An ultra-Orthodox group filed a complaint with Jerusalem police after HaGefen, a Messianic Jewish publisher, offered a new translation of the Bible to teenagers at Israel’s annual Hebrew Book Week. Yad L’Achim, a prominent activist group that has been known for harassing Christian missionaries to Israel and voicing opposition to Arab-Israeli marriages, complained that the…
In the November 28, 1963 issue of the Forverts — only six days after Kennedy’s assassination — editor-in-chief Simon Weber wrote about President John F. Kennedy’s favorite biblical passages. President Kennedy would have been 100 years old on May 29, 2017. I think that what he gave us most was pride. It felt good to…
The Oriental Institute, one of the world’s most valuable collections of ancient world artifacts, takes no position of the historical veracity of the Bible. But one of its most precious holdings testifies vividly to at least part of it. In the early seventh century BCE, Sennacherib, king of Assyria, invaded the kingdom of Judah. The…
(JTA) — The only time I ever attended Israel’s International Bible Quiz, I sat three rows in front of the prime minister. It was 2005, I was a 19-year-old student, and I watched as Ariel Sharon strolled in with his security detail, a large black nylon kippa perched lumpily on his head. The rest of…
For the first time in 30 years, a secular Jewish teen has won the World Bible Quiz, a test given every year on Israel’s Independence Day to Jews ages 14 to 18 from around the world. Sagiv Lugassi, who attends a secular science and technology high school in Maalot in Northern Israel, was the winner…
Trump, Pence, Ryan and the whole GOP are Sodomites. This doesn’t mean that they engage in sodomy, per se. Rather, the Republican leadership today is guilty of sins so grievous that God found necessary to destroy their (im)moral forebears in the Torah. The actual text of the Sodom story in Genesis 18 and 19 doesn’t…
In synagogues around the world on April 1, the annual Torah reading cycle will turn to the book of Leviticus. I am looking forward to it. Few synagogue goers or Bible readers seem to share my enthusiasm. Not that the Bible is usually boring. Over the past few months in synagogues, we read Genesis’s highly…
President-elect Donald Trump has announced that he will be sworn in using both Lincoln’s Bible and his own family Bible, given to him by his mother. The Constitution doesn’t require that a Bible be used at all. The Bible aspect of the inauguration is all about symbolism, not law. Barack Obama chose Lincoln’s Bible for…
מאַטי מענדלאָוויטשעס ברודער, וואָס האָט יאָרן לאַנג געליטן פֿון דעפּרעסיע, האָט הײַיאָר זיך גענומען דאָס לעבן. .
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