The episode of Mei Merivah (Numbers 20:1-13) is among the most perplexing narratives in the Torah. After the people complain about the lack of water, God commands Moses to take the staff, gather the nation, and speak to the rock so that it will produce water. Instead, Moses rebukes the nation, strikes the rock twice, and water emerges abundantly. God then declares that Moses and Aaron will not lead the people into the Land of Israel.
Recent months have seen ugly manifestations of anti-Zionism throughout the world. The haters have distorted the meaning and mission of Zionism. We need to embrace “Bible Zionism” in every forum to set the record straight.
Kohelet is a philosophical and introspective work that confronts the tension between inherited ideals—wisdom, righteousness, reward—and the painful unpredictability of real life. Among its central themes is the question of whether wealth and wisdom—so extolled by traditional texts like Proverbs—can truly offer a good life.
Rabbi Hayyim Angel will be giving various shiurim/lectures during the coming weeks, including some accessible via Zoom.
Haredi religious leaders in Israel believe that yeshiva students should be exempt from military service. Rabbi Alan Yuter discusses the halakhic--and practical--rejections to that approach.
Judaism does not ask us to abandon our particular commitments in the name of a universal humanity. Rather, it teaches us to see that the God who calls us into covenant is also the creator of those who stand outside that covenant.
Francis Idris offers a significant review of Rabbi Marc D. Angel's book, Maimonides, Spinoza and Us, Toward an Intellectually Vibrant Judaism.
Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals, asked Rabbi Zev Eleff to address four questions about the state of Modern Orthodoxy.
Kohelet 1–3 sets the tone for a book that never settles for easy answers. In the
face of toil, impermanence, and uncertainty, Kohelet urges not despair, but
attentiveness—to fleeting joy, to moral humility, and to the awe of God that arises from
honest limitation.
Notwithstanding our recent history of esteemed leaders and thinkers, the weaknesses in our Orthodox world cannot be ignored if they are to be mended. A variety of factors have resulted in a collapse of any meaningful application of the word "leadership" to Modern Orthodoxy. This collapse is mostly self-induced.