Peter Beinart's new blog on the Daily Beast titled Open Zion (formerly Zion Square) is dedicated to an "open and unafraid conversation about Israel, Palestine, and the Jewish future." But after several weeks of Open Zion, one writer has concluded that its conversation is not, in fact, open—and is not one in which he can continue to take part. Here, he resigns his position.
When did "natural" become a synonym for "good" or "better"? Advertisers tell us that everything from our food to our skincare is better when it's used in its most natural state. But haven't the philosophers tried hard to get us out of the state of nature?
The next time someone tells you that ethical behavior doesn't need a foundation in religious teaching, step onto an Israeli bus (it doesn't have to be the gender-segregated variety) or open a mass-circulation Israeli newspaper and see how religion puts Jewish ethics on steroids.
Imagine God not as a benign force infusing the universe with love and sustaining it with mercy, and not as a stern judge smiting sinners from on high with his cosmic zap-gun, but as a grandfatherly figure, kind but, truth be told, somewhat out of it, sitting in a corner, tolerant of the various paths his children have chosen.
The Greeks did not invent equality. Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, and the gang famously believed that the rich are different from you and me—not merely because they are shaped by their privileges but because they are actually, literally made of superior stuff.
Numbers 8:1–12:16
By David Hazony
Is anything touchier in Judaism than the issue of authority? This week's Torah reading addresses the question of authority head on—and through the person of Moses himself. The answers are unlikely to please either Orthodoxy or Reform Judaism.
Exodus 21:1–24:18
By Moshe Sokolow
"Should you purchase a Hebrew slave [eved ivri], he shall labor for six years and go free, gratis, in the seventh." This week's portion commences with a topic that is of poignant and almost eerie pertinence in this period of upheaval caused by economic straits, when many Jews have increasingly been compelled to depend on communal and philanthropic welfare. How does a Jew become a slave? And can another Jew become a slave master?
Jack Wertheimer
Fifth in a series on people and places fostering commitment to Judaism and the Jewish people.
"I've heard the term ‘Jewish peoplehood' very often but never understood what it meant," says Zhanna Beyl, an immigrant from Moscow now living in New York, where she works with Jewish teens from the former Soviet Union. "But I got a feeling for it when a small group of us from Latin America, Poland, India, and the States spontaneously sang the same Jewish musical tunes and talked." The setting of their encounter was the Nahum Goldmann Fellowship program, a unique experiment in global Jewish conversation.
Aryeh Tepper
The stagnation of Jewish tradition is hardly a new story. In a sense, it's a modern Jewish trope. In the 19th century, both the Reform and Conservative movements emerged as responses to this perceived atrophy. Leading Orthodox rabbis, some of whom agreed with the reformers' critique, devised their own attempts to revive the tradition—if, naturally, along more traditionalist lines. Unfortunately, none succeeded in arresting the decline.
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