Moshe Daniel Levine
By Moshe Daniel Levine
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Community The Passover story is real, because it has a real effect on the world
Everyone and everything, from person to nation, crafts a story of where they came from and where they want to go. It isn’t a question of whether our stories are fact or fiction, but rather of how they shape who we are today and want to become tomorrow. In other words: the stories we tell…
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Community Do Israeli politics pose a risk to American Judaism?
When I was a graduate student studying ancient Jewish History, I had to pour through hundreds of primary sources — each with their own bias and agenda — in an attempt to arrive at somewhat of an objective picture of a historical situation. In a couple hundred years, when future Jewish historians want to understand…
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Community In Jewish tradition, sodomy doesn’t mean what you think
I constantly stress to my students in Hillel that the dominant Western or Christian-centric exegesis of biblical stories is often very much the opposite of Jewish interpretation. This is true with the creation story and the subsequent eating from the tree, which Jewish thinkers read as a story of human empowerment as we gained the…
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Community Who decides what authentic Jewish practice looks like?
Thousands of years ago the central practice of Yom Kippur involved two goats. These goats would be taken by the high priest who would draw lots to decide which one would be immediately sacrificed in the Jerusalem temple and which one would be led out into the desert only to be pushed off a cliff…
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Community My article was controversial – and I talked to the haters
Hillel and Shamai, the exemplars of rabbinic and Jewish pluralism, have a dark secret that is seldom found on the many source sheets featuring these archetypal rivals. While most teachers focus on the many stories highlighting the high level of respect and civility between these two men and their respective study houses, we can find…
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Community Zionism is the Jewish Black Lives Matter
There is a particular irony when I hear those in the mainstream Jewish community touting the specious “All Lives Matter” slogan. No, this isn’t just about a betrayal of our ethical tradition demanding that we uplift the oppressed. Rather it is an irony that cuts so deep that this slogan actually undermines a belief shared…
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Community Are Jews white? Comfort in ambiguity is the answer
There’s something simultaneously ironic, funny, sad and fascinating when a student messages me asking if they are white. Now this isn’t, of course, a question about physical colors, in which I’m no expert; any of my peers will attest to the fact that I wasn’t blessed with an eye for color schemes. Rather, they are…
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Life With the corona virus afoot, don’t be foolishly pious.
Judaism has never been a tradition that privileges meticulous religious devotion over self-care and personal health. In a famous Mishna, Rabbi Joshua states that a “foolish man of piety”, or hasid shoteh, causes the world to be destroyed. While the Talmud gives the specific definition of a man who refuses to save a drowning woman…
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