dbloom

One of the foremost experts on the Second Temple Period, Shaye J. D. Cohen, the Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard University, writes, “In the eyes of the ancients, the essence of religion was neither faith nor dogma, but action” (51). Though counterintuitive, this statement seems absolutely correct. If one searches the…

In the first part of his watershed work, Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B.C.E to 640 C.E., Seth Schwartz, the Gerson D. Cohen Professor of History at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, argues “that imperial support for the central national institutions of the Jews, the Jerusalem temple and the Pentateuch, helps explain why…

Scholars regard the Book of Lamentations as one of the most problematic in the Tanakh. Written after the fall of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E., Eicha describes Jerusalem’s decimation and the nearly complete destruction of its inhabitants. The text acknowledges sin only briefly and it does not specify its nature. Traditionally, commentators have interpreted Lamentations…

Harold Camping, President of Family Stations, Inc., predicted that Judgment Day would occur on Friday, October 21, 2011. Needless to say, the day passed without any readily apparent existential threats. While many would call Camping crazy or insane, his belief is no less plausible than Moses’ splitting the Red Sea, Jesus’ walking on water or…

My last post, “How Do We/I Connect to God,” mentioned several ways to revitalize Reform and Conservative Judaism. One of these avenues relied on self-exploration and creating one’s own personalized Judaism. This leads to the question of how to keep the Jewish community together when everyone practices differently. Some historical analysis is very helpful in…

The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. was a watershed moment in Jewish history.  With Roman control of Judea making the idea of rebuilding a third temple impossible, the question became not so much as where to meet God but as how to meet God, for the Temple’s destruction eliminated Jews’ ability to …

In 586 B.C.E., the Babylonians, under King Nebuchadnezzar, decimated the Temple in Jerusalem, forever ending ancient Israelite culture.  With the Temple destroyed and most of its worshipers exiled to Babylon, it seemed that God had left His “Chosen People.”  Yet, after defeating the Babylonians in 539 B.C.E., King Cyrus the Great of the Persian Achaemendid…