Since its inception, Christianity included a significant stream of asceticism. John the Baptist is portrayed as a kind of hermit, content to live the life of a penniless vagabond. The Jesus of the Gospels does not exactly repudiate wealth, but neither does he promote...
In its discussion about preparing for Passover, the Talmud (Pesahim 4b) concludes that according to the Torah a verbal renunciation of all leaven in a Jew’s possession is all that is required in order to fulfill the Scriptural requirement to destroy all hametz....
The Passover Haggadah assures us that “all who enlarge upon the telling of the exodus from Egypt is praiseworthy.” But how one “enlarges” upon the story is unspecified. An early Midrash (Mekhilta, Bo, end) reports that Rabbi Eliezer ruled that a company of scholars...
The Torah portion the Rabbis assigned to Shemini Atzeret includes a brief description of the sacral calendar in which the three annual pilgrimage festivals are included. For Sukkot, the festival that immediately precedes Shemini Atzeret – an independent holiday – the...
The Mishnah (Sukkah 50b-51a) describes the festivities associated with the Water Libation Festival as a unique and unforgettable celebration. The most pious of celebrants would dance with torches and the Tosefta, cited by the Talmud (Sukkah 53a), details the words of...
Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Talmud says, each person’s earnings for the year are determined: all the more reason to pray for prosperity on Rosh Hashanah itself. The farmer would come to the synagogue and pray for a higher crop yield or increased animal...
Theodicy is the technical term applied to the philosophical justification of evil in the world. The fundamental question of theodicy is how can an all good and all-powerful God allow the existence of evil in the world? This question impacts directly on our perception...
By tradition Jews read the Book of Ecclesiastes on the intermediate Shabbat of the festival of Sukkot. Near the end of the book is a curious phrase. “Be warned, my son, of making many books” (Kohelet 12:12). According to Dr. Robert Gordis, the last six verses of the...
Stan Boutin, a biological scientist at the University of Alberta has been researching red squirrels in the Yukon for more than thirty-five years. In the course of his work on the Kluane Red Squirrel Project he has documented a phenomenon important to the evolution of...
In one of the most moving passages of the High Holiday liturgy worshippers implore God “not to cast us off into old age.” But old age, like the future, ain’t what it used to be. Consider the case of Don Pellemann. In 2015 at the age of one hundred, Pellemann set five...