An Understanding Heart

BH 5727. 1967. 49 years ago the Land of Israel and her people stood alone facing Arab armies far larger and better equipped than Israel’s, armies ready to attack at any moment. This was a time of great danger. Fear entered the hearts of all Jews everywhere. Like this year, 5776 -  5727 was a year of Hakhel – gathering:  In ancient Israel, every seventh year was a  Shemitah  ("sabbatical") year. At the onset of the eighth year, on the second day of the holiday of Sukkot, sixteen days into the new year, all gathered in the Holy Temple for a dose of inspiration to tide them over for the next six years of wordly endeavors. This event was known as  Hakhel , "assemble!" It was the only event that required the attendance of every Jew, women, men and children, reminding us of the historic moment when our nation stood at Mount Sinai, when every member of our nation was present when G‑d lovingly gave us the Torah. Once the entire nation had gathered, the king, si...

Veracity or Virtue? Is honesty always the best policy? Can falsehood ever be a G-dly path? Truth is considered a primary moral virtue in many ethical systems. The Torah places great value on Truth in many places and ways. The Torah also permits significant deviations from truth as a matter of practice. Does this represent a conflict of the pragmatic and the ideal to which we surrender the ideal? Alternatively, perhaps, is there a unified theory extant to resolve these contradictions? “The Seal of the Blessed Holy One is Truth”. This oft-quoted statement is found in several places by Chazal . “Honesty is always the best policy” is a folk truism. Michel Montaigne  (the 17th century French essayist) writes in his Essays “That as the only thing that bonds people together is words falsehood strikes at the heart of any connection among Humans”. The Ohr Hachayim, in his first piece of commentary on Beraishit, points out that the account of creation allows several fundamental e...

There has been a lot of discussion about the unbearable -to-many cost of Jewish day school education. It seems to me that the only way forward are very large contributions to the system as a whole - perhaps as an endowment - by the very wealthy in the Jewish community. Many are uncomfortable with the idea of the Jewish future being funded by a few plutocrats. Besides the fact that Jewish tradition articulates the idea that the only reason some of us are entrusted by Providence with large amounts of money, is to be able to make a significant difference in the world with it. There are several reasons why this seems to be the only way out of this problem in the USA. Indeed the whole cost of education crisis is an exclusively North American problem. You will note very little complaining on this score coming from the UK, Australia, and the Continent. This is because there is significant government aid in varying degrees to many Jewish schools - not all but there are always good Jud...

This is the first of an occasional series on Maimonides' Guide to the Perplexed for those who find it, well, perplexing. My goal is not to wade into all manner of dense scholarly arguments, but to provide interesting and accessible insights from this very important work of Judaic learning. So, I'm labeling these posts "A little bit less perplexed". It is not a systematic presentation, but sort of "a taste of".  I will begin by posting a link to a brief overview of the book and its impact by Rabbi Dr. Nissan Mangel: http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/107784/jewish/Philosopher-and-Mystic.htm.   A few apologies: The Guide was written in Arabic, which I don't read, so I'm relying on several Hebrew translations (Ibn Tibbon, Kapach, Schwartz) and the English one by Shlomo Pines. I'm hoping comparing multiple translations will help get me to the heart of the various matters. There are also many variant texts from different manuscripts...

For all of us who were old enough to understand what those terrible towering billows of smoke drifting from lower Manhattan to Brooklyn, visible from as far away as Connecticut, and worldwide electronically meant on 9/11, the death of Osama bin Laden cannot but strike a chord in that place in our hearts that seek to see revealed justice in this world. After all one of the basic tenets of the Noahide the universal law of humanity is - “Shofech dam hadam beadam damo yishafeych” He who spills the blood of man, his blood shall be spilled”. Yet we understand that this is not out of a Divine concession to a desire for revenge, vengeful feelings are unworthy of human being (kedoshim). Rather we grasp that there is no place in the world for a person who does not respect the image of G-d that is each one of us. The murderer all the more so the cold blooded ideological murderer says: “I decide the value of a human being”. This is a more direct denial of g-d than even Idol worship, which simply...

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