A common tactic among those who try to preach religion, is applying the phrase ‘out of context’ to many quotations taken from religious texts by secular people – quotations which demonstrate the bad things in religion. Wikipedia explains ‘out of context’ as “a passage removed from its surrounding matter in such a way as to […]

I love blues. The music that is. I can listen to long programs playing this genre. Friends of mine love different kinds of art: Some like to visit the theater, others do sculpting. There are even those who go to the opera, god forbid. There is one thing in common with all of the above. […]

New Year’s Eve is named “Sylvester’s Day” in some countries, Israel included. The reason has to do with Pope Sylvester I who presumably died in December 31, almost two millennia ago. According to one legend, it appears that Mr. Sylvester was not so kind to the Jews. The contemporary outcome is a major ban by […]

The situation: A weekly meeting, in which employees of a certain Israeli company help small children – sons and daughters of Ethiopian Jews who recently immigrated to Israel – in preparing their school homework. Innocent kids. Still do not know Hebrew properly. They certainly do not know biology or astronomy. Even don’t know the difference […]

This one really pissed me off. All this talks about the “Chosen People” always makes me feel uncomfortable. I am a Jew but I am not “chosen” in any way. Either I am the only person aboard (and all the rest are products of my imagination, a la Descartes) or everyone else is similarly “chosen”. […]

Last Saturday, while walking in some known Israeli town, I couldn’t help noticing the renowned pattern of an El Al plane passing above in the sky. An El Al airplane? On Saturday? For a moment I thought the Messiah was already here, and then I remembered the old airline trick of “On Tuesday my name […]

About six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. The ‘Shoa’ – as it is called in Hebrew – is a true terrible historical event which we all know. Many of the survivors still live among us, some carry on their skin the mark of the death camps. There is plenty of documentation in the […]

Our mind has evolved to grasp the world as having absolute rules and definitive purposes. In our day-to-day life – things must have well-defined locations, events must occur at well-understood times, movements have clear directions. The reasons for this tendency are easy to explain. For millions of years, our survival has been depending on a […]

Jerusalemites suffered two disasters during the recent few days. In one of them, a building exploded due to a gas leak. A whole family – a father, a mother and a little baby – were killed. The other disaster involved a poorly-carried-out extermination of pests, which also resulted in the poisoning of two little baby […]

(Original version in Hebrew: http://hofesh.org.il/articles/halacha/talmud_logic/talmud-logic.html, using http://www.daatemet.org.il for many resources) “New generations are inferior to older ones” – this is a common idea in Judaism, somewhat reversing the known facts of human and cultural development. According to this idea, the ancient sages are said to be “closer to God” in spiritual power, so they surely […]