“If male, is he circumcised?” Covenant, community, compassion and conscience [2011/2016]

[I am addressing the question of circumcision in Judaism by looking at Liberal Judaism UK. Please bear in mind as you read this article, that I believe that the Liberal Jewish movement plays a vital role in the ethical awareness of the Jewish people, and has done much good to challenge and update Judaism, not […]

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Tradition

What weight should we give to the voices from the past? After all, we don’t do exactly what was done in the past, not least because we cannot know for sure what was done, but also because conscience, common sense, or new knowledge to which the Rabbis did not have access persuade us to do

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Lashon Hakodesh

Hebrew has a structure of correspondences between words by their root (shoresh) that provides layers of subtlety and multiple meanings. Comparison of passages that use words similarly or in special ways gives scholars opportunity for a range of interpretations. In kabbalistic thought, the letters themselves have meanings, and gematria (numerology) provides another relatedness between words and phrases

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Limmud Nigun

Composition and audio © Alexander Massey 1 September 2008 BUY the sheet music – $1.95 (lead sheet) I wrote this after coming back home from my first ever experience of a Limmud conference, camping in a field in the heart of the English countryside, where I heard the most amazing gig that mixed Israeli and

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Tree of Life Nigun

Composition and audio © Alexander Massey 4 May 2007 BUY the sheet music (lead sheet, optional pno part) – $1.95 This nigun was written to mirror the movement of the angels on Jacob’s ladder, ascending and descending between earth and heaven (Gen 28:10-19). I originally thought of the melody spanning 10 pitches (B to D),

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