In the Talmud (Bavli Shabbat) we read that the reason for lighting Hanukkah candles is Pirsumah D’Nisa, פרסומא דניסה, “advertising the miracle” (of Hanukkah). We light the Menorah on a window sill in order to make it visible to the world. The lights are meant as a reminder that the
The campaign to vaccinate a nation during a pandemic has brought into sharp relief a dimension that we, individual-freedoms-loving Americans often resist, that of the “common good”. “In ordinary political discourse, the “common good” refers to those facilities… that the members of a community provide to all… in order to
(Continued from part 1) GREATER THAN OUR PARTS Scientism, or Reductionism, which currently frames our reaction to disease in general and to COVID-19 and its variants in particular, has also been a strong motivator for civilization’s progress during the past century. Reductionism, Materialism, and Isolationism, at the time of their emergence
Passover 5782 What is a prophesy? A story about the future. And a self-fulfilling prophecy? By definition, it is a story that generates a future. This common wisdom about the self-fulfilling potential of articulated predictions, is especially apt on Passover, the holiday of “Telling”. “Haggada”, the booklet we read during
As a secular Israeli child, my training in prayer was none. I had no reason to step into a synagogue and less so to pray. Loyal to the political and ideological indoctrination of my youth, I had consciously attempted to keep myself “untainted“ by exposure to Jewish classical text and
