I recently finished reading Professor Jonathan Haidt’s new book The Righteous Mindand found it to be utterly fascinating. The objective of the book is to present readers with a nuanced psychologically based reason for why people of good will and character differ so sharply and so strongly on critical issues. He specifically draws our attention to the subjects of religion and politics but his theory could be applied to any subject on which people passionately and vigorously disagree…

Read more at Patheos.

Conversion to Judaism is noble process that represents a person’s desire to find shelter under the wings of the Divine Presence as manifested through the unique pathway of the Covenant at Sinai.¹ For a long period of Jewish history it took quite an exceptional person indeed to seek out conversion to Judaism. Jews lived in bitter and harsh conditions, suffering persecution and discrimination at the hands of almost every country they found themselves in. Hence, the Talmud teaches that when a person comes to convert, one makes it very clear to them how hard it is to be a Jew in the contemporary world…

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Many have written in recent days about the wildly popular new movie The Hunger Games based on the book series of the same name. There have been those who have written about it from a political perspective and those who have analyzed it from an artistic perspective, and of course, those who have viewed it from a religious lens. In regards to the latter category, many Jewish writers have focused in on its connection to the holiday of Passover, which we are currently in the midst of it. The story line, with its dystopian future, oppressive regime and a people yearning to be free, does bear some remarkable similarities to the narrative of the Exodus celebrated on Passover. However, I believe there is another Jewish comparison that has been overlooked and sheds an even greater depth on the relationship of God to humanity…

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This past weekend Jews throughout the world celebrated the beginning of Pesach, the Passover holiday, by embarking on the ancient rituals of the seder. The seder, with its rich symbolic actions and accompanying powerful text from theHaggadah, is an entryway into the psychological, emotional and spiritual experience of the Exodus. Indeed, this is the very point of having the seder, as the early rabbis taught: “In every generation, one is obligated to see oneself as having left Egypt. (Pesachim 10:5)” What does this immersion into the Exodus narrative cultivate in a person? What sort of world outlook does this bring forth? …

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In every generation throughout Jewish history there have been people who desired to enter into the Covenant of Israel and join their fate with the fate of the Jewish people. The earliest examples we have of such people are from the Tanach. The story of Ruth and her journey to the People of Israel became the paradigmatic story of conversion for the early rabbis¹. Before Ruth rabbinic tradition speaks of Abraham as the first convert² or of all of the Jewish people standing at Sinai as all converts³. Regardless of where conversion began, there has always been paths open for people who have yearned to convert to Judaism…

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We live in a drastically different world than people even a generation before us did. The modes of communication open to us allow for instantaneous communication between people around the globe. People used to need to wait for the newspaper the next morning to find out what happened somewhere else, but now, all one needs to do is point their web browser to the right address and discover live feeds of current events in every part of our world. Furthermore, this feed is not one directional any longer. Every person now has the ability to comment publicly about the actions of others. The boundaries of geography, nation, culture, language and religion are all disappearing in our ability to project our opinions and thoughts into the global discourse…

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The most defining characteristic of an observant Jewish life is fidelity to the halacha, to Jewish law. The halacha is an all-encompassing system that governs a person’s life from the moment they wake up in the morning until they go to sleep at night. There is little area in one’s daily routine that is not nuanced by Jewish law. A person who maintains a life devoted to halacha is often asked about the perceived burden of doing so.¹ How is it possible to live life encumbered by so many details about everything one does? Yet, those asking fail to recognize that every person living in any society governed by law lives their life surrounded by a legal code as well. The failure to realize this reality is, in effect, the answer to their very question for their ability to live a meaningful, fulfilled life is not hampered by conforming to the laws of their society…

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In the tragic story of the suicide of Tyler Clementi, the former Rutgers student, whose privacy was violated by his roommate, Dharun Ravi¹, the need to emphasize the right to privacy becomes ever more pronounced. In a world where leaders of major corporations and trendsetters declare that “privacy is no longer a social norm,²” it is incumbent upon the voice of our religious and ethical traditions to re-assert the inherent dignity of each individual person…

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Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot has published a remarkable new book Mikra and Meaning(Maggid Books, 2012) in which he demonstrates his tremendous fluency with the Biblical text and his mastery of the rabbinic tradition surrounding it. Each chapter takes the reader on an adventure exploring the intricate and varied ways of understanding the narratives presented in Tanach and plumbing the depths of the tradition for layers upon layers of meaning…

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It was a little over a year ago that I wrote an article for the religion magazine First Things in which I argued that the foundation for building a large umbrella inclusive community cannot rest on shared prayer alone…

Read more at Patheos.