Mountain Minyan המנין בהרים

There was a very brief article in The Forward and another here in Ha’aretz, but you’re much better reading this more detailed article in The Guardian. There is a companion opinion piece here.
I’m fairly sure I know how this will play. There will be a lot of commentary on it criticizing it because, well, it’s [...]

I once asked a Rabbi why some Jews tolerate cooperation regarding Israel from Right-Wing evangelicals who think we’re all going to hell—the exact kind of thinking that let’s you draw a straight line from the Roman Emperors passing anti-Jewish laws, through the Inquisition straight to the Holocaust.
His answer to me was (I can’t remember verbatim): [...]

Over at the Jewish Journal, Rabbi Shafner argues that the Jewish tradition leaves the creation story in B’reshit/Genesis somewhat reconciled to science.
I will confess that there is a certain crossword-puzzle-like attraction to reconciling the text with science of all kinds: Genesis with cosmology, Exodus, Joshua, and Samuel with archaeology and other written sources, trying to [...]

This whole line of research confuses me (from Ha’aretz).
A Holocaust researcher in New York uncovered documents which show that David Ben-Gurion and the Zionist leadership in pre-state Israel had urged the Allies to bomb Auschwitz once they had learned that they were in fact death camps and not labor camps as was previously thought.
I [...]

A friend of mine posted the following:
Do people really not even want to handle their own consciences anymore? Law is not morality, yet it is depended upon by the people of this nation to resolve moral disputes – a system which doles out its peculiar brand of equality via monetary compensation – as antithetical to [...]

Our Rabbi asked us to talk on a social, not political level, with our peers about Israel on Yom Kippur. What would it mean—God forbid—if it were annihilated. I’m going to write this in answer: what would it mean if the US were “annihilated.”
It would mean that my culture, my home, and my world were [...]

I believe when people say there is “apartheid” in Israel—this is what I think, please tell me if I’m wrong—they are referring to the Occupied Territories. I say this because I try to give people a charitable interpretation of their claims—no matter how hyperbolic—if at all possible.
You can’t possibly say that there is apartheid within [...]

Point. Counter-point. Etc.
So, a lot of people were pissed about the Jewish Agency ad decrying 50% of Jews “assimilating.” So, of course, there has to be someone telling us why the complaints were wrong, but maybe for slightly more snobby or intellectual reasons that we mere mortals thought at first. It’s the Slate magazine theory [...]

In this post in July 2008, I asked if “dual covenant” theology was the doctrine of the Catholic church. Pope John Paul II had made a number of statements inching in that direction, and the U.S. Bishops catechism stated that the Mosaic covenant remained “eternally valid.”
At least until recently. They have revoked that change.
From a [...]

Apropos of the holiday, I have been rooting through Tractate Rosh Hashana. I own a very few Talmud books, but I have an entire English set on my computer and the Hebrew is online, so I print out parts and make notes in the margins.
The first Mishnah is about the four different new years. On [...]