Is marriage a legitimate prerequisite for a university course? That is what some female students are asking at Bar-Ilan University. The controversy surrounds a course in “marital communications,” which we told you about here. It requires those who enroll be married for at least one year. The course is intended for those who want to…
‘Reparative therapy” for gays and lesbians, which attempts to “change” sexual orientation and is neither reparative nor therapy, is the last gasp of bad theology. It exists to solve a theological crisis. On the one hand, Jews are told that God loves us and that “it is not good… to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18) On…
Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow thrust religion into the consciousness of football fans everywhere this year by famously taking a knee and bowing his head in prayer on the field. And while his prayers caused their fair share of controversy, not everyone thinks mixing football and religion is such a bad thing. Ahead of Super…
Apparently oblivious to how offensive this would be to any non-messianic Jew, Atlanta pastor Eddie Long — who privately settled lawsuits with several men who had alleged he molested them as boys, and whose wife recently divorced him for the same reason — allowed himself to be wrapped in a Torah scroll by messianic ‘Jew’…
Avrum Burg draws a number of distinctions in his analysis of parashat Bo. The core of his argument is that “Every struggle for freedom is a struggle to seize the mastery of time” and coordinate with this, and that “command of time is the essence of freedom.” A subsidiary argument contrasts in a similarly binary…
Exodus 6:2–9:35 Not long ago my niece Shira sent me some comments on the weekly portion in which Moses was saved by Pharaoh’s daughter. She compared the historical events with the life stories of her two grandmothers, who had died at the end of a long, full life after first experiencing a childhood of terror…
Miketz — At the End of Two Years Genesis 41:1–44:17 Because We Were Strangers Joseph is the archetype of the Diaspora Jewish success story. He is the first ever to make it big in the royal court. He is the first to understand what it means to live outside Israel, initially under duress but later…
In a speech aimed at liberal Jewish voters, President Obama sought to rebut Republican claims that he was soft in his support for Israel and praised Reform Judaism’s support for civil rights and social justice in his address at the biennial meeting of the Union for Reform Judaism. The crowd of 6,000, in turn, enthusiastically…
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