There is much in Rabbi Sacks' essays to make us think. He tells us in his introduction that spirituality is not the same as religion, though the two are related. Spirituality happens when we open ourselves to something greater than ourselves.
The opening of Lekh Lekha raises numerous questions. Why did God choose Avraham? Why was it necessary to choose anyone? Why does the focus of Sefer Bereshit suddenly shift from a broad universal focus to a narrow, particularistic one?
When I was a young rabbi, I believed that the classic models of Sephardic rabbinic leadership provided a responsible and meaningful example for all of world Jewry. Nearly 50 years later, I still believe this to be true. In spite of all the negative signs that abound, I still believe this to be true.
It has become common for Jewish students attending American institutions of high education to feel bullied, threatened, intimidated or silenced. What should be done? What can be done?
New Class with Rabbi Marc D. Angel. No Jewish thinker has had a more significant impact on Jewish religious thought than Moses Maimonides (1138-1204). Please join Rabbi Marc Angel for a class (via Zoom) dealing with the central teachings of Maimonides on faith and ethics.
Rabbi Eliyahu Benamozegh of 19th century Livorno was a traditional rabbi…with a mind open to the untraditional. He was a rational, modern thinker…who fully embraced the truths of Kabbala. He was devoted to Jewish particularism…while fostering a remarkably universalistic worldview. He would not be constrained or confined by artificial intellectual categories. The ultimate unity could only be sought through all the available avenues of human thought.
Tanakh needed prophecy so that we could transcend ourselves and our limited perspectives to aspire to a more perfected self and world, and to reach out across the infinite gulf to God. Ultimately, however, it also needed Ecclesiastes to teach how to have faith from the human perspective, so that we may grow in our fear of Heaven and observe God’s commandments in truth.
Generations of elementary day schoolers have colloquially called the Asher Yatzar blessing “the bathroom Berakha.” When looking at this Berakha through an understanding of modern science and medicine, its ancient wisdom truly shines.
This study contrasts the legal rhetoric regarding the abortion issue. What does the plain sense of the canonical library actually prescribe? And what is the view of that version of Orthodox Judaism that bases itself on the intuitive consensus of an elite group of rabbis through a kind of "continuous revelation"?
The first volume of Rabbi Marc Angel's "Angel for Shabbat" has been translated into Spanish by Myriam Frydman of Bogota, Colombia. The volume includes divrei Torah on the Torah portions of the week, as well as thoughts for the various holy days and festivals.
