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Oct 13, 2026, 7:59 AM

Seeing Red: Hubris and the Halakha of Space Flight

Rabbi Nachum Eliezer Rabinovitch, photo: Nadav Efrati / Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Nahum_Eliezer_Rabinovitch

Vladimir Menshikov, Boga Nyet! [There is no God!], 1975. State Museum of the History of Religion in Saint Petersburg. Scaled-down, low-resolution image permitted under fair use clause, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:%D0%91%D0%BE%D0%B3%D0%B0_%D0%BD%D0%B5%D1%82_1975.jpg

In 1961, as humans reached Space, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson of Lubavitch (1902-1994) wrote a private letter in which he declared that Space travel was permitted according to Jewish law. The Lubavitcher Rebbe offered a broad, affirmative framework for...

Allen S. Maller

Oct 13, 2026, 4:56 AM

A COMMANDMENT AGAINST RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM

I am sure most religious people shudder when they hear terrorists who are religious fanatics using Scripture to support their violent actions. For several years I sought texts that condemn extremism and the arrogant assertion of personal judgment. I...

Oct 12, 2026, 11:20 PM

‘Want to Create Greatness? Start by Giving Someone a Compliment!’

The Compliment That Could Change Someone’s Life Sometimes greatness begins with someone believing in you. I have a theory about human nature: Most people are walking around with greatness inside them, but nobody has bothered to tell them. We live in a...

Oct 8, 2026, 3:47 AM

Beginning Again With Dignity and Destiny

Parshat Bereishit always feels like more than the first parsha of the year. After Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot, it is the moment when inspiration has to become rhythm. We begin again, not only by reading the Torah from...

Sharona Margolin Halickman

Oct 7, 2026, 10:03 PM

A Thorny Situation

After they ate from the tree, Adam, Chava and the snake were all cursed. The thorn represents Adam’s curse (Breisheet 3:17-18): “…Accursed is the land because of you; by painful toil you shall eat all of the days of...

Oct 6, 2026, 3:34 PM

The Heavens Belong to God: May a Jew Leave Earth?

Apollo 8 Flight Plan, Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-apollo-8-delivered-moment-christmas-eve-peace-and-understanding-world-180976431/
Overlaid with astronaut:, stock photography licensed via Canva

Early Space exploration precipitated an interest in how Jewish law might be kept beyond the confines of planet Earth. Before asking how Halakha could be observed in Space, we need to return to an earlier question: whether humans may...

Oct 5, 2026, 6:44 PM

Not Everything Is Yours to Fix

I sometimes catch myself reading the same bad news over and over again. I read the story, then the update, then the analysis. Then I check again an hour later, even though I know perfectly well that nothing I...

Allen S. Maller

Oct 3, 2026, 10:36 AM

A Jewish View Of Choosing To Be Chosen

Christianity and Islam are religious communities. Judaism (Hebrews Genesis 14:13) however is more than just a religious community. The Hebrew Bible is filled with secular national Jewish history and political desire to make future Jews into ongoing independence and...

Oct 2, 2026, 1:32 PM

Isaiah: The Prophet Behind the Scroll

The author/soldier with his book "Jewish Journeys, The First Temple Period" (Koren: 2025). Photo ©️ T. Book, 2026

The Israel Museum in Jerusalem is concluding a remarkably successful exhibition, "A Voice from the Desert: The Great Isaiah Scroll." For the first time in almost 60 years, the public has seen the complete scroll, more than seven meters...

Allen S. Maller

Oct 2, 2026, 8:31 AM

Islam’s 99 Names of Allah, and Judaism’s One Sacred Name of YHVH

Islam's 99 names of Allah, and Judaism's 70 sacred names of God share deep linguistic, historical, and spiritual connections. We have Shared Semitic Roots: Arabic and Hebrew are sister languages. Divine attributes in the Qur'an and the Hebrew Bible...

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