• Fear and Loathing in Beit Shemesh

    Rape is not about sex, it’s about violence.  So too Orthodox Jewish men attacking little Orthodox Jewish girls in Beit Shemesh because they were wearing short sleeves this past week http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/12/27/3090916/israelis-rally-around-naama-women  was not, God forbid about tzniut, the Jewish notion of modesty (the perpetrated acts were of course anything but modest),  but about power. In Israel religion is…

  • Why Some Orthodox Jews in Israel are Violent

    Why don’t Orthodox Jews in America act violently against women who are not dressed modestly, while some in Israel do?   There are to my knowledge almost no such outbursts in the USA, whereas in Israel we read about them quite often, such as this week  http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/12/27/3090916/israelis-rally-around-naama-women    In fact the attitude of even right…

  • Hanukkah 2011: A Hanukkah Irony

    Hanukkah today is a holiday of great irony. Though not a Biblical holiday, and certainly not Judaism’s most essential holiday, Hanukkah has taken on an exaggerated importance in America, due I think, to its calandrical proximity with one of Christianity’s most important festivals. Hanukkah commemorates the war in the year 166 B.C.E. between the Jews…

  • Were our Avot Perfect? (Part 2)

    Last week I wrote a blog post on another blog in which I suggested Abraham had on some level failed the test of bringing his son Isaac as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah.  That instead of bringing him perhaps the more ethical response would have been to protect the innocent child even in the face…

  • It is Meritorious to be a Jew: The Conversion of Children

    Recently I met with a young couple whose wedding I will soon perform.  They are both observant and the man was born a Jew.  The woman was converted as a young child since her mother was not Jewish, though her father was.   She and her siblings were converted as children by a very Chashuv Rav…

  • Purim 2011: Purim Versus Halloween

    The leaves fall and the air turns crisp and an underlying feeling of fear and foreboding enters our neighborhoods.   Graves pop us in front yards along with skeletons and the like, bringing death out of its boundaries and into our domains.  Parents, many Jewish parents included, will encourage their children to dress up in frightful…

  • Rosh Hashanah: A day of Insight not Atonement

    What is the difference between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?  We often refer to both as days of judgment, yet they seem as different as night and day.  Rosh Hashanah is a Yom Tov, a joyous holiday, on which we eat and drink and have simcha, joy.   In contrast, on Yom Kippur we are filled with awe and…

  • Rosh Hashanah 2011

    On September 17th and 18th this year Jewish people around the world will celebrate the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah.   The word Rosh Hashanah does not mean “new year,” it literally means in Hebrew, “The head of the year.”     Our head is the limb that controls our body, which contains our brains, our faces,…

  • A Religious Dilemma

    My friend and former student Esther (not her real name) embodies all the values and qualities that are deemed praiseworthy in the Orthodox Jewish community…except for one.   She is a leader of Jewish people helping to form observant and learned communities wherever she goes.  She is smart, modest, humble, learned in Torah, observant with the…

  • A Hesped (eulogy) for my Mother: Torah and Art a synthesis of worlds

    My mother (hk”m) died last week.  She was a well know artist, committed observant Jew, a deep thinker, and a humble supportive mother.  We are all dying, but to live a life that is dignified, creative, and that brings much insight and light to the world is the goal -and this my mother truly did. …

  • Shavuot 2011 – Seeing the Sincerity in Those with Whom we Disagree

    It is not easy for the Jewish people to see themselves as one. They label each other heretics and fanatics, and deem each other guilty of undermining the welfare, identity, and religious underpinnings of the Jewish people as a whole. Some have noted that unfortunately it often takes persecution to bring Jewish unity.   Hitler…

  • Our neighbors: Jeffrey Dahmer and Osama bin Laden

    “Do not rejoice when your enemy falls.” -Proverbs 24:17 “Then Moses and the children ofIsraelsang…Pharos’s chariots and army God has drowned in the sea!” -Exodus 15:1 Should we cheer at the fall of Bin Laden?   The Biblical book of Proverbs would seem to indicate we should not.   On the other hand in the Biblical book…

  • Avoiding the Comforts of Extremism

    Sometimes the middle path is perceived as that which is noncommittal and lacking passion.   But in the realm of religion the opposite is true.  It is moderate positions that require more passion and commitment because they tend to be less black and white and thus harder to balance.  Extreme ideas in contrast are easy to…

  • The French Emperor’s Burka: When Liberalism Leads to Close-Mindedness

    It is ironic when liberalism generates, instead of open-mindedness and acceptance, limitation of others’ free expression and denial of their rights.   France, I think, in dictating the limitations of what Muslim women can wear, has unmasked its liberte et egalite and shown it to be something else entirely.  The French Emperor, it seems, is wearing no clothes.  Liberty and…

  • Heaven and Hell

    When I was a Rabbi at Washington University it was common for students who were not very knowledgeable about Judaism to ask me, “Rabbi, Judaism does not believe in Heaven and Hell right?”  I am not sure where this seemingly widespread impression came from, but my flippant answer was always, “No, but we do believe in heck.”…

  • Is God in the Tsunami?

    …After the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake… -I Kings 19:11 “Where is God now? Where is He?…He is hanging here on this gallows” -Night by Eli Wiesel “The cruelty and the killing raise the question whether even those who believe after such an event dare to talk about God…

  • The Pope’s Exoneration of the Jews: A Step Back from Real Interfaith Encounter

    I was deeply offended by the Pope’s recent book quote in which he freed the Jews from responsibility for the killing of Jesus (I know it’s just a restatement of Nostra Aetate but that was before I was born).   Here is why -consider the following scenario to which, to me, it felt akin: Suppose in…

  • Tabernacle, Shabbat, and the Risk of Idolatry

    With this week’s Torah portion, Pikudey, we will finish the book of Shemot, Exodus, and the reading of a 5 torah portion series that describes the tabernacle, a moving temple the Jews had in the desert, and its erection.   In these portions God describes the tabernacle to Moses while he is on the mountain…

  • On Modesty and Misogyny by Rabbi Hyim Shafner

    The sexual assault on CBS reporter Lara Logan in Tahrir Square last week brought me to think a bit about the role of modesty in religious countries.   Egypt is a country in which most women are religiously required or encouraged to cover themselves completely.  Yet paradoxically it is also a country in which women on…

  • Passover 2011 – The 10th Plague and the Sanctification of the First Born

    In the past few Torah portions we have been reading of the Jewish People’s Exodus from Egypt.  The 10th plague, the smiting of the firstborn, seems to be the final catalyst which precipitates Pharos’ freeing of the slaves.  Curiously, just after the firstborn in Egypt are killed the Jewish people are told, “…therefore you shall sanctify…