Can one deny the existence of God and be a good Jew?
Dennis Prager and Rabbi Joseph Telushkin open the first chapter of their book The Nine Questions by claiming that the question of God's existence "is life's most crucial question". In…
The Passover Haggadah and the telling of the story of the exodus – factual history or religious myth and narrative?
On Passover, we celebrate as Jews the exodus from Egypt representing the birth of the Jewish people. According to the Jewish tradition, Passover is the "time of our freedom" -…
Maimonides and religious language
Maimonides' great work of philosophy (that he actually presents not as a work of philosophy but commentary), the Guide of the Perplexed, is an esoteric work in which Maimonides declares…
Rabbi Soloveitchik and Halachic Man
Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, who lived in the 20th century, was a leader of modern orthodoxy, a Halachic (legal) scholar and a very profound thinker who pursued secular as well as…
Rabbi Soloveitchik and the Lonely Man of Faith
Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, who lived in the 20th century, was a leader of modern orthodoxy, a Halachic (legal) scholar and a very profound thinker who pursued secular as well as…
The essence of Judaism and religion – orthodox (faith) or orthoprax (good deeds)
There is an ancient debate in the Talmudic tradition concerning the question as to the essence of Judaism and religion - faith or good deeds. Rashi (the great commentator of…
The verse “I am the Lord your God”
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in his blog on the Torah reading of the week (Va’etchanan 5777), presents two arguments in the Jewish tradition regarding the opening verse of the "10 statements"…
Heresy and moral atheism
Maimonides (the great legal scholar and philosopher of the 12th century) is the first and only thinker in the Jewish tradition to codify a set of principles of faith within…
The source of authority and sanctity of the Torah (the 5 Books of Moses) and Rava’s anti-theological conception
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel points out (God in Search of Man, P. 257-278), that there is a fundamental difference between the concepts of the Torah (the 5 books of Moses)…
The interpretation of texts contradicting orthodox dogma
In traditional rabbinic Judaism we as Jews live not by what is written in the Bible (the Written Torah) but by the Bible as interpreted and understood by the Jewish…