Recently in Judaism Category

Twilight screenwriter, Melissa Rosenberg, tells the Jewish Journal that "her" vampires are not like any others. "They're kosher vampires," Rosenberg says, laughing.

To call them "kosher" may be a stretch, but the leading figure, Edward Cullen, and his family are all "vegetarians" -- which in this context means they don't drink human blood, though they do eat animals -- and therefore they are not killers, but hunters. Their anomalous way of life, in which diet is not simply a carnal drive but a moral choice, makes them outsiders, not only from the world of mortals but also from the larger vampire culture, who see the Cullens as a threat to the vampire establishment. The story's human protagonist, Bella, idolizes the Cullens, and, you could say, sees them as a light unto the vampire nation.

Well, what do you think? Are these vampires really different? Are all vampires "Jewish", in the sense that they are eternal outsiders, as Rosenberg speculates? I am not sure, but I do know that any time you watch a movie, and ask who is the "Jewish character", you will learn a great deal about what being Jewish means -- not to the character, but to yourself. Now that's always intersting.

Jewish support for initiatives addressing co-existence among all citizens of the State of Israel, both Jewish and Arab, has gone mainstream. Is this a good thing or not? Depends on whom you ask.

Last week's unanimous endorsement of the cause by American Jewry's largest religious movement, at the biennial conference in Toronto of the Union for Reform Judaism, was the latest sign that Jewish support for Israeli-Arab causes has become popular. But such support is not limited to Reform Jews.

Activists from secular to Orthodox have taken up this cause, though there is no doubt that the numbers skew in one direction - and it isn't toward the traditional community. That disturbs me personally, but should not actually be an issue in the debate about the wisdom of this trend.
It seems to me that this is ultimately an issue about which those on the left and the right, both politically and religiously, ought to agree.

This should be a no-brainer, right? Well for a significant number of Orthodox Jews, it's not so obvious and that fact speaks volumes to the thinking of many in that community. Interestingly, it is precisely those who think the answer should be 'no' that are more accurate about the historical origins of the holiday, and I actually have great respect for that even if I totally disagree with the conclusion at which they arrive. But what really makes this question interesting, is that how one answers it, is a kind of Rorschach test which reveals how one thinks about Jews living in a largely non-Jewish culture.

The arguments against observing Thanksgiving are all based on Leviticus 18:3, which reads, "You shall not copy the practices of the land of Egypt where you dwelt, or of the land of Canaan to which I am taking you; nor shall you follow their laws." Some halakhic (Jewish legal) authorities rule that observing Thanksgiving violates this rule while others do not. The issue which divides them is generally whether they see Thanksgiving as religious or not.

Those who embrace Thanksgiving, do so on the basis that it was "always a secular holiday", to which anyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of history responds, "are you kidding?!"

The uproar over President Obama's bow before Japanese Emperor Akihito refuses to die down. As soon as it happened, it brought to mind the Biblical Book of Esther, and the story of Mordechai refusing to bow down to Haman. As in the case of the President, although much emotion is evoked by the story, one wonders why it is such a big deal.

Although Mordechai's refusal to bow before Haman is viewed as a heroic defense of Jewish pride and identity in the face of overwhelming power, it may well have been a needlessly obstinate decision to make a point in public, even if such point-making is neither wise nor called for. Very early on, the Sages noticed this and felt compelled to provide a reason for Mordechai's refusal.

This short article by Robin Yassin-Kassab, makes an intriguing claim about the wisdom of seeing the Bible, or any sacred literature, as mythology.

Myth doesn't mean untruth any more than a great novel does. Myth is heightened truth. A myth is perhaps more 'true' than reality because reality unfiltered is unstructured and unexplained. The fact that God uses human myths to talk to humans need not perturb the religious.

The idea that a myth is something different from a lie, and possibly more important than a simple factual truth, is not new even if it remains provocative and that is why I share this with you. Is this so different a claim than that made by the Sages of 2,000 years ago, that "the Torah was given in human language"? The idea that the infinite One could reveal in human language the full meaning of God's will is actually pretty arrogant on our part.

The article itself is overly simplistic and far too impressed with the results of a simple comparative of religions approach which notes the similarities of the Gilgamesh epic and the story of creation as found in the Hebrew Bible. But the larger issue of our ability to think bigger about the stories we hold to be sacred endures.

Ultimately, this author asks us to think about how big these stories are, and how the bigger they are, the more elastic their meaning will be. In a world of endless battles between too many who either see literal truth or no truth at all in the Bible, those are important questions to ask and to answer.

What do you think?