Isranet Daily Briefing
Friday, September 22nd 2023 / Tuesday, October 31st 2023
SHABBAT READING Crimson to White: Yom Kippur’s Miraculous Thread: Dr. Rabbi Joshua Kulp, The Torah.com, Sept. 21, 2023 — Leviticus (ch. 16) describes a Yom Kippur ritual, known as the scapegoat, in which a goat is chosen by lottery to bear Israel’s iniquities, and is then sent into the wilderness as a way of […]
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Analysis
Thursday, September 14th 2023 / Thursday, November 2nd 2023
Rabbi Moshe Hayim Efrayim of Sudilkov and Eitan P. Fishbane Jewish Review of Books, Fall 2019 “The sound of the shofar should—in a very precise theological sense—blast open the listener’s spiritual consciousness. Moreover, listening to the shofar should initiate or reinitiate an attitude of attentive wonder toward the world on the part of the Hasid, […]
Kate Roozansky Jewish Review of Books, Sept. 12, 2023 “After she gives him up, Hannah sings, “my horn (karni) exults in the Lord,” but her horn is only metaphorical—the boy is gone, there is no ram (1 Sam 2:1). Of course, Hannah visits Samuel at Shilo every year, but this means she also leaves […]
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks The Rabbi Sacks Legacy, September 2017 “The trouble is, of course, that faced with choice, we often make the wrong one.” The Ten Days of Repentance are the holy of holies of Jewish time. They begin this Wednesday evening with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and culminate 10 days later with Yom Kippur, […]
Thursday, July 27th 2023 / Thursday, November 2nd 2023
Mark Raven Commentary Magazine, August 1951 “It was the Jew’s burden—and still is—to turn over in his soul an insoluble problem of history: how could one people above all others become heir to such sorrow?” This August 12th will be celebrated as Tisha B’av—the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av—the second most […]
Tuesday, April 4th 2023 / Saturday, December 2nd 2023
Ruth R. Wisse WSJ, Mar. 30, 2023 “Why did “they” so often seek to destroy us? Why some nations and not others? Why the Germans? And why, more exigently by the late 1940s and ’50s, did Arab and Muslim leaders who already ruled over myriad countries adamantly refuse to coexist with the tiniest Jewish state? […]
Stuart Halpern Tablet, Mar. 31, 2023 ‘A harbinger of hope, a rebuker of the unrighteous, a hearer of stillness amid fractured times, the Seder night’s specter continues to visit, stirring Americans to perceive in his cup their own redemptive possibilities.’ Everyone’s favorite Passover guest is a ghost. In one of the Seder’s most mystical […]
Shalom Carm First Things, April 2023 “… for Jews, the normative memory of slavery is inseparable from the threat of extermination.” Jews throughout the world celebrate the first nights of Passover, which commemorate God’s deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt 3,500 years ago. The focus is the Seder, a meal at which a […]
EDWARD ROTHSTEIN Sapir Journal, Vol. 7, Autumn 2022 In our era of cancellations and topplings, censorious declarations and virtue signaling, recantations and exorcisms, it’s almost possible to feel nostalgic for the days when PoMo reigned supreme. PoMo? Yes, or more formally, postmodernism — a set of suppositions about the world that once inspired the academic priesthood and […]
Friday, December 16th 2022 / Saturday, December 2nd 2023
SHABBAT READING: Why Does the Torah Describe Babies Born Hands First?’: Dr. Eran Viezel, The Torah.com, Nov. 28, 2018 The story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38 ends with Tamar giving birth to twins:[1] בראשית לח:כז וַיְהִי בְּעֵת לִדְתָּהּ וְהִנֵּה תְאוֹמִים בְּבִטְנָהּ. לח:כח וַיְהִי בְלִדְתָּהּ וַיִּתֶּן יָד וַתִּקַּח הַמְיַלֶּדֶת וַתִּקְשֹׁר עַל יָדוֹ שָׁנִי לֵאמֹר זֶה יָצָא רִאשֹׁנָה. לח:כט וַיְהִי כְּמֵשִׁיב יָדוֹ וְהִנֵּה […]
Saul Austerlitz PBS, Dec. 13, 2022 “Bellow was a cultural conservative at heart, decrying what he saw as the excesses of a society spiraling out of control, but his critique is laced with deep sympathy for the rejects and failures of American life.” It is only too easy to see Saul Bellow as one […]
Matti Friedman Tablet, May 4, 2022 “So “Lover Lover Lover” is a war song. It’s not clear what “lover” he’s referring to in the chorus, which simply intones that word seven times and implores, “come back to me.” But if we understand the song as a kind of prayer, maybe the word appears […]
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