Are most people religious or secular? In most Western countries with Christian orientation, the question itself is pretty obvious. ‘Belief in God’ for a typical American would usually be accompanied by some common Christian behaviors, and since many of these are optional, it could be translated into simple everyday habits. Nothing special that can be […]

It really pisses me off when I’m being blamed for ‘hatred’. Try to criticize religion, especially the Middle-Eastern ones. Soon you’ll find yourself as the target of various accusations, which may start with ‘hatred’ and end with ‘Anti-Semitism’ and ‘Islamofobia’. Religions are not very tolerant of criticism, and that is an understatement. The issue has […]

There is a funny thing about writing fiction and legends. Things that are unimaginable in real life, become quite normal in fairy tales (the fairies themselves, to name one – no sexual meaning is intended here). Perhaps the most striking attribute of a legend is to assign human-like behaviors to other “things”. These can be […]

The Talmud says ‘Kol Be-Isha Erva’. The direct literal translation of our sages in this case reads ‘A woman’s voice is her genitals’. Luckily, the meaning is not the direct translation, but it’s almost. The meaning is ‘a woman’s singing voice induces desire, and therefore is not allowed to be heard by men’. The origins […]

The essence of any country, as I (and not necessarily others) see it, is not the ethnic composition of the population, but rather the country’s “culture”. I – and many others – very much want to preserve the “nature” of the current state of Israel in many cultural ways: Language is just one example, and […]

There is a countrywide protest in progress now all over Israel. It has been going on for several weeks now, and the main slogan calls for “social justice”. The protest is generally based on economy issues. The middle class finds it harder than ever to survive these times, let alone acquire a decent place to […]

I often stumble upon the famous argument “Who is a Jew?” (or, rather, “What is a Jew?”). Unlike other related terms, Jewishness is used to express several very different things. In many countries of the world, there is some order in things. Let’s take Belgium for instance: You can be a Belgian citizen, while from […]

June 2011 — Israeli Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, has issued an order replacing the words of ‘Yizkor’, the famous Israeli military memorial prayer. For many years it has begun with the words “Let the people of Israel remember its sons and daughters”, and from now on it should start with “Let God […]

“In India, as elsewhere in our darkening world, religion is the poison in the blood. Where religion intervenes, mere innocence is no excuse. Yet we go on skating around this issue, speaking of religion in the fashionable language of ‘respect’.” — Salman Rushdie In took the Unites States ten years or more to settle the […]

I got the idea for this page from a beautiful article, in which the author said: “Computerized ‘life’ games re-created a whole biosphere, with all its orientation and complexity, without the codes for generating ‘grass eaters’ and all the rest being programmed by anyone.” Can simple processes of replication and survival really create more complex […]