Menachem Mendel

AIWAC has begun a series of posts titled “A Partial Guide to Non-Observant Israeli Jews.” See his first post here on the Traditionalist.

Posted on August 13th, 2010 under Israel, Rabbinic Authority, Religion. Comments: None

Tomer Persico has a post (Hebrew) discussing Elchanan Shilo’s article, “A Continuous Judaism Between Halakhah and Hiloni”, and some reactions to the original article. See here for a previous post on Shilo’s article.

Posted on August 9th, 2010 under Israel, Jewish Law, Jewish Thought, Rabbinic Authority, Religion, Religious Zionism. Comments: None

Elyashiv Reicher, a journalist and teacher who lives in Yeruḥam, has posted an interesting statistic on his blog, דרומי. Reicher notes that the majority of kibbutzim that have been established in the last two decades have been urban kibbutzim. There are currently over two thousand people living in numerous communal frameworks within urban areas in [...]

Posted on August 8th, 2010 under Israel, Religion. Comments: 1

At Divrei Chaim there is a post discussing some of the orthodox rabbinical discussions about women in leadership roles. This comes not so long after the Forward Sisterhood blog published the Sisterhood 50 of “America’s Influential Women Rabbis.” Today I just saw another list of influential women, but of a somewhat different nature. In the [...]

Posted on July 29th, 2010 under Gender, Religion, Religious Authority. Comments: None

I spent most of today driving, so any celebration of July 4th has been a bit muted. A thought for the day from Thomas Paine’s introduction to Age of Reason. I put the following work under your protection. It contains my opinions upon Religion. You will do me the justice to remember, that I have [...]

Posted on July 4th, 2010 under History, Religion. Comments: None

ADDeRabbi posted a much-commented upon post Ironic Orthodoxy. It is worth and read even to those who don’t identify with Orthodoxy since many, although not all, of his observations apply to any religious community. My unscientific observation is that “Ironic Orthodoxy” is where no small number of our Orthodox friends are probably situated, and it [...]

Posted on June 9th, 2010 under Israel, Rabbinic Authority, Religion. Comments: 3

From boingboing. When some religiously devout people hear a charismatic healer speak the word of god , the regions of their brains involved in skeptical thinking and vigilance appear to shut down. Uffe Schjødt of Aarhus University in Denmark and his colleagues scanned the brains of Pentecostalists while they listened to recorded prayers from non-Christians, [...]

Posted on May 3rd, 2010 under Religion. Comments: None

Alan Brill has an interesting post on his must-see blog, The Book of Doctrines and Opinions: Notes on Jewish Theology and Spirituality, about Catholic Schools and Jewish Day Schools. This post reminds me of another interesting comparison which has been made, and that is between the Jewish and Catholic communities in Boston. A number of [...]

Posted on January 11th, 2010 under Education, Religion. Comments: 2

The Hartman Institute Blog has posted a video of the lecture “Role of Religion in the Public Space, Israeli and American Perspectives.” The two lecturers are William Galston (American perspective) and Ruth Gavison (Israeli perspective). I am listening to it now and so far it is very interesting to listen to these two different perspectives. [...]

Posted on July 8th, 2009 under Israel, Popular Culture, Religion. Comments: 3