Author: admin

The Double Rise of Yosef. Here is a whisper in the words the Torah chooses. In Vayeshev, when the brothers drag Yosef out of the cistern, it says simply “Vayalehu Min Ha’bor” – they raise him from the pit, seemingly with a struggle to…

Moral Vanity at Jewish Expense

Public life has grown accustomed to the chant. It appears at rallies and in lecture theatres, on placards and timelines, its rhythm offering the chanter a sensation of borrowed virtue, a moral halo available on…

Israel’s debate over the death penalty for terrorists is usually framed as a practical argument about deterrence. Will execution prevent attacks by people already willing to die? Is it moral, effective, reversible?

But the most…

We must be defiant in the face of today’s anti-Semitism. We must fight against the myth that we are destined to be unwelcome strangers in the lands in which we sojourn.

I recall reading the historian Graetz who maintained that when the Jews…