If one thinks of God as an all-powerful big man in heaven controlling the world, then this week’s reading would make me feel that this God was a sadistic and mean being whom I would rather not be in touch with. No matter how cruel the treatment of the Jews by Pharoah, such a God [...]
In “The Curious Rise of Anti-Religious Hysteria,” Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at the University of Kent and author of Politics of Fear: Beyond Left and Right, questions the political motivations of the new religious Left.
This week, God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites that God has promised to free them from Egyptian enslavement, to enter into a covenant with them and to bring them to the the Promised Land. “And Moses spoke thusly to Israel, and they did not hear Moses, because of kotzer ruach and too much [...]
Perhaps the greatest archetypal tale in all of human culture about addiction to top-down, unaccountable power is the story of Pharaoh in the Book of Exodus.
Now, today, we are seeing this tale lived out before our own eyes. The present government of the United States has become so addicted to its own power, so swept [...]
Matzat is pleased to announce the launch of Radical Torah.
Radical Torah is a weblog which features multiple takes on parshat hashavua (the weekly Torah portion), as seen through the lens of progressive religious and political viewpoints. The project seeks to create a resource of authentically Jewish responses to pertinent social justice issues, timed in [...]