Jewish – Excerpted

“The public intellectual face of Modern Orthodoxy comes to look too much like the Haredi world, with whom we disagree profoundly on issues of gender and women’s place”

16 September 2020 Drew KaplanModern Orthodoxy

The public intellectual face of Modern Orthodoxy comes to look too much like the Haredi world, with whom we disagree profoundly on issues of gender and women’s place. More importantly, it widens the every growing[…]

“The tradition of blessing a person to live to 120 years, as a way of wishing someone long life, only began in the last few hundred years”

23 August 202022 August 2020 Drew KaplanJewish

The tradition of blessing a person to live to 120 years, as a way of wishing someone long life, only began in the last few hundred years. The term ad me’ah ve’esrim appears in responsa[…]

“A number of Rava’s rulings require intention as a necessary condition for establishing liability for both civil and ritual violations”

9 August 20209 August 2020 Drew KaplanAmoraim

Where early generations of Babylonian Amoraim employed a system of strict liability in deciding civil cases, sages of the third generation began to employ subjective considerations, but in an inconsistent manner. It was not until[…]

“The fourth century was a period of great innovation in the history of Talmudic jurisprudence and legal conceptualization”

9 August 20209 August 2020 Drew KaplanAmoraim

The fourth century was a period of great innovation in the history of Talmudic jurisprudence and legal conceptualization. Much of this may be attributed to the great fourth generation sage Rava, arguably the most creative[…]

“…the most morally instructive thing about studying the Nazis now: we can see how tightly the elimination of the Jews was bound to a hatred of cosmopolitanism”

16 July 2020 Drew KaplanAnti-Semitism

In the nineteenth century, they arrived, before anyone else, at an understanding that, in the new world of modernity, competitive advancement—doing well on exams—would provide an alternative to advancement through bloodlines. Why the Jews did[…]

“When you’re a member of the very society you’re reporting on, every word is laden with responsibility. Personal and professional are always mixed”

27 May 2020 Drew KaplanJournalism

In my eight years as an Orthodox journalist writing mainly about Orthodox life for non-Orthodox publications, I have lived this every day. When you’re a member of the very society you’re reporting on, every word[…]

“the Talmud only makes sense to the reader who has already read it; a first reading of the Talmud only happens during its second reading”

5 April 2020 Drew KaplanBabylonian Talmud

The Talmud is not a book to be read, but a book to do things with – not a book to think about but a book to think with; and beginning to read the Talmud[…]

“The term ma’aseh is the intrusion of real life events into the largely theoretical in hypothetical discourse of the Mishnah”

17 February 2020 Drew KaplanMishnah

The term ma’aseh is the intrusion of real life events into the largely theoretical in hypothetical discourse of the Mishnah. It introduces an event that happened in the past which has halakhic implications or ramifications[…]

The Siyum HaShas “Shockingly Has Nothing to Do with the Talmud Bavli”

2 January 2020 Drew KaplanBabylonian Talmud

The Event Shockingly Has Nothing to Do with the Talmud Bavli. I kind of knew to expect this—forgive me if what follows sounds hopelessly naïve—but I was struck by how the event had no educational[…]

“So much of contemporary North American Jewish life is like running a heat lamp outdoors in the winter”

2 January 2020 Drew KaplanJewish Community

So much of contemporary North American Jewish life is like running a heat lamp outdoors in the winter. It is so inefficient, so attenuated by the entropy of contemporary society, and still overwhelmed by (post-)Christian[…]

Excerpted

Excerpts of Interest

Category: Jewish

“The public intellectual face of Modern Orthodoxy comes to look too much like the Haredi world, with whom we disagree profoundly on issues of gender and women’s place”

“The tradition of blessing a person to live to 120 years, as a way of wishing someone long life, only began in the last few hundred years”

“A number of Rava’s rulings require intention as a necessary condition for establishing liability for both civil and ritual violations”

“The fourth century was a period of great innovation in the history of Talmudic jurisprudence and legal conceptualization”

“…the most morally instructive thing about studying the Nazis now: we can see how tightly the elimination of the Jews was bound to a hatred of cosmopolitanism”

“When you’re a member of the very society you’re reporting on, every word is laden with responsibility. Personal and professional are always mixed”

“the Talmud only makes sense to the reader who has already read it; a first reading of the Talmud only happens during its second reading”

“The term ma’aseh is the intrusion of real life events into the largely theoretical in hypothetical discourse of the Mishnah”

The Siyum HaShas “Shockingly Has Nothing to Do with the Talmud Bavli”

“So much of contemporary North American Jewish life is like running a heat lamp outdoors in the winter”