Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel
I have been on vacation for the greater part of this past week. While I was away, I listened carefully to the news about a variety of social and international problems I will be addressing within the next several days.
As details of the Michael Brown murder become known in the news, the race riots continues in Ferguson. One witness who was walking with Brown at the time said that the victim raised his hands in ...
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In a number of recent news reports, we have heard the White House blast Israel for flagrantly killing children, mothers, and the sick. This past Sunday, Face the Nation featured the senior White House advisor Valerie Jarrett said that Israeli attacks on Gaza schools and hospitals were “indefensible.”
“This is why the ceasefire is so important,” Jarrett said. “It’s a devastating situation. Israel absolutely has the right to defend itself, and we are ...
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Maimonides raises a relevant question about the nature of repentance in his famous halachic tract, The Laws of Penitence, “How do we know whether a person has truly achieved repentance? If a person finds himself in the same situation where he now has the ability to sin in the same exact manner he did earlier, but he consciously refrains from doing so—not because of fear or ability, but from conviction—that person has ...
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In the technological age we are living in, a person can just about make up anything regarding conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere. Given the ubiquity of illusion, we must wonder: Did this conversation actually take place between the President and the Israeli Prime Minister?
Now here is the transcript that appeared in the Israeli news on Channel One:
Damning evidence has emerged of US President Barack Obama’s dismissal of Israel’s position in ...
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When we look at the violence that is taking place throughout the cities of Europe, it is clear that Jihadist Islam (a.k.a. Radical Islam) is no longer an aberration. When someone asked the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan what he thought of Moderate Islam, he sneered, “There is no such thing as Moderate Islam—only Islam.”
He’s correct. All you ...
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