Hair is a major issue in Orthodox Judaism. If you’re a man, you’re supposed not to shave it from your face (i.e., grow a beard and a mustache). You’re also supposed to grow your “Payot”, which is the Hebrew term for sidelocks or sideburns. In fact, the 252nd of the 613 “Mitzvot” (613 commandments) of […]

There’s something hard to explain with Islam… Don’t extreme Muslims believe in the power of God? Why then they must conduct his battles for him? Let’s see now: In Sweden, threats to burn the Quran by a far-right group triggered several nights of violence. In Israel, threats to sacrifice a young goat on the Temple […]

We used to be few. We, humans, that is. The Biblical story talks about Adam and Eve, but even real science agrees that at certain times the Homo Sapiens population was tiny. And then we became many. Very many. It is a nasty characteristic of evolution that makes the successful ones numerous, and eventually – […]

The religious argument is that the prophecies that appear in the Bible (Old and/or New Testament, depending on one’s religion) were fulfilled precisely. In fact, the fulfillment of the prophecies is, in the opinion of many believers, “proof” that God controls history. So here’s a little about biblical prophecy: The study of the biblical text […]

Religious people often classify other people by their “religion”. It’s like each and every person must “have” one single religion, which is determined not necessarily by him/her, but rather by the religious rules. Specifically for Judaism, the common definition used by Orthodox Jews for a “Jew” is: “A person who was born to a Jewish […]

Nowadays we witness an endless debate between carnivores and vegetarians, when one of the arguments is about the well-being of the animals. In the meantime, countries of the “new world”, especially in Europe, formulate new rules about how animals should be killed in order to be eaten. The main idea is electrocution, namely death by […]

“Sukkah” is the Hebrew word for a hut (as in “Pizza Hut”) – a small house, typically temporary and wooden, in someone’s territory. “Sukkot” is the plural of “Sukkah”, i.e. “huts”. One of the most interesting Jewish holidays is Sukkot. We often refer to it as the “Gathering Festival”, following the Biblical phrase: “Also in […]

The recent couple of weeks have been chaotic in Israel. Even though the struggle against Covid-19 seemed to succeed – new challenges have popped, in particular the war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and its implications inside Israel on the relationships between Jews and Arabs. This is not the proper place to describe the […]

Rumor has it that during the “Black Plague” in the Middle Ages there were those who blamed the Jews for its spread, because of the lower mortality among them, which was associated with the religious customs of washing hands. Much water has flown since then, even in Jordan River. And nowadays? Miraculously, various elements related […]

One of the common religious claims about “creation” is that the world was created some 6,000 years ago with all the known scientific evidence already built into it. Sort of “God is trying us”. This claim of retroactive creation makes little sense, and is already discussed here. An interesting method of tackling this issue is […]