(JTA) — President Obama did not mention Jews once in his Nov. 20 speech announcing immigration reforms, but he ended with a flourish that would be immediately recognizable to anyone who has sat through a Passover seder. “Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger –…
Hobby Lobby’s Steve Green hopes his planned $800 million Museum of the Bible in Washington and its priceless collection can satisfy both scholars and casual visitors. But with Hobby Lobby a household word after the craft store chain’s contentious victory in a Supreme Court ruling over contraception, scholars and analysts worry that despite its vast…
Lukas Kranach the Elder (JTA) — For some Hasidim, the Torah is too hot to handle. A recently published Bible study guide in use in a Hasidic village in suburban New York omits certain risque passages and entire passages of the Book of Genesis, according to Israeli scholar and blogger David Assaf of Tel Aviv…
● How the Bible Became Holy By Michael Satlow Yale University Press, 368 pages, $35 ● The Composition of the Pentateuch: Renewing the Documentary Hypothesis By Joel Baden Yale University Press, 392 pages, $65 ● The Formation of the Hebrew Canon By Timothy Lim Yale University Press, 304 pages, $45 According to a Gallup poll…
Israeli middle schools will for the first time teach evolution as part of the core curriculum. The Education Ministry announced Sunday that beginning with the coming school year, the theory of evolution will be taught to seventh grade through ninth grade students in secular state schools, state-religious schools and Arab schools. The curricula will include…
You know what could use a trigger warning? The bible. If any book merits a note of caution it is the one that is colloquially referred to as good. In the recent debate over whether colleges should warn students of material that deals with potentially post-traumatic stress syndrome inducing topics like war, sexual violence, racism,…
(JTA) — According to Jewish tradition, the Torah is so sacred that even a single error made on a single letter renders the entire scroll unusable. And yet the Hebrew Bible — including the Torah, its first five books — is riddled with corruptions and alterations that have accrued and been passed down over the millennia….
Our nation’s capitol is an exciting place in which to live and work. You never know who or what you’re going to come across. A famous face, the presidential motorcade, clusters of ordinary Americans dressed for all the world as if they were 18th century colonists come back to life in the 21st are the…
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