This week the Jewish people, specifically the religious ones, mark the date of “the ninth of Av” – when according to Jewish tradition the second temple (and presumably also the first one) was destroyed, and many were killed. There are many similarities between the disasters of “the ninth of Av”, about 2,000 years ago, and […]

By Ido Sokolovsky (Original article in Hebrew here) Basically, there are two types of religious people in our world. There are those who draw the line between their world of values and the real world, still there are those who don’t. In Israel, the most prominent representative of the first kind was the late Prof. […]

“Woman is the nigger of the world”— John Lennon There’s a lot going on in currently the land of milk and honey. Much of it has to do with the special attitude of religion towards women. Women are allowed to sing… as long as men don’t hear them. That is the up-to-date twist of the […]

“Blessed be he who has not made me a woman… Blessed be he who has not made me a gentile…” – This is part of the Morning Prayer, spoken regularly by religious Jewish men. Doesn’t sound good, right? There are tons of explanations and excuses for this “enlightened” text. Some say it’s actually meant to […]

Baby Moses, as you all know, was saved from a bitter end – by being put in the famous ark. Other Hebrew babies were not so lucky, which tells us that all other Hebrew babies born in Egypt after Moses were… murdered. Moses, as you all know, walked 40 years in the desert, and then […]

Wine – especially red wine – is one of my hobbies. There’s something special about this red liquid with its unique aroma. Spending some time in a winery is also a unique experience. Nowhere else you can breathe the air and enjoy something like that. The so-called “western” religions of the world possess special attitudes […]

It’s the little things that piss you off. The government may use your tax money to finance anti-education, to pump huge money into close associates’ bank accounts, even to spend it on luxury trips abroad. But you’re used to all that. It’s the little things that can really annoy. One of them being the Ministry […]

The ultra-Orthodox members of any religion – Judaism in particular – find themselves in a new kind of problem. Building walls between themselves and the outside world has always been a good strategy for nourishing religious contents, as silly as they may be. Alas, here comes the end of the 20th century with television, cellular […]

“Even if we are all wise men, all understanding people, and we all know the Torah — we have been given a mitzva (religious commandment) to tell about the redemption from Egypt.” The above is a well-known passage from the ‘Hagadda of Pesach’ – the traditional text read and spoken by millions of Jews every […]

I had a long correspondence with someone, about the Jewish concept of ‘chain of tradition‘. One specific argument mentioned had to do with how impossible (or difficult) it is to fool “wise” people (whatever ‘wise’ means). This was part of a bigger claim, trying to explain that old traditions must be true, especially given that […]