All in Machshavah

How Religious Were The Avos?: The Pre-Sinaitic Torah

Avi Borgen
Machshavah, History

It is well known that the Torah was given to the Jews in the desert at Har Sinai. This, however, begs the question: to what extent, if at all, did the Torah exist before it was given at Sinai? What did pre-Sinaitic Judaism look like? Did the Avos, living before the giving of the Torah, live by the guidelines that we adhere to today? Better yet, could they have possibly followed a code of law that was not to be given for another couple hundred years?...

The Amazing Musical Talmudic Flying Machine: What Technology And Art Should Mean To Jews

Eliezer Berger
Machshavah, Art

There seems to be some confusion about technology and how it relates to Jews. I get the impression that “technology” is used most commonly nowadays to mean “shiny electric things we use for convenience and entertainment”. A student of history (and language) would be quite aware of the much broader meaning of technology. Technology is the application of skills to produce something useful, essentially. In modern times, this involves the application and advancement of science. In ancient and medieval civilization, technology was more like a craft (“making stuff”)...

A Nation Of Nonbelievers

Devir Kahan
Machshavah, Parsha, God

Amongst the most preeminent themes of Parshas Beshalach is without question that of emunah, belief in God. The stories of the parsha all seem to focus around the Jewish people finding their faith in the Divine. And yet, it is just as much a parsha of non-belief, and a lack of faith in God...

The Reason Why Men Shouldn’t Wear Tefillin (Sometimes)

Devir Kahan
Halacha, Machshavah, Parsha

As the Jewish people leave Egypt in this week's parsha, they are given the mitzvah of tefillin as a commemoration and memorial of the leaving of Egypt. It used to be that people wore tefillin all day long, but as it became more difficult to keep a clean body the whole day, the amount of time people wore tefillin was reduced to just shacharis. What is important to understand, however, is that tefillin and praying are not really connected...

Justifying The Murder Of A Nation?: A Study Of The Morality Of Shimon And Levi

Moshe Bochner
Machshavah, History

After the Allied bombing of the German city of Dresden at the end of World War II, resulting in the death of an estimated 25,000 civilians and destroying much of the city, there was much controversy as to the moral justification and legal basis for the attacks. Ever ready for sensational propaganda, the German government seized the opportunity, exaggerating the number of civilian deaths nearly tenfold, while using the attacks as a pretext for abandoning previously signed agreements on humanitarian rights, and claiming that the city of Dresden had no war industries and was solely a cultural center...

Candle Of Suburbia

Eliezer Berger
Machshavah, Editorial

In Jewish circles, there is a huge upper-middle-class contingent (if not the majority) that resides in suburban America (like many other Americans). Despite being incomparable to the European shtetl, suburbia still manages to give the exilic Jewish psyche room to wander while providing communal insulation. In America, those features act in very different ways than they might have in Europe. The openness and breadth of possibility, combined with cozy separation, has well-nourished the ambiguous creature known as “Modern Orthodoxy”...

Why We Remember

Eliezer Berger
Machshavah

Human consciousness expresses itself in many functions. One of these is the faculty of memory. When we remember things, we consider this useful in some pragmatic way (e.g. remembering your phone, the math you studied, or the pie in the oven). This allows us to be productive. Emotional memories provide an emotional stimulation that makes us feel a certain way. Sensory memory is almost instinctual, were it not for our ability to think about our associations and make choices. And yet, with all the marvelous feats that memory displays (which have certainly not been summarized adequately here), we find it hard to relate to our own memories. When we remember childhood interests, we may have sensory and emotional memory, but no usefulness; no concept is attached to this, because we have changed since the time of the experience. When we get an ice cream craving, it’s a distraction, albeit a vivid and forceful one. When we daydream, we go nowhere other than into the messy recesses of the mind. And don’t even ask about “remembering” things like Yetzi’as Mitzrayim or Creation. It seems like a category error to call that “memory”...