Notes from an AMS talk at Kol Nefesh Masorti Approaches to וְהוּ� רַחוּ� יְכַפֵּר עָוֹן וְלֹ� יַש�ְחִית Jaclyn Chernett [Standard disclaimer: All views not in square brackets are those of the speaker, not myself. Accuracy of transcription is not guaranteed. If ...

Notes from Limmud 2008 Romance in the margins of the Book of Esther Stewart Brookes [Standard disclaimer: All views not in square brackets are those of the speaker, not myself. Accuracy of transcription is not guaranteed. If you are reading this post on Facebook, it will not lay out correctly; click...

Notes from Limmud 2008 Kasztner: Saviour or Collaborator? Ladislaus Löb and Michael Pinto-Duschinsky [Standard disclaimer: All views not in square brackets are those of the speakers, not myself. Accuracy of transcription is not guaranteed.] [This was the second of two talks; as will become clear, n...

I’ve heard thousands of stories about the power of prayer to effect divine intervention into your life, but how come there are no cases of prayer causing God to help an amputee grow a limb? We have no evidence of it ever happening. How come God answers all sorts of prayers but never the prayer...

Notes from Limmud 2008 Volver: Modern-Day Marranos and Their Halachic Struggle When Returning to Judaism R. Hillel Athias-Robles When the Visigoths converted from Arian Christinity to Roman Catholicism in the sixth century, persecutions of the Jews began. Then in 711 the Moors invaded, and the Jews'...

Notes from a talk at UCL Language, Religion and Identity in Israel Dr Ghil`ad Zuckermann "The greatest virtue of a new word is that it is not new."—Yechiel Michal Pínes, 1893 versus "It is absolutely impossible to empty out words filled to bursting, unless one does so at the expense of language i...

Notes from Limmud 2008 The Last Taboos—Idolatry and Many Gods Alan Silver [Standard disclaimer: All views not in square brackets are those of the speaker, not myself. Accuracy of transcription is not guaranteed.] We have a simplistic and patronising approach to polytheists. Idolatry and polytheism...

Part one is here and part two is here. Here’s an excerpt from part two: 9 pm. The comedy festival features Avram Mandell, Gerry Katzman, Rabbi Simcha Levenberg and Mark Schiff. Avram: "The problem with having a Hebrew name is that every time you meet someone, they want to tell you about e...

Here are my favorite sections of the Jewish Journal report on LimmudLA: …for three days and nights of Jews doing Jewish right. …But more than what you learn, LimmudLA is about with whom you learn: It offers a chance for Jews of various and often opposing backgrounds to study, eat or just...

David Suissa nails it: But as the sessions piled up and I had to make more tough choices and miss more great classes, a funny thing happened: I started getting interrupted. As I went from class to class, I kept meeting more and more people. Soon the conversations themselves began to pile up. An impr...