What is holy and absolute if not God’s word? Well, according to the Talmud, ours.
Being exposed to a wide variety of opinions helps us to be more just. A Supreme Court with clear views is not a balanced court.
The recently deceased rabbi is best known for his Talmud - but his Jewish Center in Moscow was essential to post-Soviet Jewish life.
We often think of hatred as based on religion or nationality. But it is just as damaging when it begins in individual disputes.
And when the people sinned with the Golden Calf, 1,200,000 angels of destruction descended …
If I find myself in a hostile scenario, I can take off my kippah, switching from “Rabbi Daniel with a yarmulke” to “Dan with a baseball cap.”
Human life is so sacred that Jewish tradition is famously reticent about criminal punishment in general and capital punishment in particular.
Such an absurd demand — “Change your shoes or we’ll kill you!” — but it’s the Talmud showing how an oppressive society can crush its minorities.
The rabbis understood that living in a society permeated by a toxic ideology requires us to actively and frequently negate the dominant culture.
Turns out the idea of taxes is as old as the Torah. Seth Rogovoy traces its history from Abraham to the American Civil War.