SHULA JACOBS,
NEW and BRILLIANT Upload!Originally published in The Jewish Chronicle. Date unknown: What is kosher cheese? Is it made of supervised milk without rennet? Yes, but it is the absence of rennet which really counts not the supervised milk. The reason for supervised ... Continue Reading ➨
Shabbat laws
Originally published in The Jewish Chronicle. Date unknown: What type of wine may be used for Friday evening kiddush? The details of the kinds of wine that may be used for kiddush are stated in the Shulchan Aruch (Orach Chayim 272). Here ... Continue Reading ➨
Pilgrim festivals (Passover, Shavuot, Sukkot)
Originally published in The Jewish Chronicle. Passover 17 April 1970: Is it permitted to invite non-Jews to the Seder table? Why not? If you are thinking of Exodus 12, 43 (“no stranger shall eat thereof”), this obviously applies only to the ... Continue Reading ➨
The Via Negativa in Jewish and Christian Thought: The Zohar and The Cloud of Unknowing Compared
Originally published by the Centre for the Study of Theology in the University of Essex, Essex Papers in Theology and Society (1997). Annual Sacks Lecture The Via Negativa in Jewish and Christian Thought: The Zohar and The Cloud of Unknowing ... Continue Reading ➨
The Purpose of Creation
Unpublished article. The final page of the manuscript was unfortunately missing. In his famous, stimulating but admittedly one-sided essay: Ish Ha-Halakhah[1] Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik observes that R. Simhah Zelig, the disciple and colleague ... Continue Reading ➨
Menahem Meiri on the Rabbinic Aggadah
Unpublished article. Many of the mediaeval Jewish teachers, partly in defence of the Talmud against the attacks of the Karaites, partly because of their own rationalistic stance, engaged in what Marc Saperstein, in a fine study,[1] has called ... Continue Reading ➨
The Pioneering Spirit
Originally published in Venture 2:4 (September 1958); transcript of a sermon preached at the New West End Synagogue on the seventh day of Passover, 5718 (11th April 1958). And the Lord said unto Moses: ‘Wherefore criest thou unto Me? Speak unto ... Continue Reading ➨
The Middle Way
Originally published in Venture 1.2 (August 1956), pp. 13-16. The Editorial to the first issue of Venture contained a reference to the need for a ‘middle of the road’ position in Anglo-Jewish life and thought. A number of readers have pointed out ... Continue Reading ➨
Angry Young Men and Their Parents
Sermon preached at the New West, End Synagogue Rosh Ha-Shanah 5719 (15th September, 1958). So they went both of them together (Gen. xxii, 8) Abraham and his son, Isaac, walking together along the road leading to the mount where the supreme ... Continue Reading ➨
Havvayot de-Abbaye ve-Rava: The History of a Talmudic Text
Unpublished article. One page of the manuscript, containing footnotes 9-16, is missing. The rest appears here as in the original. A statement in the Babylonian Talmud, seeming to imply that Talmudic discussions and debates are of secondary ... Continue Reading ➨
Kabbalah: True or False? – The Debate Between Ribash and Ibn Gabbai
Unpublished article. R. Isaac ben Sheshet Perfet (1326-1408), the Ribash, was born in Barcelona (some say, Valencia) but emigrated in 1391 to North Africa and ended his days as a foremost Halakhic authority in Algiers.[1] His teachers were Nissim ... Continue Reading ➨
Enjoyment of Life: Modern and Mediaeval Perspectives
Unpublished article. The enjoyment of life and its pleasures, material as well as spiritual, is rarely seen, nowadays, as incompatible with a religious outlook but this was not always so. The saying of R. Jose Ha-Kohen in ‘Ethics of the Fathers’ ... Continue Reading ➨
The Doctrine of “Bread of Shame”
Unpublished article. Many years ago in Gateshead and Manchester I sat at the feet of the renowned teacher of Musar, Rabbi E. E. Dessler (1881-1954) and, together with other youthful enthusiasts, would uncritically swallow whole the master’s very ... Continue Reading ➨
‘Caught in the Act’: Spontaneity and Jewish Ethics
Unpublished article. For all the discussions, ancient and modern, on Jewish ethics[i] the fact remains that there is no equivalent term for ethics in the classical Jewish sources of the Bible and the Talmudic literature.[1] Like religion, ethics ... Continue Reading ➨
On Non-Jewish Wine
Unpublished article. First it is necessary to define the two terms used in the literature for Gentile wine. The first of these is yayin nesekh (literally ‘wine that is poured out’). This is wine poured out as a libation to idols or used in ... Continue Reading ➨
‘The rose of Jacob, thrilled with joy’
Dear Friends, I hope all of you are enjoying a joyful and exciting month of Adar! I recently discovered that a (not very widespread) custom existed, in certain circles, of sending books of Torah for mishlo'ah manot on Purim, instead of edible ... Continue Reading ➨
Judaism
Originally published in Family of Man, 5.69 (1975), pp. 1929-31. Judaism The notion of one almighty God, his chosen people Israel and a promised land lie at the root of this great religion, which has suffered centuries of repression. Constant ... Continue Reading ➨
Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ‘Halakhic Man’
Originally published in The Jewish Chronicle. Halakhic Man, by Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Translated from the Hebrew by Lawrence Kaplan. Jewish Publication Society of America, $12.95. The classic description of halachic man, whose life is ... Continue Reading ➨
Robert Gordis, ‘Poets, Prophets and Sages’; Jacob B. Angus, ‘Dialogue and Tradition’
Originally published in The Jewish Chronicle. Of tension and turmoil Poets, Prophets and Sages: Essays in Biblical Interpretation. By Robert Gordis. Indiana University Press, 1971. £7.25. Dialogue and Tradition: The Challenge of Contemporary ... Continue Reading ➨
El-Am ‘Talmud with English Translation and Commentary’, Quiddushin, ed. Rabbi Dr A. Ehrman
Originally published in The Jewish Chronicle, 26th November 1971. People’s Talmud LOUIS JACOB The Talmud with English Translation and Commentary. Quiddushin, edited by Rabbi Dr A. Ehrman, El-Am, Jerusalem-Tel Aviv. Ideally the Talmud ... Continue Reading ➨