Ask the Rabbis // Religion & Science
In what ways, if any, do science and Judaism conflict?
31
Dec
01
Nov
Ask the Rabbis / Religion & Politics
Are there times when a rabbi must express his or her political opinion from the pulpit, even if it is likely to spark controversy?
04
Sep
Ask the Rabbis: What’s the Best Way to Ask for Forgiveness?
The first step is to admit to ourselves that we did something wrong.
30
Aug
12
Jun
What Does Judaism Say About Organ Donation?
Secular Humanism
For Humanistic Jews, there is no greater value than the sanctity of life. We honor the traditional notion of pikuah nefesh, the concept that one must act to save a life even at the expense of transgressing other prohibitions, not because this is halachically mandated but because it’s the right thing to do, independent of any religious system.
It is beyond dispute that organ and tissue transplants save and extend the quality of lives. The ultimate act of altruism is for a living donor to make the gift of an organ to a spouse, a sibling or a friend. And there is no greater legacy for the deceased than to serve as a life giver to others. Rather than deepen our pain at the time of our loved one’s death, this ultimate act of generosity...
01
May
Ask the Rabbis | What Are Our Obligations as Jews Toward the animals We Use, Live With or Eat?
What are our obligations as Jews toward the animals we use, live with or eat?
26
Feb
Ask the Rabbis: In counseling end-of-life care, what Jewish principles are most valuable?
In counseling end-of-life care, what Jewish principles are most valuable?
06
Feb
Ask the Rabbis // How Should Jews Treat Their Arab Neighbors?
Independent
Although we need to take every precaution against fanatical Muslim Arab terrorism in and outside our homeland, we need to cease forcibly displacing peaceful Arabs like Bedouins, destroying their homes (even their mosques!) for the crime of not filling out forms. We were told that we were to apportion land to those living among us, whether Arab or Martian:
“And you shall divide up this land...also to the strangers who sojourn amongst you...and they shall be to you like native citizens amid the Children of Israel… says God” (Ezekiel, Chapter 47).
It is tragic enough that we cut down healthy olive trees tended by non-militant Palestinian farmers. It is far more tragic that we continue to impose a very un-Jewish, Occidental European model of government on a culture that is deeply tribal and Oriental, thereby alienating even...
14
Jan
Ask the Rabbis // What Does Judaism Say about Immigration?
In Israel or America, in our homeland or dispersion, we are immigrants and the children of immigrants.
02
Jan
Ask the Rabbis: Does Jewish anxiety have a theological basis?
INDEPENDENT
Anxiety is a universal human malady that strikes when we find ourselves at the crossroads of choice-making, equipped with several hefty wagonloads of relativities and barely a handful of absolutes. It was not into the light of clarity that Moses journeyed for his encounter with God, but into the Great Cloud of Obscurity. There he received two chunks of rock etched with divine absolutes. But by the time he returned to camp, the batteries had worn out, and the divine absolutes became an endless stream of possible interpretations and applications that continue to perplex us to this day. We live in the misty chasm of the most oft-repeated word in the Torah: “And.” It is in the struggle with the “and” that we grow; in grappling with the faded boundaries between clear and unclear, we...