Book Review of The Habura's Passover Volume
Book Review
Pesah: Insights from the Past, Present, and Future (The Habura, 2022)
Rabbi Hayyim Angel
Articles
S. Y. Agnon: Thoughts on a Great Israeli Writer
S. Y. Agnon, born in August 1887, was an Israeli author who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966. His writings are infused with deep love of the Bible, Talmud, Israel...the Jewish People and the Jewish historical experience. In this short essay, Rabbi Marc Angel explores some of Agnon's major themes.
Our Journey in the Haggadah
Our Haggadah—with its core over 1,000 years old—takes us on a remarkable journey that combines narrative and observance into an intellectual and experiential event for people of all ages and backgrounds. In this manner, we travel alongside our ancestors from freedom to slavery to redemption.
Reflections on Jewish Spirituality
By opening with the story of creation, the Torah teaches that one must have a living relationship with the natural world in order to enter and maintain a living relationship with God. Jewish spirituality flowers and deepens through this relationship and is organically linked to the natural rhythms of the universe. To a great extent, Jewish religious traditions serve to bring us into a sensitive relationship with the natural world.
Humanity and Being Human: Thoughts for Parashat Aharei Moth
A popular quip has it that "I love humanity; it's the people I don't like." It sometimes seems easier to love an abstract concept like humanity, or the Jewish people, or the community--rather than to love actual individuals. After all, individual human beings are not always pleasant or nice, courteous or considerate.
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik: Judaism and Modernity
Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik is Orthodoxy's most eloquent response to the challenges of modernity and to the critics of Modern Orthodoxy. A Torah giant of the highest caliber, the Rav was also a world-class philosopher. In his studies in Lithuania, he attained the stature of a rabbinic luminary. At the University of Berlin, he achieved the erudition of a philosophical prodigy.
Rembrandt, the Holocaust and the Quest for Authenticity
As we are in the season of Yom Hashoa, I think of Rembrandt’s superb Large Self-Portrait. It cast a spell on me when I first saw it. But on Yom Hashoa it invites thoughts that penetrate deeper into my very being. When trying to do the impossible—imagining what happened to members of my family and to millions of other Jews who perished in the Holocaust—Rembrandt’s self portrait awakens me from my slumber.
Review of Rabbi Eugene Korn's book, "To Be a Holy People"
Rabbi Hayyim Angel reviews an important new book by Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn.
The Great Privilege of Being a Jew
You do things that shouldn’t be able to be done. You endure things that shouldn’t be put up with. That is part of the existential job description of what it means to be a Jew. And I cannot imagine a greater privilege than the opportunity to be part of it all.
Video Games; Luxury Cars; Talking in Synagogue: Rabbi M. Angel Responds to Questions from the Jewish Press
The Jewish Press newspaper has a bi-weekly column in which a panel of rabbis is asked to comment on relevant questions. Rabbi Marc D. Angel is one of the respondents and here are his replies to some of the recent questions.