Committing High Reason

Once, Eli had no interest in Judaism because he thought it meant being a Zionist. Today he is a rabbi. This is his story.

The students of Rabbi Abraham and Zvi Yehuda Kook incorporated into their Judaism large doses of organic nationalism, pagan land worship, militarism, and end-of-days Messianism, combining them into a new, autonomous philosophy that they call Dati Leumi ("National Religious") Judaism. Photo by SoWhAt249 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64048771

Hume claimed the fact we can conceive of something coming into existence without a cause shows it is possible. He's wrong not only about his conclusion but his premise as well. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43301996?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents (Note: Wolfson is incorrect about the argument from design not being used in Jewish philosophy as an independent proof to the existence of G-d. It...

There are many reasos Orthodox Jews oppose Zionism: It is the antithesis of Judaism, and encourages anti-Semitism. Here are the 3 of many reasons to be anti-Zionist.

Israeli human rights activist, Ronnie Barkan, explains how both right-wing and left-wing Zionists are both equally Zionist at bottom, the only difference being the right-wing is open about their policies. The left-wing profess to be liberal but are really anything but.

There is no "new anti-Semitism." Anti-Semitism has not mutated to include anti-Zionism. Instead, accepting the unintelligible Zionist definition of Jewish identity has caused Zionists to be defined out of the protected classes of minorities that society has created laws to protect. The IHRA definition is a misguided and destructive attempt to rectify this. For further reading: The Empty...

Theodor Herzl (d. 1904) is a Zionist hero, described in Israel's Declaration of Independence as the "spiritual father" of Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu referred to him as  the "Moses of our time." But Herzl was notorious for horrific anti-Semitism particularly against religious and Eastern European Jews (read this , for example) and his delusions about Zionism transforming th...

Miko Peled needs no introduction - he's a famous guy. But if you want, you can check out his website or podcast .  If you really want to know what kind of guy he is, though, the most emblematic snippet I can think of offhand is this: Miko Peled followed his father’s footsteps at first, joining Israel’s Special Forces after high school and earning the red beret, but he soon grew to regret his...

The January 6th insurrection at the nation's capital that resulted in the impeachment of Donald Trump depicted the characteristics of a religion more than a political position. Prof. Gloria Moran discusses American civic religion from a legal and historical perspective, tracing its roots to its the Roman Empire.

Lee Stranahan, Republican radio host, journalist and former Breitbart reporter once thought that his peers at Breitbart - Joel Pollak and Ben Shapiro - are typical of observant Jews’ attitude toward Israel, and that anti-Zionism was “a leftist thing,” directly tied to one’s position in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Then one day, Lee watched a video of Rabbi Yaakov Shapiro and close to 20,000 Or...

Studies have discovered surprising weaknesses in our decision-making process that make us vulnerable to manipulators. We may think we are making rational decisions based on clear data when in reality we are looking at the numbers through the prism of our own biases.  These biases are exploited by people who want us to make certain decisions. We do so, without knowing we are being manipulated. In t...

Reuven and Esther Guttman of Long Island arrived in Egypt for what they expected to be a routine vacation.  But when the border guards ran Esther's passport, which had her maiden name, Maimon,  on it, they discovered that she was a descendent of Maimonides (1135-1204), the revered rabbinic head of the Egyptian Jewish community in the 12th century, and personal physician of the first sultan of...

In February 2020 an anonymous article appeared in the Forward by a teacher in several Zionist Hebrew Day Schools, claiming they teach dual loyalty to Israel and that they need to stop. The article was met with derision, condemnation, and even denial of the author's existence. Meet the author, who no longer teaches in such schools and is safe from reprisals,  as he tells us his full story. SEL...