Judaism

( The Times of Israel ) – As we wait anxiously to see whether the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas will take hold and become permanent—ending the massacres in Gaza and bringing the hostages home—we find ourselves in the midst of Sukkot, the festival of fragile dwellings [or “Feast of the Tabernacles”]. During Sukkot, […]

Featured

Benjamin Netanyahu’s Abuse of History for Politics

Yoram Meital

Beersheba (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – After his address to an almost empty hall at the UN, Benjamin Netanyahu found a warmer reception at a Shabbat gathering in the Israeli Consulate in New York. There, the Prime Minister chose to “reveal” what he presented as a forgotten historical truth. “The Arabs expelled us from […]

Anti-Zionism

Anti-Zionist Jews Gather at the Birthplace of Zionism

Yakov M. Rabkin

Montréal (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – In March 1896, William Hechler, the Anglican chaplain at the British Embassy in Vienna, came across a book titled Der Judenstaat (The State for Jews). Hechler belonged to a centuries-old Protestant movement that aimed at gathering Jews in Palestine and converting them to Christianity. The book’s author, journalist Theodor Herzl, […]

Christianity

What do the Bible, the Quran and the Torah say about the Justification for War?

The Conversation

By Robyn J. Whitaker; Mehmet Ozalp, Charles Sturt University, and Suzanne Rutland, University of Sydney (The Conversation) – Wars are often waged in the name of religion. So what do key texts from Christianity, Islam and Judaism say about the justification for war? We asked three experts for their views. The Bible Robyn J. Whitaker, […]

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A Great Muslim Scholar of Jewish Heritage Passes: Abdallah Schleifer (1935 – 2025)

Shalom Goldman

Middlebury, Vt. (Special to Informed Comment; Feature) – Abdullah Schleifer, prominent Arab journalist and Professor Emeritus at the American University in Cairo, died last week at the age of ninety. The grandchild of European Jews who fled Europe and immigrated to the U.S. in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Schleifer converted to Islam […]

Israel

Shattering the Myth of the “Holy Land”

Shamai Leibowitz

( The Times of Israel) – Could someone earn a commendation for deliberately breaking the holiest object ever created, one that was crafted and inscribed by God Himself? According to a midrash [scripture interpretation], this is exactly what happened to Moses. In our weekly scripture reading, Exodus 30:11–34:35 [“Ki Tisa”], Moses shatters the tablets after […]

Antisemitism

Death shaded the Life of this Holocaust historian. The cancer Memoir he began in Hospital was a final ‘Act of Love’

The Conversation

By Tess Scholfield-Peters, University of Technology Sydney (The Conversation) – Mark Raphael Baker began writing his final book, A Season of Death, from his hospital bed, in the wake of his terminal pancreatic cancer diagnosis. His second wife, Michelle, would later observe: “More than a comfort or distraction, in him it was a need.” The […]

Jewish History

What Hannukah Teaches us about Violence and Peace

Yakov M. Rabkin

( The Times of israel ) – Biblical accounts teem with violent episodes. Just a few days ago, we read in the synagogue the story of Jacob’s two sons, Levi and Simeon, massacring the entire male population of a city in a devious scheme using a religious pretext. (Genesis 34) Their father was so aggrieved […]

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Killing One innocent Soul is the Same as Killing all of Humanity: Jewish and Muslim Teachings against Cosmocide

Juan Cole

The below is an excerpt from my essay, “The Sin of Cosmocide,” for Renovatio, the literary magazine of Zaytuna, the Muslim liberal arts college in Berkeley, Ca. It underlines how both Jewish and Muslim spiritual teachings forbid the killing of innocents who are guilty of no crime, and equate this deed to killing all humankind […]