Analysis
Friday, December 8th 2023 / Friday, December 8th 2023
Elana Stein Heinpower Times of Israel, Dec. 7, 2023 “What bound all of these Jews together was more powerful than what divided them.” Hanukkah reminds us that miracles are possible and that seemingly unwinnable wars can be won. But it also holds lessons about partial victories, imperfect heroes, and incomplete belonging. We tell the story […]
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Isranet Daily Briefing
Friday, September 29th 2023 / Wednesday, November 1st 2023
________________________________________________________ SHABBAT READING Is Kohelet’s Wisdom Vanity of Vanities?: Prof. Rabbi Marty Lockshin, The Torah.com, Sept. 2023 — The Mishnah (m. Yadayim 3:5) makes clear that the inclusion of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) in the biblical Canon engendered more opposition than other biblical books.[1] Unfortunately, we don’t have a detailed record of the rabbinic discussions about Kohelet, pro and […]
Friday, September 29th 2023 / Thursday, November 2nd 2023
S.Y. Agnon Tablet, Sept. 25, 2015 “Rabban Gamliel purchased an etrog for one thousand zuz, and the sages did not even specify whether it was beautiful or not, and you set aside the choicest of etrogs on account of a few shillings?” To witness how precious the mitzvah of Etrog is to the Jewish people […]
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks Aish, no date “How odd of God / to choose the Jews,” goes the famous rhyme, to which the answer is: “Not quite so odd: the Jews chose God.” They may have been, at times, fractious, rebellious, ungrateful and wayward. But they had the courage to travel, to move, to leave […]
Rossella Tercatin Jerusalem Post, Sept. 20, 2021 “Anyone, regardless of their social status, could join, immerse themselves in the pool, walk toward the Temple as the experience built up with tens if not hundreds of thousands of people gathered inside the city on this route.” Some 2,000 years ago, as the festival of Sukkot approached, tens […]
Friday, September 22nd 2023 / Thursday, November 2nd 2023
Ruth R. Wisse WSJ, Sept. 21, 2023 “The Peretz-like skeptic who discredits supernatural belief is won over by the act of human kindness performed anonymously and in secret—by Judaism’s humanistic, humanitarian ethic.” In the Hebrew calendar, the 10-day period beginning with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and ending with Yom Kippur, the year’s holiest […]
Thursday, September 14th 2023 / Tuesday, October 31st 2023
SHABBAT READING Akeda and Rosh Hashanah: Invoking the Original Oath God Was Forced to Make: Prof. Rabbi David R. Blumenthal, The Torah.com, Sept. 14, 2023 The rabbis link the Akeda with forgiveness of sins for the Jewish people (Bereishit Rabba56:10, taken up in many selichot): Rabbi Bibi the Great said in the name of Rabbi Yochanan: Abraham said […]
Thursday, September 14th 2023 / Thursday, November 2nd 2023
Ernst Simon Commentary Magazine, September 1955 “Today the “Days of Awe” are an embarrassment for most of us because we can give them neither a national, a ritual, nor a purely natural meaning.” The calendar, with its rhythmic division of the year, its beginning and its end, its workdays, rest days and holidays, provides […]
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, […]
Tuesday, April 4th 2023 / Saturday, December 2nd 2023
INCREASING TIES It Came to Pass at Midnight—From the Amidah to the Passover Haggadah: Prof. Rabbi Laura Lieber, The Torah.com, Sept. 26, 2020 –– The Passover Haggadah concludes with a series of songs, the first of which is וַיְהִי בַּחֲצִי הַלַּיְלָה, Vayhi BeChatzi HaLayla, “It Came to Pass at Midnight” (Exod 12:29). The song, however, was not […]
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 […]
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