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Tag Archives: Maimonides
How to Handle Talking About God
“We can talk about God because the word ‘God’ serves as a handle, connecting us to what we can’t know or understand.” Continue reading
Spinoza on the Couch
My latest blog post for The Jerusalem Post: I’ve spent a lot of my life dealing with crazy people, including myself. “Crazy,” of course, has various definitions, though it’s not the topic of this blog post. My favorite definition was … Continue reading
Peace Depends on Truth
My latest blog post for The Jerusalem Post: Truth can be a matter of life and death. That’s no surprise, since it’s happened many times in history. But I want to make a much more difficult argument: A theory of … Continue reading
Torah Parallels Are No Problem
My latest blog post for The Jerusalem Post: Were the Jews the first people to think of monotheism? And would it matter if we weren’t? Such questions tend to worry Biblical scholars when they start comparing our Torah with other … Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Jewish Philosophy, Judaism, Modern Orthodoxy, The Jerusalem Post
Tagged Atrahasis, Biblical Parallels, Blanshard, Gilgamesh, Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Prophecy, Revelation, Saadia, Saadya, Spinoza, Torah
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The Jewish Roots of Modern Science
Must we choose between science and religious faith? Many people think so. On the scientific side, we find pop atheists such as Sam Harris, who believes that “religious faith is one of the most perverse misuses of intelligence we have … Continue reading
Prophetic Brains in a Vat
My latest blog post for The Jerusalem Post: “Brains in a vat”? It sounds like the plot of a bad science fiction movie. But it might hold a key to understanding prophetic insight. The basic idea was around even before … Continue reading
How Medieval Islam Influenced Modern Judaism
My latest blog post for The Jerusalem Post: In the modern era, we associate Islam mainly with terrorism, barbarism, and opposition to science. But it was not always so. Long ago, our early encounters with Islam influenced the development of … Continue reading
Will Judaism Disintegrate?
My new blog post for The Jerusalem Post: A popular California rabbi’s forecast seems gloomy until you think about it. Then you realize it’s absolutely catastrophic. He says that Judaism is: “… a platform [that] rests on a mountain of dynamite. … Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Jewish Philosophy, Judaism, Modern Orthodoxy, The Jerusalem Post
Tagged Authority, Autonomy, Eliyahu Fink, Fink or Swim, Halacha, Hedonism, Jewish tradition, Maimonides, Millennials, Modern Orthodoxy, Moses Mendelssohn, Nihilism, Open Orthodoxy, Saadia Gaon, Spinoza, Zeitgeist
22 Comments
Belief, Backward and Forward
My latest blog post for The Jerusalem Post: Judah Halevi was a poet. Saadia Gaon and Moses Maimonides were philosophers. On the surface, their approaches to religious belief seem almost completely different. But at a high level, they agreed almost completely … Continue reading
Posted in Bible, Epistemology, Jewish Philosophy, Judaism, The Jerusalem Post
Tagged Ethics of Belief, Halevi, Kuzari, Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Saadia
2 Comments
Choosing to be Chosen
In most creation myths, an essential part of creating is to divide things from each other, thereby bringing order from chaos. In Genesis, God divides light from darkness, the waters above the firmament from waters below the firmament, and the … Continue reading
The Thousand-Year View 