So many people joined the first of our four-part intro to Maharal last week, that it would be insulting to keep referring to them – even playfully – as Dummies. For those who missed last week, it is not too late to join us this coming Sunday evening BE”H for the second installment of the webcast series, brought to you by Torah In Motion. Once again, if you don’t have a set of Maharal, you will be able to download the texts you need prior to the webcast. Registration instructions are available by followng the links at last week’s advisory
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Darwin was a Brit, after all, so it would be rather rude of Sir Jonathan Sacks not to comment on his 200th birthday. The Chief Rabbi manages to neatly side-step the thicket of arguments about evolution, and to simply state that its factuality is largely irrelevant to believers. If anything (mirroring the famous reaction of R Shimshon Raphael Hirsch), if it is assumed to be true, it only increases our sense of awe at the wisdom Hashem attached to His Creation. Happy Birthday, Charles! While your findings fueled your struggle with G-d (or your struggle with G-d fueled your findings), the rest of us ma’aminim b’nei ma’aminim aren’t having a rough time of it at all. There are some even in this skeptical age who still believes that god is an old man with a long white beard. His name is Charles Darwin, patron saint of scientific atheists. 2009 will be a double anniversary for followers of Darwin: the two hundredth anniversary of his birth and the 150th anniversary of his work The Origin of Species. We will undoubtedly hear the claim asserted that Darwin dealt a death blow to religious belief. That, it should be said, is quite … Read More >> In 2003, the first day of Adar brought us an early Purim present. It wasn’t food, but rather food for … Read More >> This may not initially read like a book review, but it is just that. Some older books are so important, that they deserve a bit of contemporary context to remind us how important they are. This review is about one such work. Please bear with me. Debates about G-d have come a long way since medieval times. Back then, the key issues were whether the Prime Mover argument was more compelling than the First Cause alternative, and whose conception of G-d was accurate, with the loser consigned to eternal damnation in the fires of hell. Hell doesn’t enter into the discussion too much anymore, and His existence is supported in very different ways. Christopher Hitchens is a capable and engaging presenter; going up against him takes either courage or foolishness in the attempt, and real skill in prevailing against him. All in all, I would give Rabbi David Wolpe very good marks in his November debate at Manhattan’s (high temple of classic Reform) Temple Emmanuel. Rabbi Wolpe is certainly one of the Conservative movement’s most articulate spokespeople. (Contrary to the NY Times story, he was not rated #1 in Newsweek’s famous rabbis list, not … Read More >> It is more than a week after the Israeli elections, and the nature of the next government is still not known. That already suggests that the next prime minister, whether Binyamin Netanyahu (likely) or Tzippi Livni (unlikely), will preside over a highly unstable coalition, and that much of his or her time will be spent dealing with fractious coalition members. In 2001, Netanyahu turned down the premiership when it was handed to him on a silver platter, after the fall of Ehud Barak’s government, because he saw no point in a prime ministerial election that left the same Knesset in place. He preferred to let Ariel Sharon swamp Barak in the prime ministerial election, and to wait in the wilderness for another eight years, to dealing with the same unstable constellation of coalition parties and their constant irreconcilable demands. He may well be asking himself today what he gained by the eight year wait. In short, the Israeli electoral system is broken. It appears to have been designed to guarantee a series of short-lived governments, like post-war Italy. Conceivably a high level of political instability would be an affordable luxury if Israel faced no serious threats, either external or internal. … Read More >> What makes so many so certain that the current scientific orthodoxy is the final word? The answer is hubris, the monkey wrench in many a human machine. … Read More >> Not quite. Dummies can’t understand Maharal, and I am notoriously poor at lecturing to intellectually challenged audiences. Still, lot of folks see themselves as dummies when it comes to wading through the works of one of the most important resources in explicating Aggadah. Starting Sunday evening, I am going to try to disabuse them of their feelings of inadequacy, by giving a four-part interactive webcast through the friendly folks at Torah in Motion. The shiur will begin at 9PM EST, 6PM PST. There is no charge, but registration is required. We will offer some background and then wade into representative texts of different kinds of tools that Maharal offers us in approaching the world of Aggadah. Texts will be available before the shiur, either as downloads or last minute emails, depending on whether I manage to get them to the shiur hosts in a timely manner. Each shiur will last about an hour, including time for questions at the end. Those with webcams can see and be seen; those without will be able to see others. After registering, you will be taken automatically to the webcast and signed in. I look forward to this with excitement … Read More >> As I write, it is two days before the Israeli elections. Prior to previous elections, my Har Nof neighborhood has always been festooned with election posters hanging from balconies. I have not seen a single one this time. Nor have I received the usual call from the “Gimmel” campaign headquarters asking me how I think my neighbors will vote, and whom should be reminded to go to the polls. The only campaign literature to reach my mailbox was that of right-wing National Union party. In short, the apathy among both chareidi voters and activists is almost total. Virtually every election poll shows United Torah Judaism declining from 6 seats to 5, despite the tens of thousands of potential chareidi voters who have reached the voting age since the last elections. Though polls have consistently underestimated the number of seats for United Torah Judaism in the past, there are indications this year that the polls might be on target. (By the time this piece appears, we will know for sure.) Last week’s Mishpacha quoted United Torah Judaism activists as expressing the hope that the natural population growth will overcome the abstention or vote for other parties of “those who are disappointed.” … Read More >> Two students in one of Jerusalem’s high school seminaries came to interview me last week for a documentary about how to internalize one’s Torah studies. I was impressed both the seminary’s sponsorship