Our family watched Jaws together the other evening — which, in case you’re wondering, I regard as responsible parenting since our kids are basically too young to be genuinely scared by the film. The whole rest of the next day, two-year-old Saul was chattering about the “shark teeth.” “Shark teeth get the blooood,” he called…

In the spirit of looking facts in the face, let us admit what Jewish law actually prescribes: Abortion in the context of a non-Jewish nation like America is a death-penalty offense. My point is not that America should now write Biblical, Talmudic, or Maimonidean legislation into modern legal codes. The suggestion would be madness. But…

Miriam Shaviv has a fascinating book review in the Forward on the Spanish “Jewish Christians” or “Marranos” who, up until the expulsion from Spain in 1492, accepted baptism and outward life as Christians while maintaining a secret, internal loyalty to Judaism. They did this under the threat of intense persecution. Some practiced Jewish rituals in secret. Others…

An ancient Biblical tradition, a midrash, relates that the Canaanites wrote marriage contracts between man and man and woman and woman, and that this was one reason the land “vomited” them up in favor of the Israelites who took their place. The historicity of this isn’t the point. It’s the moral that matters, having to…

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