Article Archives

Why Was Moses Punished?

It comes in the Torah portion read this Saturday (Hukat, Numbers 19:1 - 22:1), and it is unquestionably the lowest point in Moses' career. After dragging the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt, giving them the Ten Commandments, overthrowing the Golden Calf, and braving their never-ending backsliding, complaints, and pleas to return to Egypt, Moses is asked by God to perform one more miracle in response to the Israelites' evidently unquenchable thirst. "And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Take the rod, and gather the assembly together . . . and speak to the rock before their eyes; and it shall give...

World Zionist Congress

The 36th congress of the World Zionist Organization (WZO) opens in Jerusalem today, bringing together hundreds of delegates drawn from political parties in Israel's Knesset as well as from Zionist and Jewish organizations in the Diaspora. On the agenda are subjects ranging from the condition of Zionism in Israeli society and worldwide, to settlement in Judea and Samaria, to Israel-Diaspora relations. Unfortunately, no matter how stimulating the speeches may be, no one anticipates any fateful decisions or even any serious grappling with existential questions.

What Israel Ta-Shma Saw

Among the 7,000 new titles featured in Israel's annual  book festival last week was the fourth, final, and—sadly—posthumous  volume of studies by Israel Ta-Shma (1936–2004), one of the great rabbinic scholars of modern times.

Psychoanalysis: A Jewish Science?

How Jewish was your childhood home? To this query, Anna Freud responded: "more than people think, and less than I remember."  Her quip does double duty: illustrating the porous boundaries of memory, fact, and interpretation that psychoanalysis has sought to clarify and disturb, and highlighting a question surrounding the enterprise since its inception. How Jewish is it?

The Rebbe

The story of Lubavitcher Hasidism in our time is nothing short of astounding. Here is an ultra-Orthodox sect, deployed all over the world, exuberantly engaged with non-observant Jews and with non-Jews, availing itself of every imaginable form of contemporary communications technology. What was, for generations, the most intellectual and scholastic-minded hasidic dynasty—its other name, Chabad, is an acronym for "Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge"—has become an ecstatic mass movement. At the heart of it all is the seventh and last Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), who died childless—and whom some substantial number of his followers forthrightly regard as the messiah.

Christianity in the Middle East

Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Cyprus on Sunday was marred by events that cast their own, baleful light on the purpose of his mission: to unveil a Vatican position paper on the deteriorating condition of Christianity in the Middle East. Hours before his arrival, one of the document's authors, Bishop Luigi Padovese, the apostolic vicar of Anatolia, was murdered by his "mentally unstable" driver.  Padovese had only recently met with Turkish authorities to discuss the problems of that country's tiny Christian minority—and had previously extended Christian forgiveness to a Muslim youth who in 2006 murdered a Catholic priest. Three more...

A Zionist Citadel?

The annual meeting of the board of governors of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem takes place this week in Israel's capital. Not unlike the state that it preceded into existence, the university, opened 85 years ago on Mount Scopus in northeast Jerusalem, is in the throes of crisis.

The Chief Rabbinate

On May 23, Israel's chief rabbinate issued new regulations requiring prospective couples whose parents had been married by someone other than a rabbinate-approved rabbi to apply, along with their mothers, for a full inquiry into their Jewishness. The regulations provide for inquiries into the Jewishness of other couples as well. In the meantime, making deft use of its authority over conversions to Judaism, the rabbinate has acted to delegitimize other rabbis, in particular from the Modern Orthodox and Religious Zionist movements, as a whole. Founded as a body that would help unify the modern Jewish state, the rabbinate (Hebrew: rabbanut) has...

Chaim Grade’s Quarrel

Mir vet men nit maspid zeyn... No one will eulogize me... The death several weeks ago of a reclusive, elderly widow in New York has raised hopes that, at long last, scholars and lovers of Yiddish will have access to the buried treasures in her apartment. These are the legacy—manuscripts, papers, works waiting for translation—of her husband, one of the greatest Jewish writers of modern times.

The Importance of Moshe Greenberg

On May 15, a giant of Jewish Bible scholarship passed away in Jerusalem at the age of eighty-one. American-born and  -educated,  Moshe Greenberg combined classical erudition in ancient Near Eastern languages and rabbinic and medieval exegesis with the critical perspectives of modern scholarship, analytical deftness, and literary style. He brought all these to bear on the ancient texts to elicit both knowledge and moral and spiritual guidance.