of such creative projects, and even more so by the ability of these young women to zero in so sharply on the central challenge that faces every believing Jew. The task of integrating one’s Torah learning into one’s life challenges every one of us – each on his level. For no one, however, is it achieved automatically or without effort. Rabbi Moshe Feinstein used to give an example of how easy it is to create a chasm between one’s Talmudic studies and “real life.” He described a yeshiva that is currently studying the laws of damages in Bava Kamma. One of the principles discussed by the Gemara is “adam muad l’olam – a man is responsible for the damages he causes. One day bein hasedarim, one of the boys knocks over his roommate’s alarm clock, which crashes to the floor and breaks. The one who broke the alarm clock and the owner approach their rebbe to find out what the din is. The former protests … Read More >> “Oy,” some progressively clean-shaven clergymen are probably thinking, “Popper’s blown our … Read More >> Very few people can take a secular poem and turn it into a successful limud. Most who would try would have little worthwhile to say. They would use the poem as a source only because they would be more at home with a secular poem than with genuine mekoros. Others would try to use the poem to prove their breadth and sophistication – but miss the real poetry. Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, shlit”a, is no ordinary figure. He has spent his life in the tents of Torah as a Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion, and before that as a Rosh Kollel at YU. Acting as head of a hesder yeshiva didn’t prevent his having a close relationship with R Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, zt”l. He learned with both Rav Hutner in Chaim Berlin, and then with his father-in-law, R. Yosef Dov Soloveitchik zt”l at YU. He also has a PhD in English lit from Harvard (in a program known to some as the Twersky Kollel), and seems to welcome these diverse influences within him without any sign of strain between them. (I have never seen as fair, balanced, and enlightening a treatment of the age-old issue of the propriety of … Read More >> Whatever your stance on the abortion debate, no decent human being can fail to be repulsed by the story: “Baby Trashed After Botched Abortion.” Apparently the doctor didn’t show up in time to abort the child of his 23-year-old patient, so she gave birth instead. At which point one of the clinic’s owners wrapped the breathing infant in a biohazard bag, and threw her out. The defenders of abortion-on-demand will, of course, decry this horrid aberration. The president of the Broward County chapter of the National Organization for Women talked about how important it is to be sure women don’t go to “these types” of clinics. But is it really an aberration? True, one doesn’t see stories like this at all frequently — yet. But one line in this story reflects, in my opinion, a very clear sign of the true state of affairs: “The case has riled the anti-abortion community, which contends the clinic’s actions constitute murder.” According to the autopsy report, the baby filled her lungs with air. There is nothing to contend. There is nothing to discuss, nothing to debate. The clinic owner murdered the baby. If this was not murder, plain and simple, then any baby, … Read More >> Tu Bishvat,eve of Israeli elections. About seven years ago a journalist colleague confronted me during a coffee break. “Are you a Neanderthal? How could you support the Shas party?” I invited her to come to Netanya to visit kli rishon some Shas institutions. A few weeks later she took up the gauntlet and came with a photographer to write an article (about Neanderthals?) I took her to the Beit Margolit girl’s elementary school, that had grades 1 to 5; to thriving kindergartens in deprived neighborhoods that were boosting children from the entire religious and non-religious spectrum; to the hessed store of “fellafel Yael”; to Rabbi Moshe ben Moshe’s outreach to marginal youth; to an interview with R. Ovadia Yosef’s daughter Adina BarShalom who founded the Haredi College in Jerusalem. When my journalist friend submitted her article to the Jewish Exponent, they returned it to her and said it was too positive, too glowing to be true, and asked her to rewrite it! She stood her ground and it was published. She doesn’t vote for Shas, but she did change her opinion. “Seeing is not the same as hearing” – is chazal’s phrase … Read More >> Armed with my backpack and the Let’s Go Guide to Israel, I descended from the intercity bus at Jerusalem’s Central Bus Station, planning to spend a few days exploring the city for the first time. I intended, based upon the Let’s Go recommendation, to stay in a youth hostel on King George Street — but at that point I was approached by a young student like myself, in T-shirt, jeans, the mandatory Israeli sandalim, yarmulke and tzitzis. Okay. Almost like myself. I had a yarmulke too, somewhere back in Be’er Sheva. And after inquiring to determine that I was both Jewish and looking for a place to stay, he suggested that I visit the Heritage House, a free Jewish youth hostel in the Old City. Given that it was centrally located and the price couldn’t be beat, it wasn’t a hard decision. Rabbi Meir Schuster’s youth hostel had one limitation — it closed at 9 a.m., while many popular tourist destinations did not open until 9:30 or 10. For this reason, the hostel manager suggested going to a class at nearby Aish HaTorah, which oh so conveniently happened to start at nine. And thus I was introduced to a Jewish yeshiva, … Read More >> “Look… This child awaits his turn. Watch their humiliation. They are corpses, Allah be … Read More >> [The following piece contains a long consideration of beliefs of other religions. Some of our readers are uncomfortable with such material. They are hereby warned to skip to the next post. The piece is an expansion of one that I coauthored and appeared on the Washington Post and Newsweek blogs last week. All new material is solely my own.] “Insanity is hereditary. I got it from my children.” So read an old bumper sticker. If insanity can be hereditary, then errors and blunders can perhaps be contagious. We seem to be in the midst of an epidemic of gaffes, and they started at the Vatican. Days after the deed was done, no one seems to have come up with a plausible explanation for why the Pope decided to make himself a lightning rod for criticism. A week ago Saturday, he revoked the 1988 excommunication of four individuals who had contravened the authority of the Vatican by being consecrated as bishops by maverick French Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Lefebvre had acted completely outside the jurisdiction of the Church. One of the four, Richard Williamson, had distinguished himself a short while earlier by claiming that there … Read More >> |
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