黑料社

On Korah and Spinoza

Jul 1, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Korah

When I was a rambunctious kid growing up in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, the name of Benedict de Spinoza came to me as easily as that of Ted Williams or Stan Musial or Sid Luckman. If the latter three were among my childhood heroes, the former meant a great deal to my father. He spoke often of Spinoza’s grand conception of God as the sum total of all that exists. Indeed, body and mind were but two attributes of God’s infinite nature. There were countless others which we would never know. For my father, Spinoza represented the fullest and finest expression of Judaism’s historic quest to understand the endless diversity of existence in monotheistic terms. On many a Shabbat I was treated to a discourse that eluded the grasp of my inattentive mind. I remember only the stirring intensity of his fascination. Spinoza provided a haven in which the rational bent of my father’s mind and the religious hunger of his heart could both find comfort.

Isaiah Berlin and Kant

Oct 21, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Bereishit

I like Isaiah Berlin’s favorite quotation from Kant: “Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be built.”

On Baseball and 黑料社 Endurance

Sep 25, 1995 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Rosh Hashanah

Seminary lore has it that Solomon Schechter advised the young Louis Ginzberg, when he joined the faculty, to master the game of baseball.

God’s Human Partner

Jan 5, 2002 By Ismar Schorsch | Commentary | Shemot

At the end of their gripping biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel (unfortunately chronicling only the European phase of his life), Edward Kaplan and Samuel Dresner report that he arrived in New York on March 21, 1940 aboard the Lancastria. For a moment, after reading that tidbit, I wondered if uncannily the Schorsch family had come on the same ship. I dimly knew that the month of our arrival had been March 1940.

The Spirit and the Letter

Feb 5, 2016 By Yonatan Y. Brafman | Commentary | Mishpatim

After the heights of the revelation at Sinai, Parashat Mishpatim settles down to more mundane topics, including a lengthy discussion of torts. Perhaps motivated by this sudden change of altitude, Nahmanides interprets these details as expansions on the Ten Commandments, such as the prohibitions on coveting and theft: 鈥淔or if a man does not know the laws of the house and field or other possessions, he might think that they belong to him and thus covet them and take them for himself鈥�.

Dawkins and a Deeper Level of Faith

Nov 18, 2006 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Hayyei Sarah

In his introduction, Richard Dawkins articulates his goal in writing The God Delusion: “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down” (5).

The Currencies of Justice

Aug 9, 2008 By David Hoffman | Commentary | Devarim

You shall not be partial in judgment: hear out low (katan) and high (gadol) alike. Fear no man, for judgment is God鈥檚. (Deut. 1:17)

Philo, the great first-century Alexandrian 黑料社 thinker, was engaged in a project that in many ways was deeply modern. He sought to 鈥渢ranslate鈥� Judaism for the Greek-speaking world of his day and demonstrate to a highly educated and urbane population that the Torah was a philosophically serious work. Not only could one be a Jew and be a Greek, but in many ways a pious Jew was the truest of Greeks.

Jacob’s Struggle Is Our Struggle

Nov 24, 2007 By Marc Wolf | Commentary | Vayishlah

鈥淚n olden times when wishing still helped, there lived a king whose daughters were all beautiful, but the youngest was so beautiful that the sun itself, which was seen so much, was astonished whenever it shone in her face.鈥