Growing up, my family never celebrated Halloween, so I have no emotional attachments to the day and few thoughts about whether it’s good or bad for the Jews. But for those who want a glatt kosher trick-or-treating experience, MyJewishLearning has two new articles on evil spirits for the yarmulka set. In the first, Jay Michaelson […]

Oy!!!
From the Jerusalem Post:
37% of Israelis say that the haredim are the most hated group in Israel, according to a new study conducted by the Gesher organization ahead of the memorial day for the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.
Some 15% said the same of new immigrants from former Soviet Union countries, while about 13% said that […]

The fight over Jerusalem’s gay pride parade just intensified. Apparently, Jerusalem Police Chief Ilan Franko met with Ultra-Orthodox leader Yitzhak Tuvia Weiss on Sunday to discuss protests promised by the latter’s constituents.
YNet quotes the Kol-Haredi phone hotline (which provides news to the Ultra-Orthodox — presumably for those without televisions or radios) as reporting that:
“The spiritual […]

The Encyclopedia Judaica was published more than 30 years ago, but it remains one of the most comprehensive and reliable sources of information on Jewish history and religion. Still, the explosive growth of academic Jewish Studies in the last few decades — not to mention the march of history — guaranteed that a new edition […]

Thanks to Cross-Currents and Hirhurim for pointing out Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ article about Richard Dawkins’ atheism in The Times of London.
It’s worth reading Sacks’ short piece in its entirety, but let me just highlight one aspect. He begins his comments with the following story.
“DO YOU believe,” the disciple asked the rabbi, “that God created everything […]

“It is not clear why the change from polytheism to monotheism should be assumed to be a self-evidently progressive improvement.” So writes Richard Dawkins in Chapter 2 of The God Delusion. And while his snide tone continues to annoy me, he’s got a point.
It was a truism of my Jewish education that monotheism was the […]

Imagine if right before your bar mitzvah you were told that — despite the invitations in the mail — you had to change the venue for your Torah reading. Now imagine that the reason you had to change the venue was because you might not be Jewish. And imagine that the reason you might not […]

When I woke up last Saturday and saw the New York Times Book Review, I couldn’t help wondering: What would Rabbi Lookstein think? Featuring Richard Dawkins’ attack on the creator God on the day Jews around the world would read the creation story!
Ironic or not, reading Jim Holt’s review of The God Delusion on Shabbat […]

MyJewishLearning.com was created to be a comprehensive source of Jewish information and in the past few years we have initiated this project by posting 2,500 articles and features. Total comprehensiveness is impossible, of course, so we continue to add content that will help you in your Jewish study and lives. But while Jewish learning is […]