What will Israel look like when we have peace, firm and stable? What are the chances that a new national identity worthy of respect will take shape ---and the danger that it won’t?

Two grave questions, perhaps the most serious in human history, hide behind the topic assigned to me. First , what is “God”? and second, what is the relevance of this question to secular man?

To explore the concept of God down the generations of Jewish thought I intend to ‘cling to the talons’ of three winging intellects: -- the “great eagle” Maimonides

Messianism, in the way that King David, Rabbi Akiva, Rambam, Rabbi Kook, the Palmakh, and pioneer Zionism all understood it, is a fundamental element of Jewish culture and the Zionist ethos both secu

He demands total fidelity from his chosen people, is extremely angry when his sons follow strange gods, and to bring home the lesson, punishes them severely. His servants should be no less jealous, i

Questioning the meaning for our own time of the Jews’ ‘election’ and in this specific form points up the emotional and intellectual difficulty of opening the subject at all after the Holocaust.

The much-flaunted notion that Israel can be Jewish or democratic but not both rests on fallacious thinking and tendentious presentation. Israel will not be a state or a democracy if it is not, at one

Secularism as worldview and secularization as process have been more than a central factor in the making of modern society and culture, they have been the decisive influence. And this is surely enough

Over 50% of the world’s Jews are secular, for whom a return to traditional religion is no longer an option. This is the most talked-about section of the Jewish nation and yet the least targeted

A “Jewish work of art” is the work either of an artist whose Jewishness clearly influenced his art or a work by a Jewish artist which has had a significant place and role in Jewish culture

Halakhah is rabbinic law and legal rulings. Their present making is a bear-garden. Hundreds of rabbis issue rulings - each on his own judgement, each to his own flock - which state laws to flout,

From the cloud-enshrouded summit of Mt. Sinai the warning has rung out down the generations, “You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image or any likeness…” (Exodus 20:4).

In the beginning man created God. The question that of course preoccupies agnostic or atheist thinkers is for what object? What made it necessary to create God?

A legal fiction is a sort of white lie, meant not to cheat or mislead but rather to help and assist. It is a type of technique that assumes the existence of imaginary facts or situations

Our society is in a bad way and the country is plagued with injustices. One gets the impression sometimes that the battle against crime using the legal violence of the law enforcement authorities is a

After the 1996 General Elections in Israel, the religious political parties are more powerful than ever, their own definition of Jewishness more pervasive than ever, and their bonding with the land of

There are three concentric circles to the identity of the secular Zionist Jew. There is no way to reach the inner circle without going through the outer circles, and there is no way to get out of the

Are people infuriated by injustice not allowed to show their anger? Are protest meetings and demonstrations not the right thing? Are we not allowed to call a racist “Racist” without the curators of co

Herzl had far more radical intentions for the religion and government of the Jewish state than we realize. In terms of today’s debate, he could even be thought subversive.

To each epoch its own conception of the truth its own peculiar way of explaining the perfect scheme of reality. Each conception is different, yet each claims all-inclusiveness. Which is true?

Dina is a doctor, secular, and a long-time Tel Avivan. Ten years ago, after a traumatic event in her family, she looked for some organization or setting to study Judaism in. Not that she had turned r

It is a commonplace of street-corner conversation between one secular and another that the religious are slowly taking over everything — one element of our lives after another, that religious coercion

Who or what gave the religious political parties so much power in a supposedly secular state? The answer is Ben-Gurion, a great leader, but who in this may have made his biggest and most fateful misca

Rapp replies to the Leibowitz paper a) that Leibowitz’s definition of humanism is wrong and wrong-headed, and b) that, on a more reasonable definition of humanism, Leibowitz was three-quarters of the

Should the search for God occupy a rational person? Actually, the question should be put differently. Is it rational for any human being not to seek God? A rational approach does not provide final

Humanist pluralism repudiates the relativism which negates the very principles of humanism and democracy. Men and women are not born human but grow into their humanity in the context of a national cu

Prometheus - symbol of the battle for man’s superiority over animals and against repressive despotism

Belief in God as an existent being ruling the world versus the belief that the source of all authority is man, who created God as literary hero.

The following is a chapter from Yaakov Malkin’s coming book, God and Other Literary Characters. The book sets out the author’s belief in the virtues of acknowledging God for what He is — the creation

Some Jews believe in God as an existent being ruling the world. Some believe that the source of all authority is man, who created God as literary hero. Moses, Maimonides, Spinoza and others of Jewry’s

The importance of the memory of Yitzhak Rabin’s murder and its effect on our lives goes far beyond the pain and grief it causes us. It has opened our eyes to a new and dangerous reality that the ideo

Why is it so hard to put what we believe in clearly into words? Why did my What Do Secular Jews Believe? have to go through six rewrites before it reached publishable form (and came out at last in Feb

The right to make our own choice from the Jewish sources, to play our part in shaping our own culture, to take inspiration from our heritage religious and secular, Jewish and non-Jewish

The phrasing suggests that God has meaning to a secular Jew. It reveals too a subconscious monotheism, or a monotheistic culture that thinks of one God rather than of a variegated pantheon of divini

It is said that when the French scientist and philosopher of the 18th century, Laplace, presented his theory of the formation of planets to Napoleon, the Emperor asked him : Where does God fit into t

Half the Jews in the United States do not go to synagogue or have any formal affiliation with the Jewish community. But it is probably true that they are interested in holding on to their Jewish ident

Leibowitz can find nothing that unifies the Judaism of all those who call themselves Jews. As for those who call themselves humanist Jews, he demonstrates why on his own definition of humanism he cann

We learn from our history that the greatness of Judaism, its survival and contribution to humanity derive not from obedience to tradition and precepts, but to rebellion!

Democracy in Israel has problems the break-up of the alliance between secular political parties and Religious Zionism, the hesder yeshiva, segregated and unsupervised educational systems but it is not

Until a few decades ago quite a lot of statistical data was available on the religions of the world, even on relatively small Christian and other sects, but no data were to be had on the ‘non-religiou

How many people believe in God? How many of the world’s religious inhabitants believe in a single supreme God? How many in the world consider themselves members of an organized religion? How many peop