We tend to think of slavery as something belonging entirely to the past. On the Seder Night, we will talk about slavery going back thousands of years and think of it abstractly as a feature of a barbaric world long gone. We will be asked to imagine what it was like to be a slave and then imagine experiencing freedom from slavery.…
Ben Hecht
We Jews have always been a fractious, divided people, ever since the days of Moses. If we came together, it was to respond to an external threat, and even then, there was always dissension. And so, it is today. But such conditions produce the most unlikely heroes. It matters not to me if they come from the left or the…
Lilith
There are many stories about evil spirits who are supposed to surround us and interfere in our lives. That’s one way of explaining evil in our world. Such ideas are still popular amongst the credulous and the superstitious. Most evil spirits are male, like Asmodeus. But the mistress of evil is Lilith. Queen of the night. The name comes from the Hebrew…
Free Speech
In my youth, I always regarded free, reasoned, civilized speech to be one of the most important and positive features of Western societies. My education, at school, university, and beyond was always predicated on the freedom of expression and listening to another point of view. Almost as important was that you could laugh at and make fun of ideas you thought…
Self Defense
Elliot Horowitz in his overview of Purim over the ages, Reckless Rites and the Legacy of Jewish Violence has a subtext. It is a quote from the English poet W.H. Auden “ Those to whom evil is done, Do evil in return.” And Purim he suggests is an example of this. He documents Christian and Jewish ( liberal and reform) disapproval of…
Why Purim Matters
Purim matters so much this year. It tells a never ending story. We were threatened with destruction. We responded by finding ways to combat the threat. We did not capitulate. We called out evil as it was. We celebrated our survival by emphasizing charity, friendship, and gratitude, strengthening our communities, all positive qualities, building not destroying. We did not rejoice in…