traditions […]”

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The Hardening of the Heart
April 11, 2024 0Comments

The Pharaoh of the Book of Exodus is possessed of a ruthless and stubborn character. He is an egocentric, unemotional human being, devoid of all compassion, incapable of feeling the pain of others, shame, or guilt.

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The unpredictable, inexplicable help that we encounter
April 18, 2024 0Comments

all through Jewish history, from the Exodus to the Maccabean Revolt to the rising from the ashes of the Nazi Holocaust to the creation of the modern State of Israel, the end result was not the to-be-expected consequences. It was something that surprised even the most optimistic speculations about human capacity.

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An Incident in a Small Middle Eastern Tribe
April 13, 2024 0Comments

What really happened that night, on that day hundreds and hundreds of years ago, when the Book of Exodus tells us that

Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians; and there was a great cry in Egypt… And he called for Moses and Aaron by night and said: ‘Rise up, get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as you have said. Take both your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone; and bless me also.’

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 The Hidden Inner Compass
April 11, 2024 0Comments

“The Hebrew midwives disobey Pharaoh. His own daughter thwarts him, and her maidens assist. This Egyptian princess schemes with female slaves, mother and daughter, to adopt a Hebrew child whom she names Moses. As the first to defy the oppressor, women alone take the initiative which leads to deliverance.”

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Let’s Talk About Miracles
April 13, 2024 0Comments

To paraphrase Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Jews do not keep their faith because of the miracles they experience. It is their faith that leads them to interpret their life as miraculous.

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The Ten Plagues
April 18, 2024 0Comments

The miracles reported in the Bible were supposed to strike the reader as miraculous. Even if some natural phenomena can be found at the heart of the Ten Plagues, the theology rather than the natural history of the plagues intrigued the biblical authors and inspired them to tell the tale of the plagues as they did.

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Reading the Book of Leviticus-ויקרא Today

Vaykra

March 25, 2025 No Comments

If the observation of the French philosopher Voltaire that “the Bible is more famous than known” is true, then anthropologist Mary Douglas’ comment regarding the third book of the TaNaKh is its confirmation. Leviticus, she says, “Is

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