Off the Pulpit Archives

In 1930 Winston Churchill asked, “Can a nation remain healthy, can all nations draw together, in a world whose brightest stars are film stars?” That question is far more cogent today than it was when Churchill first asked. We are...

The poet Langston Hughes asked that a particular Duke Ellington song be played at his funeral: Do Nothing Until You Hear From Me. Is such a thing possible? The idea of hearing messages from beyond the grave has tantalized human...

One of the lessons I have learned over decades in the rabbinate is how hard it is to criticize one’s own. People who will criticize other countries, or the other party, will not turn a disapproving eye on their own....

There is a beautiful story told of the Brisker Rav, Reb Hayyim Halevy Soloveitchik. Once a man arrived late at night in Brisk. All the houses were dark save one so he knocked at the door. He was greeted warmly,...

Hatred of Jews is the most intractable and sustained hatred in human history. Moreover, it is a hatred for which many reasons have been given by the haters, all of them demonstrably untrue. Jews have been hated when they were...

The Roman historian Tacitus relates that when Pompey and his troops entered the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem in 63 BCE, they found it “untenanted.” It was a mystery to them to find nothing inside the sacred...

In Maimonides’ listing of the 613 commandments, the first is believing in God. The last is a king not amassing great personal wealth. In a certain way, those two commandments, one positive and one negative, are intimately related to one...

Mitzrayim in Hebrew means narrow. We think of narrowness as a purely negative trait. Yet there are times when tighter is better: when we are held for example. “Snug” is another word for narrow – because sometimes to be confined...

In April of 1903 the first pogrom broke out in Kishinev, shocking the Jewish world and causing death and destruction. Increasingly it seemed to observers that Russian Jewry was in danger. As a second pogrom in 1905 was to prove,...

Let me tell you about a friend I never knew. He was born in Jerusalem in 1906 and died in 1972. His name was Rabbi Mordechai Hacohen. His father was a renowned kabbalist who led services at the Western Wall...