Announcing his new book in a hucksterish email to J street members, Peter Beinart details the truths vouchsafed to him and his fellow enlightened acolytes. A brief sampler:
Is there an afterlife?
Benjamin Disraeli was born Jewish, baptized as a boy but (mostly) considered himself to be Jewish. He famously proclaimed to Queen Victoria — who began by hating him and ended adoring him — that he was the \”blank page\” separating the Old and New Testaments.
The start of the event was running late — did I mention it was a Jewish event? — and midway through our green room conversation, Hitchens pulled out a small bottle of Johnnie Walker Black. He emptied it into a 16-ounce clear-plastic cup and drizzled in some Crystal Geyser spring water. And he began sipping.
In Jewish tradition, the act of seeking forgiveness from someone we have harmed is clear and specific.
Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple informed his congregation by letter this week that he was recently diagnosed with a form of non-Hodgkins lymphoma; Anna Krakovich survived a suicide bomb attack to become a response team leader for SELAH; Salman Rushdie speaks out as pro-Israel Muslim; Israeli and American staff and campers at the Union for Reform Judaism\’s Camp Newman collaborated on recording a song titled \”Kol Yisrael (We Are All Connected).\”
\”Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity\”: Traditional Judaism feared and distrusted this child of the enlightenment. Although prominent Jewish thinkers, from Moses Mendelssohn to Solomon Maimon to modern Zionists, have claimed him as their own, every deliberation on Spinoza wonders — is he a Jewish thinker?
Rabbi David Wolpe has removed himself from consideration for the job of leading the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York. Wolpe, of Sinai Temple in Westwood, had been widely considered a front-runner for chancellor at JTS, the central institution in Conservative Judaism.
Rabbi David Wolpe has removed himself from consideration for the job of leading the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) in New York. Wolpe, of Sinai Temple in Westwood, had been widely considered a frontrunner for chancellor at JTS, the central institution in Conservative Judaism.
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