
Quaking in my boots
Hillel GoldbergJun 01, 2023
I am supposed to be quaking in my boots. Not I, Hillel Goldberg, the individual. Not I, a columnist for the Intermountain Jewish News, a specific newspaper. Not I, a...
Look how we talk about each other
Hillel GoldbergMay 25, 2023
I have yet to meet my first person who does not say that we live in terribly polarized times, and that something definitely needs to be done. I can count on one hand the...
Shavuot — the elusive holiday
Hillel GoldbergMay 18, 2023
Why is Shavuot the elusive holiday? The usual answer is that Shavuot has no unique ritual. Not the matzah or the seder of Passover, not the shofar of Rosh Hashanah, not...
A visit with a Torah sage, Rav Dovid Cohen
Hillel GoldbergMay 18, 2023
Rav Dovid Cohen’s 10-digit phone number is perhaps the most dialed number in the rabbinic world worldwide.
How many genders in the Torah and the Talmud?
Hillel GoldbergMay 11, 2023
G-d has no gender. Just as G-d is neither a male nor a female, G-d is not a transgender, not a binary, a nonbinary or any other gender referent. As Maimonides pointed...
Israel, at a crossroads of naivete
Hillel GoldbergMay 04, 2023
For its first 75 years Israel had to face down external enemies as it built a society of immigrants. But will Israel now fall apart, due to internal divisions?
May we meet in high places
Hillel GoldbergApr 27, 2023
It would be wrong to dispense with the professional aids and informal crutches that the vicissitudes of life require. That said, there is a general aid that smoothes...
The Sermon Clock
Hillel GoldbergApr 20, 2023
Will efforts by Major League Baseball to shorten the game via a pitcher's clock give rabbis an idea?
A message for Israel
Hillel GoldbergApr 13, 2023
I’ll take my Torah with carpentry. Jerusalem in the 1970s was a world of beautiful juxtapositions. Standing in the center of the Beit Yisrael neighborhood was the Mir...
Are we for diversity and democracy, or not?
Hillel GoldbergApr 05, 2023
Under Israel’s judicial system one need not have “standing” to be heard by Israel’s highest court, which rules on policies, not just laws.