News of the Schism Has Been Greatly Exaggerated
Judaism is a religion and a people liable to split upon serious disagreement. At least, this is the sense of Judaism you may get from Jonathan Weisman’s New York Times report on the upcoming “Great Schism” between American Jews and Israeli Jews. The term is Christian, referring to the permanent rupture between the Catholic and […]
Nature, Wisdom, Prophecy, Torah, and G-d
Five avenues to repentance.
Faith is to stand in relation with the creator, and know my sins require punishment. Trust is to stand beyond relation with the creator, and therefore have an unreckoned future of goodness. Foolishness is not to know Him, wisdom is to relate to Him through intermediaries, and faith is to relate to Him directly through […]
We know that Torah is compared to food, but have we ever stopped to consider the simplest of culinary considerations pertaining thereto, namely, what pairs with it? Don’t start naming wines; wine is also Torah, and this isn’t one of those weird gastropubs where everything is made from the same ingredient. The fact is, Torah […]
The Cruel, the Less Cruel, and the Kind
They say the opposite of cruelty is kindness, and that the opposite of hate is love, but it is rare to find a man of unalloyed cruelty and hatred. A man of pure hatred is like a man without legs, a tragedy, but an exception that proves the rule. Most of us are cruel and […]
If Antiochus was my Rebbe (and such a thing is thoroughly impossible) he’d tell me how beautiful Judaism is. Antiochus looks at his men, at his enemies, at his deities, and sees a sublime order. Each of them is part of a story, which is another way of saying they each want something that they […]
I Won’t Know What Pittsburgh Means
Sometimes, when I’m bored, I imagine something truly preposterous—a man of space and time. Such a man would not see the world the way we do. I like to think he’d divide things neatly into cubic meters, or perhaps (with a nod to the issue of establishing an absolute frame of reference for such a […]
If the universe is created by G-d with human beings in mind, why is there so much of it?
The 3rd member of a Sukkot series. Member the 1st. Member the 2nd. “Every single thing one sees or hears is an instruction for his conduct in the service of G-d. This is the idea of avoda, service: to comprehend and discern in all things a way in which to serve G-d.” -The Holy Baal […]
Every argument, every compromise, every concession to pragmatism, every demarcation and limit and definition driven into the ground seeking solid bedrock for anchoring the chains, they make me sick. There are only two places I can actually live, sub-rational nihilism and faith. Subrational nihilism, the power of it — this is the good stuff. Let […]