The Beacon

It is the height of both arrogance and folly to believe that we, in the year 2012, have finally reached the pinnacle of human thought and are able to know with absolute certainty what is right and what is wrong, what is moral and what is not. The hubris that such an idea contains is [...]

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This past week, Yeshiva University held its annual Yom HaShoa ceremony, led by the Student Holocaust Education Movement (SHEM). The ceremony’s theme, “Remember the Future,” centered on the idea of rescue and the consideration and value which brave individuals placed on the future and the preservation of eventual generations of Jews. The keynote speaker, Dr. [...]

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I was intrigued by an article in the New York Times about the New American Haggadah, so I bought a copy. I thought the name was a tad odd, but then Apple called their third generation iPad the “New iPad,” so maybe it’s in vogue to name things by adding the word new in front [...]

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“For religious man, space is not homogenous . . . there is, then, a sacred space . . . there are other spaces that are not sacred and so are without structure or consistency, amorphous. . . . This spatial homogeneity finds expression in the experience of an opposition between space that is sacred — [...]

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Song, Salvation and the Price of Freedom   My life flows on in endless song; Above earth’s lamentation, I hear the sweet, tho’ far-off hymn That hails a new creation; Thro’ all the tumult and the strife I hear the music ringing; It finds an echo in my soul— How can I keep from singing? [...]

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When trawling through the Internet recently, I came across a Haggadah aimed at Humanistic Jews (available here). Humanistic Judaism is a form of Judaism that emphasizes the cultural aspects of traditional Judaism, while adapting them to fit a secular humanist worldview. I’ve been interested in the movement ever since I heard about it, because I [...]

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Fixing Marriage and Custody in the Ultra-Orthodox Community A lot of people seem to agree that the Hasidic system—maybe even the Haredi system as well—of marriage and dating needs some updating. There is also a consensus that using religion as a weapon to keep people in the fold is wrong. Most people also think that [...]

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How our food reaches us is a modern problem. In earlier generations, most people prepared their own food. Meat was fairly scarce—at least, for those who weren’t exorbitantly wealthy—and mass-produced goods did not yet exist. So the issue of having to worry about if your food was prepared in a proper and ethical manner was [...]

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It does seem rather anachronistic that Pesach follows Purim in the Jewish calendar. The commemoration of our defeat of Persian armies around the time of the Second Temple inexplicably precedes the celebration of our Exodus from Egypt in approximately the year 1250 BCE. The Jewish calendar’s arrangement of its wide-ranging holidays provides for ample inspection [...]

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What to do with those who leave the fold of Judaism has always been a difficult issue for Orthodox Jews. The Shulchan Aruch describes various halachot which cover the treatment of a meshumad (one who converts to another religion), a min (heretic), or someone who flaunts different issurim. But someone who marries a non-Jewish woman [...]

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Several weeks ago, while visiting friends for Shabbat, I picked up their copy of Son of Hamas, Mosab Hassan Yousef’s personal account of his life as the son of a prominent Islamist sheikh and his journey away from the world of Islamic extremism. Yousef, who became a double agent for the Mossad after being arrested [...]

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“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” – John Stuart Mill. In the above quote, Mill expresses the idea, axiomatic in the western world, that people are entitled to [...]

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I would like to write this piece strictly as a personal reflection on the concept and debatable veracity of gematria, of Jewish/Hebrew numerology. I am often surprised to find people of high intellectual nature who find gematria to be a legitimate way in which to find religious meaning. I understand that our religion seeks to [...]

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Dedicated to Dr. David Johnson. The night I spent in Goslar, something very strange happened. I still can’t think back to it without a tremor of fear. I’m not naturally a fearful person, mind you, but I’m almost as afraid of ghosts as is the “Austrian Observer.” What is fear? Is it a function of reason [...]

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I was not your average baal teshuva. Nobody had “mekareved” me. There was a rabbi I knew, but we had never connected on any level. There was no introduction, no NCSY experience, no rabbi who initially took me under his wing. I remember a rabbi stifling his laughter when I, after talking about having figured out [...]

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Parshat Terumah, it would seem, is written for the compulsive engineer. Most of the parsha, indeed most of the rest of Sefer Shemot, details the plans and materials for constructing and servicing the Mishkan, the portable Sanctuary of God. Every piece of the Mishkan, every building element and ornament, every utensil and holy vestment, receives [...]

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I wish to share a beautiful article that brought tears to my eyes when I followed the link on my Twitter feed. The article is written by a Jewish atheist. When her only child moved out of the house, she took up babysitting. Her favorite clients: Orthodox Jews. Why? In the author’s own words: “An [...]

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The Rambam (Hilchot T’shuvah 3:8) lists one who denies Chazal’s Rabbinnic authority among those who have no share in the World to Come. That does not mean that we have to assume that every word that every Rabbi says is completely correct. Whichever “Rabbis” encouraged the recent violent protests outside Beit Shemesh were clearly wrong. [...]

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There are two problems that every Jew encounters when he or she reads the stories in Chumash, especially the ones in Bereishit. First, these accounts seem fantastical and allegorical, and they are hard to believe on their own. Second, one must contend with modern science and archaeology which occasionally appear to contradict the accounts that [...]

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Oftentimes, people try to categorize the Torah in black-and-white genres, as either completely factual or completely fictitious. In the former view, the Torah is a non-fiction recording of historical events beginning with the literal account of the world’s creation and culminating in the Jewish people’s entrance into the Promised Land. This view sees all the [...]

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Two weeks ago, I walked away from a car accident. Inclement weather, of a familiar kind well-traveled in the past, proved a larger obstacle than I had anticipated. In an instant, I lost control of my car and found myself crossing traffic on the four-lane highway. As the car spun and my mind raced to [...]

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On January 29th, 2012, Dr. Leora Batnitzky was featured in conversation with Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik on the topic of Batnitzky’s latest book, How Judaism Became a Religion: An Introduction to Modern Jewish Thought (Princeton University Press). This event, hosted by Yeshiva University’s Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought, was a wonderful opportunity to [...]

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