Posts About Jewish
The Movement of Faith
Religion is still of interest to people. They continue to think about religion, even if that means they are deciding that they have lost their faith, or that they are abandoning it altogether.
Sins and Virtues
There is no list of “Deadly Sins” in Jewish theology, nor is there a list of worthy virtues. We do not believe that good and evil are defined by particular qualities.
The Future of Jewish Americans
The more American Jews become identified with the prevailing culture, the sooner they can expect the same future as so many other immigrant communities who assimilated into mainstream America and lost their unique identity.
A Possible and Necessary Alliance
The influence of religion helps to preserve and protect life on Earth by giving science a moral direction and higher purpose.
Spirits of the Body or the Mind?
Aside from the obvious influence of dreams and memories – which are very much part of this world – pure souls have a primarily unconscious relationship with us.
One Aspersion Fits All
This collection of faults is surely untrue of religion as a whole, even though some of these traits may be true of certain religions.
Heaven and Hell, In the Abstract
In Judaism, we don’t dwell heavily on the next world because it is not something that we can do very much about.
To be Saved is Human, to Do Good Divine
In Judaism, good deeds are intrinsically connected with holiness and the Divine.
Faith Becomes More, Not Less, Apparent
War does not give enough space for intellectual doubt.
An Unending Attempt to Reach More
Whatever I have achieved in the past, there are always new horizons to conquer.
Not Just Words but Deeds
A statement of confession is just a statement, and as such, of doubtful validity.
The Question Is Not If the World Will End, But How?
The Jewish Sages have taught that humanity has a choice.
Teach religion in schools, but don't indoctrinate
There is a need to give children at least some basic and true notions about religion.
Fine Line: Criticizing Israel Without Anti-Semitism
There is a widespread belief in Jewish “superiority” even in morality, which results in holding the Jewish state to standards not expected of any other nation
People of Faith Vital in Saving Earth
Since people of faith are optimists who believe that the world can be made better, they should be active in saving the globe.
Prayer As Begging, Thanking, or Simply Saying 'Hello'
The central idea of prayer is to express, in words or in thoughts, that I want to make contact with God.
Women Benefit More Than Men from Religious Involvement
The feeling of being connected, the observance of the laws, and the inner devotion were always – and continue to be – stronger among women than men.
Sometimes The Only Way To Fight Evil Is To Destroy It
Evil is not just a relative and imaginary power, it does exist.
Neither the Problem Nor the Arguments Are New
Recent growth of religious fundamentalism created a counter-reaction of atheism
Thanksgiving's Basic Nature Is Religious
About the position of non-believers vis-à-vis Thanksgiving: it really depends on what kind of non-believers they are.
Heaven, Yes; Hell, Not So Much
Even Tony Soprano (who did believe in hell) didn’t think he was going there, though he admitted to some extra work in purgatory for his gangster behavior.
Time to Embrace a New Reality
The Pew Report highlights a trend that has long been developing in American religion not a sign of health or a sign of sickness, but a fact that Jews, like others, have recognized as a challenge to long-held assumptions.
Mixed Reactions: One Jewish Perspective
The integration of religion fully into our lives, including the need to use it to address the great moral issues of our time, is something to which Jews can strongly relate.
The Gandhis and Their Moral Blind Spot
Mr. Gandhi’s refusal to even reference the formal state of war that most Arab nations still maintain against Israel . . . reflects the moral blindness of his grandfather regarding Jews and deprives his moral analysis of the power it might otherwise posses
Three Major Blunders in an Otherwise Inspiring Speech
Part of Romney’s speech smacked of political manipulation and pandering that marred the contrary points he made elsewhere within the speech.
For Some, This is the Wrong Question
I take an agnostic view. I believe that it is unknowable and therefore, asking what comes next is simply the wrong question.
God Embraces Faithful Relationships
Fifty years from now, most religious communities will look back with astonishment on the controversy over same sex relations the way we do today on yesterday’s bans on miscegenation.
"You Shall Be Holy"
There is no more exalted formulation of the human condition and our role in the universe than these words of Lev.19:2.
President Bush, Jesus and Social Revolution
Jesus’ call to prioritize the poor, the sick, the prisoner, the hungry speaks to a radical alteration of the social order.
I Believe in Doubt
I favor doubt. I believe in doubt. I even believe that doubt itself must be doubted....
"Thou Shall Not Stand By"
Leviticus 19:16: “Thou shall not stand by.” It expresses the need to intervene on behalf of those in danger or need – in other words: we must never be indifferent....
