Isranet Daily Briefing
Friday, March 14th 2025 / Friday, March 14th 2025
SHABBAT READING Ruth and Esther: Divergent Narratives, Convergent Narratology: Prof. Rabbi Reuven Kimelman, The Torah.com, Mar. 11, 2025 — Aside from featuring a heroine, the biblical books of Ruth and Esther seem hardly alike. Setting – Ruth takes place in rural Judea, in Bethlehem, in the period of the Judges, before the establishment of the […]
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Analysis
Friday, March 14th 2025
Emmanuel Bloch and Dr. Rabbi Zvi Ron The Torah.com. Mar. 16, 2022 “Apparently, Streicher could not help but notice the parallels of the hanging of ten Nazis and the hanging of Haman’s ten sons.” Streicher and the Nuremberg “Purimfest” Twenty-four defendants were tried at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals (Nov 20, 1945–Oct 1, […]
Friday, March 14th 2025 / Thursday, March 13th 2025
Mijal Bitton Times of Israel, Mar. 6, 2025 “Amalek, by contrast, represents the kind of Jew-hatred that cannot be explained.” The worst mistake Israel made before October 7th wasn’t a failure of intelligence; it was a failure of imagination. This has been one of the most painful realizations as findings from probes into the attack were released […]
Jonathan S. Tobin JNS, Mar. 12, 2025 “Whatever the details of what actually happened, the idea that the Jews had turned the tables on those who sought their death and killed a lot of them is horrifying to modern-day leftists.” This is not the first time in history in which some Jews have internalized the […]
Jenna Weissman Joselit Jewish Review of Books, Mar. 13, 2025 “The former conversos in the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam embraced the Esther story as their own.” Purim—the whole shebang, from the ancient story on which the holiday is based to the contemporary ways in which it’s celebrated—always struck me as raucous and overegged. After seeing the […]
Wednesday, October 23rd 2024
DUALITIES OF JUDAISM Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah in a Nutshell: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, The Rabbi Sacks Legacy — SHEMINI ATZERET is a strange day in the Jewish calendar. It is described as the eighth day, and thus part of Succot, but it is also designated by a name of its own, Atzeret. Is it, or is it […]
Matti Wagner Times of Israel, Oct. 23, 2024 “This year, with so many men in reserve service, who will take the small children on their shoulders and dance with them?”” On the first anniversary of the most deadly attack on Jews since the Holocaust, rabbis of communities throughout Israel are grappling with how to […]
Doron Kornbluth Jerusalem Post, Oct. 22, 2024 “… simcha is related to who I am, who I can be, and who I am connected to.” I’ve always looked forward to Simchat Torah. This year? Not so much. You can guess why. The question is: How can we be happy this Simchat Torah? In a way, […]
Prof. James A. Diamond The Torah.com, Oct. 21, 2016 “Questions fuel all Jewish biblical interpretation.” “After [Abraham] was weaned, while still an infant, his mind began to reflect. By day and night, he was thinking and wondering, “How is it possible that this sphere should continuously be guiding the world and have no one […]
Shlomo M. Brody Tablet, Oct. 15, 2014 “Another distinctive element of Simhat Torah is that in addition to reading the day’s Torah portion and its maftir, we take out a third Torah scroll to begin the reading of Genesis.” Simchat Torah is an anomaly on the Jewish calendar. The festival, which celebrates the completion […]
Wednesday, October 16th 2024
Meir Y. Soloveichik Commentary Magazine, October 2023 “But that was not all that Yadin found. The cavern contained letters from Bar Kochba himself, including one written in advance of the Sukkot holiday, referencing the ritual of waving a lulav, a palm frond:” Striking archeological discoveries are a constant in Israel, but they can still occasionally inspire wonder. […]
Dovid Bashevkin Tablet, Sept. 1, 2021 “I don’t know why we long so for permanence,” writes the philosopher and physicist Alan Lightman, “why the fleeting nature of things so disturbs.” Most Jewish holidays are easy to explain to your non-Jewish colleagues. Many, if not most, know about Passover, and after enough years with enough Jewish […]
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