By Allan Nadler
Outgoing British chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks seeks to achieve a union between science and religion in his latest book. Maybe he should have set his sights a little bit lower.
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By Allan Nadler
The array of uses and misuses of Baruch Spinoza, perhaps Judaism’s most-famed heretic, is testimony to the boundlessness of the human imagination.
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By Allan Nadler
Baruch Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632, the son of Portuguese Marranos (or conversos, or crypto-Jews) who had fled the Inquisition. A prodigy at Amsterdam’s Etz Chaim Yeshiva, he was widely expected to become a rabbi. As rumors of his heretical ideas spread, he was denounced by his yeshiva teachers, and in 1656 he was excommunicated by the Mahamad (Jewish Community Council) of Amsterdam. He lived in several small Amsterdam towns, most notably Rijnsberg, before settling in The Hague, where he died in 1677.
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By Allan Nadler
A new memoir about Lithuania and the Holocaust is little more than a confusing collage of wide-eyed postcards from a land whose history the author struggles, and mostly fails, to decipher.
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By Allan Nadler
A new book details how Orthodox rabbis dealt with questions stemming from 9/11. One major project involved permitting wives of victims to remarry.
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Why Do Jews Intermarry at a Much Higher Rate Than Others?
Boston Bombers Pal Slain in Florida Eyed in 'Jewish' Triple Murder
The Mirror in the Mikveh
If Rabbis Are Allowed To Intermarry, Get Ready for the Non-Jewish Rabbi
Top 10 Badass Mah Jongg Jews
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