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.
Dayyenu is enough — really?
Hillel GoldbergMar 30, 2023
One of the most popular parts of the Passover seder is Dayyenu. Jews love it and sing it over and over. For many children, it is their earliest memory of the seder.
I always wanted my own personal codex
Hillel GoldbergFeb 23, 2023
Move over “London, Tel Aviv and elsewhere.” Move over British Museum. Move over US Constitution. All of these eminent worthies — not to mention Sotheby’s and the...
I never cease to be shocked . . .
Hillel GoldbergFeb 16, 2023
Why do I never cease to be shocked? Probably for the same reason that no one else is, either. I open the Intermountain Jewish News from 1935 — three years before...
Among the angels
Hillel GoldbergFeb 09, 2023
I was at the synagogue of the Bostoner Rebbe, Rabbi Meir Horowitz. Time for Ana BeKoa’ch and Lecha Dodi. I cannot count how many renditions of Lecha Dodi have deeply...