The Pope and Islam: Let's Stop Kidding Each Other
We have Catholics defending an act that while perfectly legitimate is obviously sticking it to Islamic fascists. And we have secular and liberal fundamentalists legitimately critiquing this act with a predictable fierceness and complete disrespect for anything religious.
Just Another Deflection
The real question is to us regular Americans. What do we do when our religious leaders preach hate and divisiveness?
Can Religion Help Us Heal From Sexism and Racism? Umm...?
We religious people should be a bit more humble, recognize the power of religious wisdom and practice to evoke the best and worst in us, and realize that what we claim God or our sacred texts teach is often what we in our limited and finite and distorted and clouded view of things are teaching
The Problem and Potential of Religion
The more important question is at what level of moral and psychological development are the people who are using religion to address sexism and racism because that will determine how they use religion.
Our Obession and Outrage
Why are we so obsessed with a politician’s personal sexual immorality, but are not more morally outraged by leaders who lie to take us to war and whose incompetence, greed, and desire for power keep them from honestly addressing fundamental economic, health insurance, and environmental crises.
An Ever Living People
Jewish identity will be plural and will mean what those people who consciously call themselves Jews decide it will mean.
The War on Christmas. Bah, Humbug! It isn't that Simple
What a shame that a season that should be about Light and Love and Life has become one more place for our religious fundamentalists and secular fundamentalists to play out their insecurities and fears.
Call Me Daft and Politically Correct
What a shame that a season that should be about Light and Love and Life has become one more place for fundamentalists to play out their insecurities and fears.
Religion, Heal Thyself First
The major challenge to religion is not whether it can cure the world’s biggest social problems but whether it will make things incredibly worse.
The Many Halloweens
We were reminded that Halloween was not a Jewish holiday and as age appropriate actually learned a little about the origins of the holiday and where we as Jews differed.
Science and Religion: A Question of Humility
We need a more humble science and more humble religion to develop their own potentials to understand the depth and breadth of this radiant Kosmos.
Religion is What We Make of It
At the highest level, I do think that all religions carry the same basic message but most of us do not live at the highest level.
God Isn't a Political Hack
Given that McCain, no doubt, is a decent and moral person his uneasiness about his fellow citizens because they are Muslim is frightening.
Cults as Clarifiers
The word cult reveals as much as it hides about both the groups designated with the dreaded label and the groups dong the designated.
Lamentations: 9/11
In their final cell phone conversations, some 9/11 victims simply and heroically witnessed a yearning to love and the faith that love ultimately swallows up death.
How Big is Your God?
The answer to the question how does God allow disasters like hurricane Katrina depends on what kind of God we believe in. The question assumes a God living high up above, a Divine Puppeteer or Shepard of sheep who rewards and punishes as he sees fit. This conventional and most common God image of the Axial Age monotheistic religions, founded in the time of the great city-states with their kings ruling from on high, is simply one very limited and partial image of God. Using this puny, patriarchal, and punitive attempt to describe our experience of God (one I admit...
Sacred Doubt
These letters remind us that any faith that is certain is no faith at all just as any love never doubted is very shallow love.
Words of the Living God, even When I disagree
“These and These are both the words of the living God.”
Beyond Vatican II: My Truth, Your Truth, The Truth
In recent weeks Pope Benedict XVI has unnerved liberal Catholics as well as many Protestants and Jews with two pronouncements. The first removed restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass which since Vatican II has been replaced by a more accessible version of this core Catholic rite. The second pronouncement reasserted that the Roman Catholic Church is the one and only true church through which salvation can be achieved. Many people, both within and outside the Catholic community, are perplexed and apprehensive that the Pope is taking the Church back to its exclusivist and even intolerant pre-Vatican II days. But...
A Necessary Tension!
If our choice is between religious fundamentalists and secular fundamentalists, patients' interests will not be maximally perceived yet alone honored.
Can Secularism Save Judaism?
The generation that witnessed the Holocaust, the birth Israel, and the Six Day War is passing, and among younger Jews both support for Israel and interest in the Holocaust are waning.
Jews Then, Pagans Now
The same logic that broadened the original chaplaincy bill to ensure that it embraced Jews now requires broadening it further to embrace Pagans.
Talmud Sees a Different Question
The more important debate in Judaism is not between salvation and good works, but between study and practice.
Friend to Israel; Enemy to Anti-Semites
Thanks to Falwell, support for Israel and opposition to antisemitism, became dominant features of Evangelical Christianity.
Pope Rebuilding After Bad Start
The Pope has begun to build bridges with the Islamic world after a disastrous start, but, despite his attempts to build these bridges, it feels as if the hand of friendship is not being stretched out far enough.
