Thank you for visiting my site! Jewish values have always guided my thinking. What complicates the process of distilling those values is the interpretation of our sacred texts and how it ought to be interpreted. One of the great masters, my teacher, Prof. Eliezer Berkovitz struggled with this his entire life. "...not only does the method of Authority not work, it actually defeats the eternal validity of the Torah. The Torah is eternal because it has a Word for each generation... If they have the authority they impose the Word meant for yesterday and thus miss hearing the Word for today for this generation, for this new hour in the history of the Jewish people..." These powerful words launched me on a lifelong odyssey of listening and learning, in search of the Word and through this process the discovery of Post Denominational Judaism.
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 In Search of Relevance It’s kind of painful and embarrassing to write about the marginalization of what could have been a powerful institution in Israel – the rabbinate. It really doesn’t matter which rabbinate we are talking about – the Rabbanut Harashit; the Eida; Satmar or Naturei Karta - they are all doomed to oblivion in the minds and hearts of most Israelis because of their pettiness and inability to see the larger picture. The issues facing Israel and the Jewish world today are greater and more treacherous than any time in the past fifty years. There are palpable existential threats to the corpus of the Jewish people whether in Israel, Europe or the United States. Threats by Iran, rapid assimilation in the Unites States and an unfriendly U.S. administration are but the most obvious of problems that are plaguing the Jewish people. Notwithstanding these compelling and pressing issues the rabbinate in Israel is paralyzed, inept at understanding the shifting ground upon which it stands. |
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