Our Horizontal Society

The Tora enjoins the Israelites upon their entrance into the Land of Israel to love the stranger—36 times. Moses gives the people a historical context to this commandment, he reminds them to love or in some instances to not oppress the stranger “for you were a stranger in the land of Egypt.” This thread of…

The advent of Islam in the seventh century brought profound changes to the Middle East and to the Jews living there. The unification through Islamic conquest of the formerly warring great empires of Christian Byzantium and Zoroastrian Persia opened up vast territories for long-distance exchange of goods within a single realm. For Jews, the predominantly…

For many Jews across the world, a central element of Ḥanukka is the kindling of fire throughout the eight nights of the holiday. While many of us—Sephardic and Ashkenazic alike—are familiar with the method of lighting taught by Hillel, one Sephardic community explicitly deviates from this widespread custom. For Spanish Jews who arrived in Aleppo…

Within Jewish tradition there are sources that express not just tolerance toward aspects of Muslim religiosity, but intellectual and religious respect and admiration. It is important to become acquainted with these sources, and to consider their implications. Here I consider one such source, found in the writings of R. Yiṣḥaq Farḥi of Jerusalem (1782-1853). R….

There is an interesting relationship between the Qorban Pesaḥ (pascal sacrifice) and the Bayiṯ (house) in the Tora. Among the laws regarding qorban pesaḥ, we find that there must be one lamb per bayiṯ, the Israelites must mark their battim (houses) with the lamb’s blood, the lamb must be eaten in the bayiṯ, and it…

Pesaḥ is around the corner and one of the sections of the Haggaḏa is ‘Moṣi Maṣa’ (lit. taking out [the] maṣa [to be eaten]). The great Moroccan ḥakham Yoseph Messas homiletically interprets this phrase by playing on the double meaning of maṣa. Maṣa, to most people, means the unleavened bread normally eaten on Pesaḥ, but maṣa…