Archive for March 9th, 2010

Home2010March9th (Tuesday)

Are Animals Endowed with a Soul?

The just man knows the soul of his beast, but the heart of the wicked is merciless.

—Proverbs 12:10

The author of Proverbs stresses an important ethical lesson: a humane person considers the needs of his animals and acts kindly towards them.[1] The world of Creation is full of sentient beings, which also experience many of the joys and blessings that people commonly enjoy: like humankind, these creatures also experience pain. Suffering is a common language that ...

Learn More

Categories: Bible, biblical history, biblical theology, ethics, good and evil, Heart-Centered Judaism, Jewish Law & Technology, Judaism and Ecology, science and religion, The Future of Judaism, Theology and Philosophy

Deciphering the Symbolism of the Burnt Sacrifice

Whenever I teach a class on Leviticus, inevitably my students ask: “What is the psychology that inspires one to offer a sacrifice in general, and the burnt offering in particular? Why is the burnt offering mentioned first in the opening chapter of Leviticus?”

To the modern mindset, the mentality that believed in animal sacrifices must seem very strange. Even Maimonides viewed sacrifice as a form of retrogressive religion, tolerated in the Torah only because of the unsophisticated spiritual maturity of the ...

Learn More

Categories: Bible, biblical history, biblical theology, Halacha, Hassidic Theology, Heart-Centered Judaism, Jewish customs, Jewish History, Jewish Prayer and Meditation, Jewish symbolism

The Sabbath as an “architecture of sacred time”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) posits that the Sabbath is an “architecture of sacred time.”[1] He poignantly argues that while it is true that all peoples of antiquity venerated certain places as holy, the Torah places a far greater emphasis on the sanctification of time versus the sanctification of space. It is no coincidence that the word for sanctity is first associated with the Sabbath. When God blesses the Sabbath day (Gen. 2:3), it literally becomes, “a sanctuary of holy ...

Learn More

Categories: Bible, biblical history, biblical theology, Heart-Centered Judaism, Holidays, Israel, Talmud, Zohar, and Midrash, Theology and Philosophy

100 One-Liners

  • A friend of mine sent me 100 one-liners:
  • You can’t ride two horses with one tuchas (one “ass”)
  • A pretty face is expensive.
  • 43% of all statistics are worthless.
  • 7/5th of all people do not understand fractions.
  • 99% of lawyers are giving the rest a bad name.
  • A bachelor’s life is no life for a single man.
  • A bad plan is better than no plan.
  • A city is a large community where people are lonesome together.
  • A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
  • A conclusion is ...
Learn More

Categories: Humor

Creating a Pathway toward Reconciliation

The Middle East has often been synonymous with the metaphors of despair and angst. This story began about six years ago, when a young Israeli Arab law student and musician named George Khoury, was accidentally killed by a drive-by Palestinian terrorist, while jogging in East Jerusalem’s French Hill neighborhood. The terrorists exclaimed afterward, “Oops, we thought your son was Jewish. Sorry . . .”

To most people, a victim of terrorism is just a statistic-unless you happen to personally know who ...

Learn More

Categories: American Jewish Issues, Contrarian wisdom, Current Events, ethics, Heart-Centered Judaism, Interfaith Dialogue, Israel, Political Commentaries, The Future of Judaism