Jeffrey Woolf, at The Blogs

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May 20, 2021, 1:14 PM

What Israelis Need to Hear From American Jews

For ten days, Israel has been under indiscriminate missile fire. We have heard endless condemnations of our attempts to defend ourselves against Hamas. We've been condemned by governments, academics, celebrities and pundits. Obscenely, we have have been condemned because...

Nov 5, 2020, 2:35 PM

In my book, The Fabric of Religious Life in Medieval Ashkenaz, I highlight the fact that Ashkenazic Jews experienced their spiritual states physically. Things that were pure were experienced as physically attractive, while those things that were prohibited were...

May 2, 2019, 8:10 PM

Fighting the Hydra: On the Return of Anti-Semitism

On Shabbat, Bet Chabad in Poway California was attacked by a White Supremacist, leaving one dead and a number wounded. The attack came six months after an even deadlier assault in Pittsburgh. Yesterday, the New York Times, published a...

Apr 24, 2019, 12:41 PM

Ascending the Mountain of the Lord

Today marks fourteen years since I first ascended the Temple Mount/Har HaBayit. My reflections on the first time, fourteen years ago, have only intensified with time. The ascent is now much more dignified, and hence uplifting, owing the the...

Dec 24, 2018, 12:29 PM

Modern Orthodox Imbalance

In preparing a talk I recently gave on Redefining Modern Orthodoxy in Israel, I had occasion to revisit Prof. Jack Wertheimer's superb essay, 'Can Modern Orthodoxy Survive?' and the responses thereto. The article and the responses (save one) provided...

Nov 7, 2017, 10:56 PM

Don’t Give In…Bring Hadar and Oron Home!!!!

Over three years have passed since Lt. Hadar Goldin and Sgt. Oron Shaul fell in the defense of Israel and its people, during Operation Defensive Edge. For over three years, Hamas has held their bodies hostage as part of...

Jun 16, 2017, 6:49 PM

Thoughts on the intermarriage wars

Conservative Judaism is losing its last deference to Torah, and the same impulse is burning at the edges of Orthodoxy

Jan 22, 2017, 10:57 AM

Leave Ivanka Trump’s Judaism Alone!!!

I am thoroughly and totally disgusted by the blatant and vicious shaming of Yael (Ivanka) Trump, especially by ostensibly Orthodox people. Facebook and Twitter are ablaze with snide, smarmy comments that call into question the sincerity (and by extension, the...

Nov 28, 2014, 3:41 PM

The Twilight of the (Children of the) Gods

A spectre is haunting Israel— the spectre of Judaism. All the descendants of Israel's Founding Fathers have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Academics and Intellectuals, Major Generals (ret.) and Winners of the Israel Prize, Socialist...

Nov 21, 2014, 3:24 PM

To Eulogize and to Cry — R. Moshe Twersky HY’D

When the sons of Aaron, Nadav and Avihu, died the Torah states (Lev. 10, 3): Then Moses said to Aaron: 'This is what God has said: I will be sanctified through those that are near to Me, and I...

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About Me

Jeffrey Woolf is an Associate Professor in the Talmud Department at Bar Ilan University. He is both a Medieval and Renaissance Jewish Historian, and an Orthodox Rabbi who is a long time advocate of the creation of a uniquely Israeli form of Modern Orthodoxy.

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