Menachem Mendel

The Jewish Review of Books is about to hit the stands. If both Shmuel Rosner and Azzan Yadin have articles in it, who wouldn’t want to subscribe.

Posted on February 11th, 2010 under Book Reviews, Jewish History, Jewish Law, Jewish Studies, Jewish Thought, New Books. Comments: 3

I have posted the complete interview with Yoav Sorek in one file on Google Docs. The Hebrew version can be found here. Some of the formatting in Hebrew was difficult on Google Docs, so there are some weird placements of punctuation. The English version is here.
Update: The journalist who interviewed Yoav Sorek, [...]

Posted on January 27th, 2010 under Israel, Jewish History, Jewish Law, Jewish Thought, Modern Judaism, Rabbinic Authority, Zionism. Comments: None

Below is the final part of the interview with Yoav Sorek.
Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV.
The Holiness in the Seam Line Sector
Maybe redemption will come from what you call the boundary sector, people who occupy the area between the religious and the secular?
“Correct. Taking off the kippah is maybe a type of [...]

Posted on January 26th, 2010 under History, Israel, Jewish Law, Jewish Thought, Judaism, Rabbinic Authority, Zionism. Comments: None

Part I, Part II, Part III.
Sorek discussed the theological and halakhic implications which are to be the end of the exile in his first big article, “The Torah of Eretz Yisrael and the Torah of the Diaspora (hutz la’aretz),” twelve-and-a-half years ago in the journal “Azure.” He was then a fellow at the Shalem [...]

Posted on January 26th, 2010 under Israel, Jewish History, Jewish Law, Jewish Thought, Rabbinic Authority, Zionism. Comments: 2

Part I, Part II.
Of course everyone is asking about your wife, your children.
“My wife is not so enthusiastic about my newest excitement, despite that she understands and to some extent identifies with what lies behind it. She is the daughter of a rabbi (Rabbi Binyamin Herlberg, who was killed on Har Eival) and cames [...]

Posted on January 24th, 2010 under Israel, Jewish Law, Jewish Thought, Rabbinic Literature, Zionism. Comments: 2

See here for part I.
Are You Beginning to Miss It?
“The truth is that I feel totally connected. Maybe I am misleading myself, but I have a feeling that uncovering my head is a type of option also in religious society, or in its margins. I feel connected to it and part of it [...]

Posted on January 24th, 2010 under Israel, Jewish Law, Jewish Thought, Rabbinic Authority. Comments: None

I have been thinking a lot about the interview with Yoav Sorek, which I previously blogged about, and I decided to translate the interview. The interview is from Makor Rishon, Friday, January 22, 2010/7 Shevat 5770. Below is part I.
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The First Post-Orthodox
Yoav Sorek, the wild boy of the yeshiva journalists, took off his [...]

Posted on January 22nd, 2010 under Israel, Jewish Law, Jewish Thought, Modern Judaism, Rabbinic Authority, Zionism. Comments: None

In Makor Rishon there is a very interesting interview with Yoav Sorek about Judaism, Jewish Law, Zionism, and Sorek’s experience of taking off his kippah in order to build an Israeli Judaism. The interview can be found here (scroll down a little bit) and is in Hebrew. Here are a number of Sorek’s [...]

Posted on January 21st, 2010 under Israel, Jewish Law, Jewish Thought. Comments: 2

Tomer Persico reviews (Hebrew) Jay Michaelson’s Everything Is God: The Radical Path of Nondual Judaism. For a recent article by Persico on The Rebbe see here. From his article,
As I will show, the Rebbe did believe—and encouraged his followers to believe—that he was the messiah, destined to reveal himself to the people Israel [...]

Posted on November 19th, 2009 under Book Reviews, Jewish Thought, Kabbalah, New Books. Comments: None