UN Legitimizes Seat for Palestine: Trophy for 10/7 BACKGROUND – TALKING POINTS – FACTS – ACTIONS – STORIES We value the feedback of our readers and invite you to please take 10 seconds to answer two questions about this week’s edition by clicking the image right below the Actions to Consider section. Despite a raging […]
by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD | President of Mercaz Olami (Representing the global Masorti/Conservative movement) Upon assuming the leadership of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Solomon Schechter immediately proceeded to assemble a high-quality roster of faculty committed to joining with him in interpreting Judaism for American Jews. As Norman Bentwich observed, Schechter’s recruitment […]
Our tradition places great importance on the connections we feel with other people. We note those connections through happy events, such as a wedding or Bat Mitzvah, and sad events, such as a funeral and burial. In this week’s Torah reading, Ki Tetse, we read of how we must let a captured woman mourn the […]
Islamist Terrorism Still Threatening Freedom and Democracy BACKGROUND – TALKING POINTS – ACTIONS – VOICES – STORIES As we mark the 23rd anniversary of September 11, 2001, we are reminded of the nearly 3,000 innocent lives lost in the brutal acts of terrorism. Their memory lives on, not only in the hearts of their loved ones, […]
We are in the midst of the sheva‘ de-neḥamta, the seven Haftarot of consolation that are chanted between Tish‘ah Be-Av and Rosh Hashanah. How can we be consoled this year, in the wake of the slaughter on October 7? Ibn Ezra and modern scholars teach us that Isaiah 40–66 were written by a second author […]
Hamas Exploits Hostage Murders for Terror and Propaganda BACKGROUND – TALKING POINTS – ACTIONS – VOICES – STORIES Hamas viciously murdered six Israeli hostages in a tunnel underneath Gaza. The Iran-backed terrorists executed each with bullets to the back of their heads because the Israeli Defense Forces were closing in on their position. Hamas terrorists […]
by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD | President of Mercaz Olami (Representing the global Masorti/Conservative movement) In Professor Naomi Cohen’s “Diaspora Plus Palestine, Religion Plus Nationalism: The Seminary and Zionism” (“Tradition Renewed: A History of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America,” Vol. 2), she emphasized Solomon Schechter’s early adherence — already in the 1880s — to […]
“See, this day I set before you blessing and curse.” (Deut. 11:26) When the Torah commands us to see and not just to hear, we understand that we are talking about more than cognitive understanding. We are talking about an experience shared by the soul as well. In our world there are so many blessings […]
‘The Jewish Question’: Discriminating Against Jews in Schools BACKGROUND – TALKING POINTS – ACTIONS – STORIES Ethnic Studies Curriculum: ‘The Jewish Question’ How to address the “Jewish Question,” a phrase used by the Nazis during the Holocaust, is now being debated in a California school district. Evidence uncovered during the discovery phase of a lawsuit […]
by Rabbi Alan Silverstein, PhD | President of Mercaz Olami (Representing the global Masorti/Conservative movement) The European roots of Zionism in Conservative Judaism commenced with an emphasis on Jewish history and peoplehood as espoused by Rabbi Zechariah Frankel in the mid-19th century. Rabbi Frankel had withdrawn from the German rabbinical conferences of the 1840s due […]