Issue 27-11-2009
Featured story
Quakers and Jews
A rabbi losing members of his congregation to the Meeting house next door is said to have complained: some of my best Jews are Friends! The relationship between Friends and Jews has been warm but ambiguous. When young, it is unlikely that George Fox would have met many Jews....
Top stories
Wall
Tikkun Olam
Tikkun Olam has become the new buzz word for the Jewish community… or at least, for the less orthodox groupings it has. Certainly, our own community has adopted it as one of our main themes for the year. What does it mean? Well the root t-k-n means something like ‘to...
Introduction to our special issue
Foreword by Judy Kirby, editor of the Friend Welcome to this decidedly religious issue of the Friend. Places have enormous significance in religion, Israel being the most political of our time. But whatever your political position I ask you to set it aside while reading the following reflections on...
Quakers and Jews
A rabbi losing members of his congregation to the Meeting house next door is said to have complained: some of my best Jews are Friends! The relationship between Friends and Jews has been warm but ambiguous. When young, it is unlikely that George Fox would have met many Jews....
Who are the Jews?
Jews love arguing. It’s how we arrive at the truth. Besides the Bible, our greatest Jewish book – actually it’s a twenty-volume set – is the Talmud, which records the debates of about a thousand rabbis spanning about a thousand years. Not one final decision is recorded. And as soon...
All articles
Biblical origins of Israel
In 597 bce, the tiny state of Judah in the highlands of Canaan broke its vassalage treaty with Nebuchadnezzar, ruler of the powerful Babylonian empire. It was a catastrophic mistake. Three months later, the Babylonian army besieged Jerusalem, Judah’s capital. The young king surrendered immediately and was deported to Babylonia,...
Festivals in poetry: Menorah
Daniel Deronda
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot. Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 014043 427 9. £8.99. Rereading George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda at the same time as My Name is Asher Lev, it occurred to me that the story of the latter is actually subsumed into a single chapter of the former. When Daniel finally meets the mother...
My Name is Asher Lev
My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok. Penguin. ISBN 978 014119 056 3. £9.99. Asher Lev is a young man who makes waves in his community. It is a strict orthodox one in 1950s New York, burdened with the rescue of Jews in hostile lands. Asher’s father works for the Ladover community Rebbe,...