Well… not the famous Christian thing you may have thought of. This time we will discuss another Holy Trinity. In one corner of this triangle, we find the Muslims. They believe that Muhammad traveled overnight from Mecca to Jerusalem, to the Temple Mount, and later also rode a horse from there to heaven to meet […]

There is currently a huge debate in Israel about an issue that has great potential to bring down the government: The obligatory army service (conscription) of ultra-Orthodox Jews, a.k.a. “Haredim”. Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel do not currently enlist in the IDF, while the conscription law applies equally to the rest of the Jewish population. The […]

Prof. Dan Mahler passed away on April 16, 2024. Dan Mahler was a freedom fighter, an honorary member of the Hofesh (Freedom) – The largest secular Israeli NPO, and one of its founders. Dan Mahler was also an educated man, broad-minded, and with many interests. He was a plastic surgeon and medical consultant; He was […]

Here is a summary of the recorded remarks of the Jerusalem Faction leader Rabbi Zvi Friedman from last week: It is better for us to remain under the British occupation [1948], and not in a secular Jewish state. I’d rather Arabs kill my grandchildren than that they be secular. Secularism is worse than death. It […]

This article is translated from Hebrew. It was written originally by Eran in the “Hofesh” website. If you ask a “Western” religious believer when the world was created, you will almost certainly receive an answer that the world was created some 5700-6000 years ago. If you ask who created the world, the answer will be […]

“Then said Achish unto his servants, Lo, ye see the man is mad: wherefore then have ye brought him to me? Have I need of mad men, that ye have brought this fellow to play the mad man in my presence? shall this fellow come into my house?” — 1 Samual 21:14-15 “The whole religious […]

Israel, Tel Aviv. A few years ago, I took a taxi. The [male] driver did not wear a “Kippah”. There were no religious papers visible around. Not even the common religious stickers you can find on many cars in Israel. The busy Ayalon Highway 20, however, inevitably established the necessary atmosphere for a driver-passenger conversation. […]

There are also some beautiful things in religion. In almost every religion. Although the religious believers think that the religious laws originate from “God”, in practice they were of course phrased by different people at different times and places, and usually with good and rational reasons – similarly to modern laws. “Thou shalt not kill”? […]

“And Judah said unto Onan, Go in unto thy brother’s wife, and marry her, and raise up seed to thy brother. And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother’s wife, that he spilled it on the ground, lest that he should […]

“Doesn’t the vast majority of people believe in God…?” – You’ve probably heard this overwhelming argument in one of your endless debates with some religious preachers. The calculation made by our conversational partners is quite clear: Let’s add the number of Christians worldwide (say, about 2 billion) to the number of Muslims worldwide (some 2 […]