Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel
This past week, the Jewish Chronicle published a remarkable article that caught my attention that I would like to write about, which just appeared in the news for the first time.[1]
The time: 2012
The place: Modern day Amsterdam.
The event: A group of university scholars and leaders of the Amsterdam Jewish community meet to discuss the possibility of lifting a ban of excommunication made against Baruch Spinoza. This ban has been in effect for 356 ...
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Jewish mystical tradition has long asserted that the scientific and rational oriented mind tends to see the natural in the Supernatural, while the religious minded person tends to see the Supernatural within the natural.
The modern Jewish mystic and scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel expressed the same thought even better, when he exclaimed that the religious consciousness begins with our capacity to wonder, “Wonder rather than doubt is the root of all knowledge.” Science–can ...
Learn More ShareWhen I read about the sun’s magnetic field reversing its polarity within the next several months, part of me felt a little nervous. How will the sun’s changes affect the earth? Does this mean that our earthly days are numbered? Actually, astronomers and meteorologists have indicated that we have little to worry.
The sun’s shift in polarity will not lead to more solar storms ...
For most of us, the planet Mercury looks like a little iron ball, wandering around the sun without much personality.
The Messenger spacecraft has changed that perception.
The photo comes from NASA’s Messenger spacecraft in orbit around Mercury and shows a giant crater topped with two smaller impact basins to create the recognizable shape of one America’s greatest comic iconic personalities—Mickey Mouse! ...
As Creator, and the Source of our being, God continuously brings our existence out of the abyss of nothingness, and is renewed with the possibility of new life. God’s love and compassion is bio-centric and embraces the universe in its totality. God’s power is not all-powerful (in the simplistic sense); nor is it coercive in achieving this end, but is all-relational in His capacity to relate to the world—even suffer with it as well. God’s love initiates new beginnings and ...
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