Church, State and the British Balance
We need faith to be both private and public, and we need to be less precious about how we define where faith fits. If we are truly people of faith, it colors all that we do.
You've Got Mail and a Life
E-mail is only really bad if it stops us talking face to face, if we believe technologies can take the place of people engaging with other people.
Religious Leaders Also Need Leaders
Often, religious leaders themselves do not realize how much influence they have- they need to use it responsibly, and to inspire their communities, not to be dogmatic with them.
Choosing to be Among the Chosen
Jewish communities are stronger than ever, but will need to cry antisemitism less often, and to trade on its strengths, not on a sense of victimhood.
We Need More Tell, Less Show
Fewer prayer breakfasts and more public discussion of moral issues with a faith dimension would suit my taste better- and give me less cause for concern that it is all for show.
Not Only in America
Sex outside of marriage is a great wrong, a sin. But it is not a political matter and should not be a public matter.
A Day to Celebrate Superstition?
Halloween seems to me to beg lots of questions, not least the custom of children 'trick or treating' around the streets of London, becoming an increasing nuisance.
Religious Background Should Stay There
Our Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, makes much of being a 'son of the manse'- and his attitudes have been strongly shaped by his Scottish Christian upbringing.
Physicians, Heal Others
Physicians' primary obligations are to their patients, without a doubt. They have other obligations, of course, including to wider society, to their professional colleagues, both physicians and other health care professionals, to their employing institutions, and to their own ethical codes (which may or may not accord completely with their personal religious convictions.) We know that many physicians have strong moral objections to carrying out certain procedures for religious reasons-- e.g. Catholics and abortion. But they must tell their patients that that is the case, and be honest with them. And they must advise them to go elsewhere if the...
We All Are Chosen People
My favourite verse- or perhaps verses- are Isaiah chapter 42 verses 6-7. It's really verse 7 I love: I the Lord have called you in righteousness, and will hold your hand, and will support you, and set you as a covenant for all peoples, to be a light to the nations, To open the blind eyes, to bring the prisoners out of the prison, and those who dwell in darkness out of the dungeon......
From the Beginning, Obsession with Sex
I think the Lutheran church has been courageous in voting that way, but given the gradual realization that same sex relationships are not anything but what is 'normal' in nature, the question is really why other churches and other faiths have been so vicious in their condemnation and persecution of people in same sex relationships. If the guidance to all people, gay or straight, is to be faithful, supportive, chaste and morally responsible, then the fact that clergy are living in such relationships- gay or straight- should make no difference.There is one other point. There is a complete obsession with...
Honesty Best Patient Policy
Physicians' primary obligations are to their patients, without a doubt. They have other obligations, of course, including to wider society, to their professional colleagues, both physicians and other health care professionals, to their employing institutions, and to their own ethical codes (which may or may not accord completely with their personal religious convictions.) We know that many physicians have strong moral objections to carrying out certain procedures for religious reasons- e.g. Catholics and abortion. But they must tell their patients that that is the case, and be honest with them. And they must advise them to go elsewhere if the...
In UK, Hindus Don't Have a Prayer
It is a very good thing if a Hindu chaplain opens the senate proceedings with prayer. We are just beginning to try to move away from the only prayers (every day, before proceedings start) in the House of the Lords in the UK being conducted by the Church of England bishops. There is no sign of a move. I cannot comment on church and state divides, but in terms of having prayers at all, it is a huge improvement to have people of all faiths conducting the prayers from time to time, and it works very well in the Scottish...
Pray So You Understand
You pray with intention- you do what you are doing deliberately. If you do not understand, you cannot do that properly.
Arrogance Got us There, Keeps us There
The real message of Iraq is that we are arrogant and think we know it all.
An Enlightened Approach to Faith
Only by questioning and testing one's faith can one be sure it is robust and worth defending.
DO Unto Others
Good works, carrying out God's wishes on this earth, is why we are here in the first place.
How Do We Keep Faith in Fellow Man?
How do the Darfuris keep faith with God after all that has happened to them at the hands of their own countrymen?
It is How We Deal with the World
What makes us cling to religion is not man-made-- that is the awareness of God within and beyond us.
Religious Leaders Should Assail Hypocritical Views on Environment
In religions which profess faith in God the Creator there should be special concern by "co-Creators," earthlings, to be good "stewards" of creation.
Faith Won't Heal a Divided World
If there is common ground to be found through interfaith dialogue, it will only be found by people who are willing to keep their eyes averted from the chasm that divides their faith from all others.
