Tag: Judaism

Over the years, I have studiously avoided engaging in theological disputations. Anyone deeply committed to their religious faith is unlikely to be convinced by clever arguments that their faith system is flawed. After all,...

Under pressure — “enormous pressure,” in his own words — from left, center and far right, Gary Cohn, President Donald Trump’s top economic adviser, says in an interview published Friday that he’s not going...

There will be a solar eclipse on August 21, which will be visible across parts of the United States for the first time since 1918. Solar eclipses occur when the moon blocks the rays of...

The Hebrew word Gila translates to happiness. But it is a different kind of happiness than other similar Hebrew words like simcha , or osher . Gila is the happiness found through discovery. And that is exactly the kind of happiness Chicago...

The year 403 BCE was momentous for the city-state of Athens. In the previous years, a bloody civil war had devastated the city and caused it to fall under the yoke of its arch-rival,...

The son of Menachem Mendel, a Torah scribe, Moses Mendelssohn (“son of Mendel”) not only studied in yeshiva and became a promising rabbinic scholar, he also pursued secular learning, particularly languages and philosophy, studying...

More than half of Jewish Israelis are in favor of changing the current status quo on religious life in the public realm, believing that current arrangements reflect haredi or religious-Zionist values, a new poll...

I was raised as a Conservative Jew. It suited my family and me well. Hebrew school a few times a week and services a few times a month. I was very active in my...

There are many different ways to complete the sentence “I cannot be antisemitic because… ”. All of them are dodgy. For the liberal left, the standard answer is “because I am a committed anti-racist”....

WILMETTE, IL — More than three quarters of a century ago, Nazis robbed a 12-year-old Harold Katz from a chance to have a normal bar mitzvah, the Jewish coming of age ceremony. This Memorial Day,...