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 […]

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 […]

It hit me. The solution to all our problems. And it’s all based on a mathematical attribute named ‘Transitivity’. Quoting Wikipedia: In mathematics, a binary relation R over a set X is transitive if whenever an element a is related to an element b, and b is in turn related to an element c, then […]

This morning I watched the Israeli Channel 2 morning program. The interview that caught my attention hosted two known figures, Dov Halbertal and Emily Amrusi, allegedly representing “left” and “right”, eagerly discussing “from both sides of the fence” the future of the Jewish nation and the State of Israel. Two people who believe that some […]

There are many misconceptions and contradictions in old religions, yet the “best” must be those associated with outdated knowledge of our place in the universe. Thinking of Earth as the center of everything, and of one’s own location as the center of Earth — this perception might be considered arrogant, but it comes naturally with […]

The art of inventing excuses is an old art. Most of our ancient “sacred” texts contain a myriad of contradictions and conflicts, but being “sacred” – these contradictions and conflicts must be resolved… How can the gods be mistaken? The good news is that it’s relatively easy to come up with solutions to practically everything. […]

“Religion is the opium of the people” is one of the most frequently quoted sayings of Karl Marx. Religion and economy don’t mix well, like oil and water. Together, they tend to form a vicious circle: Religion promotes poverty, which promotes religion. It takes a great leader, someone like Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, to pull a […]

Before killing seven CIA agents in a suicide attack in Pakistan in 2009, the terrorist Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi took a video of himself, in which – among other things – he expressed satisfaction with the fact of soon meeting his victims, when he is in paradise and they are suffering in hell. The planned […]

“Religious media” is much like “religious university” – sort of oxymoron. The purpose of media in general and newspapers in particular is to convey information and opinions about the world around us. Religiously-oriented media and newspapers often convey information and opinions, but about another world. Want some examples? Sure you do. Here are some references […]