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Articles

To Bless or Not to Bless: Thoughts on Halakha and Spiritual Consciousness

Posted September 1, 2010 - 2:22pm


Introducing Targums Neophyti and Pseudo-Jonathan

Posted August 17, 2010 - 3:17pm
Targum Onkelos is the rabbinically endorsed Aramaic translation of the Five Books of Moses. Publishers have recognized its historical and theological importance since the invention of the printing press and have honored Onkelos by placing it on the inside center spot adjacent to the biblical Hebrew text. Many Jews know that it exists. They know that it is for the most part a literal translation of the Torah. But most Jews do not know that there are two other full-length Targums as well as fragments of currently non-existing Targums; Targum means "translation" and is used today primarily for translations composed in Aramaic. The other two complete Targums are Targum Neophyti and Targum Pseudo-Jonathan. What are these Targums and when were they composed?

Children, Miracles, Terror, Spiritual Insight

Posted August 6, 2010 - 6:25am
How embarrassing for man
to be the greatest miracle on earth
and not to understand it!
How embarrassing for man
to live in the shadow of greatness
and to ignore it,
to be a contemporary of God
and not to sense it.
Religion depends upon what man does
with his ultimate embarrassment.

- Avraham Joshua Heschel


The Battle for an Egalitarian Israel? The Immanuel Case Chronology

Posted July 29, 2010 - 10:08am

Introduction


Jews and Evangelicals: Reflections on a Recent Meeting

Posted July 28, 2010 - 7:54pm


Are evangelicals interested in supporting the State of Israel because they are convinced that this support will help them convert more Jews to Christianity?

Orthodox Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Riskin of Israel, the founder of the first orthodox Jewish center in Israel for religious dialogue with Christians in 2008, and Dr. John D. Garr, board chairman and CEO of Hebraic Heritage Christian Center, assembled a total of seventeen Jewish and evangelical scholars in Atlanta, Georgia for a two day colloquium to discuss this question and other interfaith issues. The results were excellent and a follow-up session is planned. I was one of the attendees and the following are my impressions.


Benjamin Disraeli--Englishman and Jew

Posted July 26, 2010 - 9:27am

I always believed in Dizzy, that old Jew. He saw into the future.
Winston Churchill

( A review essay on Benjamin Disraeli, by Adam Kirsch. New York: Schocken, 2008.)


FAMILY


Report on Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals--Activities in Israel

Posted July 26, 2010 - 8:27am
Shalom uvrakha. I hope you have been having a good summer.

We recently returned from a 3 week stay in Jerusalem. I spent a lot of time meeting with like-minded individuals and organizational leaders, in order to foster cooperative relationships between our Institute and Israeli modern Orthodoxy. Below is a report on activities we have already undertaken, and that we are expanding in the coming years.

Mathematics and Other Problems for Orthodox Schools

Posted July 21, 2010 - 8:04am

New ideas about the teaching and learning of mathematics present challenges for Orthodox schools. In part, these ideas about the teaching and learning of mathematics are challenging to any schools: teachers lack content knowledge in the subject because they have had insufficient opportunities to learn themselves; teachers are strained pedagogically to teach a subject that they learned differently as students; ambitious aims for subject matter learning compete with a whole host of educational issues that need no enumeration here. For Orthodox schools, new understandings about cognition and learning are particularly fraught.


Who Is (and Is Not) teaching in "Modern Orthodox" Schools: A View from Israel

Posted July 14, 2010 - 9:16am

During the past several years as an educator in the fields of Tanakh and Jewish studies, I have come across a prevalent and disturbing phenomenon: most of the religiously observant student teachers whom I have met are not at all interested in teaching in the mamlakhti-dati school system (the religious public school system in Israel). When the time comes for them to decide on a professional placement, they apply to secular schools, or to the new model of specialized dati-hiloni schools (religious/secular schools), or to pluralistic religious schools.


Rabbi Joseph Messas

Posted June 20, 2010 - 9:44am

Orthodox Jews like to claim that they adhere to an unchanging tradition of laws and beliefs. Based on this understanding, it becomes possible to decide who "is in" and who "is out;" that is, who is part of the Orthodox camp and who must be placed in a different denomination. The term "Orthodox" itself, which is not part of traditional Jewish vocabulary but actually comes from the Christian lexicon, was adopted in order to distinguish different types of Jews. Yet what exactly defines so-called Orthodoxy is not so easy to pin down.


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