Rabbi Daniel Landes teaches Talmud and theology from Jerusalem. He was recently named one of the 2016 Forward 50 leaders.
The decision by one of North America's leading Orthodox religious organizations to ban women rabbis made no attempt to debate or confirm the cogency or validity of its argument. It was a fix from the start.
Jewish notions of the horror of murder are being dumped into the sewer of messianic madness, abetted by a prime minister who comforts the perpetrator’s family, implicitly justifying Azaria’s act.
Israel's Orthodox rabbis are failing Judaism and Israel. We need men and women rabbis who will push back from extremism and segregation, and who will uphold universal human rights.
The thugs filmed celebrating the murder of a Palestinian toddler embrace ideas that are the logical extension of the combustible mix of religion and Zionism.
Now, religious Zionist rabbis are picking up the pieces with independent conversion courts.
The yeshiva head integrated the moral wisdom of the Western world into understanding Torah, and drew a rare connection between Talmud and true human concerns.
Being a believer is mightily irritating in the lead-up to these elections.
We must all question how justified the massive death count was of innocents in Gaza, whatever the extenuating circumstances. We must investigate our actions, not to save face but so we can face ourselves.
The tragedy of the innocent boys murdered by terrorists will haunt us for a long time, but it will not destroy us. Jewish revenge killings will.
The story we tell on Shavuot - of an undocumented foreign worker, an unasked-for and unwanted refugee - demands we confront our uglier inclinations, and stop turning our backs on refugees in Israel.
Israel’s political and religious ideologues have embraced a radical aspect of the Lag Ba'omer story that is leading us to an isolated, anti-democratic and separatist Israel.
We must not allow the messianisms of the religious right to cloud the call from our greatest religious authorities to return the territories, for the sake of saving life.
The Purim story teaches us that no Jew has the right to opt out of defending our people – including the Haredim, whose self-serving prayers apparently don’t include the rest of us.