The suffering of innocents raises one of the most painful and intractable moral dilemmas for people of faith:   If there is a good God, then how can that God allow the innocent to suffer.  A good God should be able to construct a just world, one in which people pay for their own evil, but don’t suffer as a consequence of wicked decisions or hateful actions that they did not formulate themselves.  What a world that would be! Read more...

There is a place beyond which words cannot go. Try as we might, words can only allude to our most deeply felt emotions: Wonder, marvel, awe. Designed to help us communicate about ideas, facts, and values, words lose their power when it comes to the depths of human feelings, to an almost mystical connection to other living things and to life itself. Words get us to the shore, but to move to the depths we have to discard our words for other modes of expression. Read more...

Have you ever found yourself in the middle of a political, theological, legal or interpersonal disagreement with someone?  Don't feel too bad - the rest of us have as well.  Whether it's with a friend, a co-worker, a family member, or an acquaintance, each of us can think of times when we have gotten into heated arguments or debates.  The Rabbis of the Talmud called such a disagreement a makhlokhet - a separation. Read more...

These are trying times for Jews and for Judaism.  Feeling as though our abuse at the hands of hateful non-Jews will never end, there is an urge to take care of our own, to focus exclusively on Jewish interests and Jewish priorities. Read more...

 I have often wondered why Korah is treated so negatively in the Torah.  The characters in this story remind me of old cowboy movies, where everyone’s character was black or white -- and in case you would not recognize who was who, the bad guys had the black hats and the good guys had the white ones.  Aside from the possible racism involved in that, what it portrayed was a world in which everyone was either one thing or another.  That is how the people in the Korah story are portrayed as well: Korah is the essence of evil and Moses the essence of good. Read more...