What Does Judaism Teach About God?
Judaism is the world’s founding monotheism. The nature of the One God is a question on which the tradition speaks in many voices.
Foundations of Belief
God, peoplehood, the soul, and why
Who is a Jew?
Jewish identity has both a Halachic definition and a wider self-understanding. The two do not always coincide.
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The Three Pillars: Torah, Avodah, Gemilut Chasadim
Shimon HaTzaddik: “The world stands on three things: Torah, Avodah (service of God), and acts of loving-kindness.”
Do Jews Believe in an Afterlife?
Yes—and the tradition speaks of the afterlife with restraint, multiplicity, and a strong focus on this life as primary.
Why Do Jews Not Believe in Jesus?
Jesus does not match the Tanakh’s Messianic criteria and his divinity violates Jewish monotheism. The answer is that simple—and that careful.
What Is Mussar?
The Jewish discipline of character refinement—old as the Talmud, formalized in the 19th century by Rabbi Yisrael Salanter.
What Is Tikkun Olam?
“Repair of the world.” A term with a deep Kabbalistic origin and a wide contemporary application—both worth knowing.
Hasidism vs. Mitnagdism
The great 18th-century split that still shapes the contemporary Orthodox world.
What Is Kabbalah?
The Jewish mystical tradition—the inner Torah, esoteric and beautiful, central since the 13th century.
Why Did God Create the World?
Three classical answers—the rationalist, the kabbalist, and the Hasidic—and why each is illuminating.
Grace, and What We Have Instead
Grace is a translation, with a Greek history. It does not exist in the Torah in its Christian conception. But "Jews don't believe in grace," is absolutely false. So in answering the question, "Where is grace in the Torah," we need a better answer than simply, "It doesn't."
The Name We Don't Say
On divine names, and the many careful ways Jews decline to write them.
God's Pronoun
What pronoun should we use for God? A meditation drawing on the Ba'al Shem Tov, Kabbalah, and Martin Buber.
A Case for Existence, A Case for God
The Editor's philosophical argument for existence, for others, and for a higher pattern—written for his children, accessible in the manner of a friendly conversation.
On Redemption
A meditation on the Jewish doctrine of teshuva, the Jewish Messianic expectation, and what Christianity inherited and what it altered.
The Problem of the New Testament
A close reading of the New Testament's portrayal of the Pharisees and Scribes—and why that portrayal cannot be reconciled with what is known of the historical Sanhedrin.
Moshe and Noach: One Soul, Two Lives
The Arizal's teaching that Moshe Rabbeinu was the reincarnation of Noach—and how a leader's failure to pray for his generation was repaired centuries later at the foot of Sinai.
The Journey of the Soul: Gilgul Neshamot in Jewish Thought (Prologue)
The prologue of the Editor's full treatise on gilgul neshamot—the rationalist and mystical traditions of soul-transmigration in Judaism, with detailed engagement of DovBer Pinson's contemporary synthesis.
The Journey of the Soul: Gilgul Neshamot in Jewish Thought
A source-based exploration of rationalist and mystical accounts of the soul, reincarnation, and spiritual repair, with a close reading of DovBer Pinson’s Reincarnation and Judaism.