…halakha is currently paying a steep price for Orthodoxy’s exclusion of the queer community. Halakha’s *discriminatory attitude toward the gay community alienates many of MO’s younger generation. It could very well be that halakha is[…]
As both a scholar and an academic politician, Neusner moved the study of Judaism from Near Eastern Language or History departments into Religious Studies. This move allowed for the study of Judaism as a religious[…]
A mature adult faith demands that we take in difficult, painful facts and allow them to become part of our understandings of God, our language of faith and connection. Hanukah is not a holiday about[…]
The roots of traditionalism lie in Mizrachi Judaism. In the Orient, instead of the dichotomy between religiosity and secularism, there arose a worldview that saw the loose, non-halachic practice of Judaism as a legitimate option.[…]
The fact that Oz is an outspoken opponent of occupation and the policies required to attend to it cements his bona fides in making this argument, which is the strongest I know against the moral[…]
…custom, even when considered obligatory, derives its authority from the practice of either a community or a family; if misrepresented as a rabbinic ordinance, a custom may be seen as more sweeping than it actually[…]
The topic of “tzniut” or “modesty” has recently become a prominent point of discussion in the Jewish community, mostly in response recent incidents of religious violence in Israel…. But the common theme … and indeed[…]
Change can be very slow, even inadvertent, in Jewish tradition. Present-day academies of Talmudic scholarship have much more in common with their medieval precursors than with modern educational systems. The core of the practices of[…]
Universalist ideas were central to Jewish authors living in the Second Temple period, and to the readers who read and circulated these authors’ texts. The circulation of Jewish universalist ideas at this time indicates that[…]
We tend to think of the consecutive developments of Greek philosophy, normative Judaism, and early Christianity as being exclusive to one another. But the opposite is in fact true: these schools shared many ideas, including[…]