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July 3, 2008

Rabbi Dr. Abraham J. Twerski: A spiritual budget (TOUCHING!)

Jeff Jacoby: Israel still paying for its defeat

JWisdom:: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part IV by Rabbi David Aaron

July 2, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Appeasers Make Poor Patriots

The Kosher Gourmet By Kathleen Purvis: Slaw, y'all: For BBQs or Sabbath dinner, these southern recipes are something else!

JWisdom:: Rabbi Mordechai Becher: Jewish Rx for A Simpler Life

July 1, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. I think it's important to leave a legacy to my children. How much should I save towards this end?

Paul Greenberg:A President who is history deficient?

JWisdom:: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Poland's Unique Antisemitism

June 30, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: Remembering the architect of Torah Judaism for the modern world

Abe Novick: Hulk: Still a Jew?

JWisdom: : Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality, Part 2: The Abandoned Child

June 26, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Quantum leap to evil

Caroline B. Glick: Victimized families must not be allowed to dictate policy

June 25, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Today in Biblical History: King Jeroboam of Israel prevents pilgrimage to Jerusalem

Jonathan Tobin: Real Friends and Real Enemies

JWisdom: Raping of reason By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 25, 2008

Steven Emerson: Kristof: Never Mind the Terrorists

Stratfor Intelligence Briefing: Mediterranean Flyover: Telegraphing an Israeli Punch?

JWisdom: Rabbi David Aaron: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part III

June 24, 2008

Caroline B. Glick: What were they thinking!?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Guilty knowledge

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Warping Innocence

June 23, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Diploma dilemma

Jeff Jacoby: A world without children

JWisdom: Rabbi Dovid Gross: Putting the Spirit Back into Spirituality --- Introduction

June 20, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: Man: The Crowning Glory of Creation

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's darkest week

JWisdom: We aren't worthy? by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 19, 2008

Rabbi Elazar Meisels: The saints who don't come marchin' in

Chris Christoff: Muslim woman demands an apology from Obama after camera snub

June 18, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: Still Dancing Around Jerusalem

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky: Chilled fruit and vegetable soups

JWisdom: Souls Need A Check Up? by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 17, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: Baby Einstein

Caroline B. Glick: Bush's rhetoric, Bush's policies

JWisdom: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part II by Rabbi David Aaron

June 16, 2008

Varda Branfman: Bob Dylan, won't you please come home?

Diana West: Academic dares to question the 'religion of peace'

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Positive Backfire

June 13, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: Trading manna for whine

Caroline B. Glick: Peace with friends

JWisdom: From the mouths of … by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 12, 2008

Michael Feldberg: Meet Paul Revere's pal, the Orthodox Jew who played a key role in laying Boston's cultural and business infrastructure

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: No need to be tempted by Wendy's mandarin chicken salad

JWisdom: Re-Jew-venating prayer, Part I by Rabbi David Aaron

June 11, 2008

Rabbi Avi Shafran: What would Hillel say?

Jonathan Tobin: UNRWA and NGOs: The Real U.N. 'Insult'

JWisdom: Sara Yoheved Rigler: Greatness Made Simple: How a momentary decision shifted life's course and destination

June 6, 2008

Rabbi Pinchas Stolper: Revelation: The basis of faith

Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Mere hours after becoming Israel's new 'best friend' Obama backtracks on status of Jerusalem

Caroline B. Glick: UN choosing to protect rogue nuclear programs

JWisdom: Sameness in difference by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky

June 5, 2008

David Lightman: Now Obama wants to be Israel's newest 'best friend'

Obama's remarks to AIPAC policy conference

The Kosher Gourmet By Ethel G. Hofman: Shavous cuisine: Ruby Fruit Soup, Lokshen Kugel with Cheese, Key Lime Curd, Calsone Casserole Frittata with Wild Mushrooms, Sun-dried tomatoes and Olives, Baked Tilapia with Pepper Cheese Cream and Brown Sugar Shortbread

JWisdom: Why a Jewish Jerusalem makes so many nervous by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 4, 2008

Jonathan Rosenblum: A different sort of 'religious broadcaster'

Jonathan Tobin: Misgivings on the Road to Damascus

JWisdom: 44 Years Without An Argument? by Sara Yoheved Rigler

June 3, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Obama vs. McCain on the Middle East

Everything's Relative: There is a crisis growing in Orthodox synagogues worldwide, reveals Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel

JWisdom: White Facades; Black Secrets by Rabbi Mordechai Becher

June 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Lie to outsmart discriminator?

He writes the songs that make our souls sing:Gavriel Aryeh Sanders interviews Jewish music legend Ben Zion Shenker; includes stirring, uplifting song

JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Of laws and lives

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review August 22, 2007 / 8 Elul, 5767

The Decalogue, dangerous? Advice for a society that cringes at commandments

By Rod Dreher


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Everybody with male children this summer seems to be reading the wonderful retro guidebook The Dangerous Book for Boys. I was startled, and pleased, to find — amid the knot-tying, semaphore-reading, poker playing and all things the Dennis the Menace set needs to know — a page dedicated to, of all things, the Ten Commandments.


The Decalogue, dangerous? The commandments certainly are regarded as hazardous by the Irritable-American community, which successfully petitions the courts to banish them from public life. At least these stalwart secularists give the Decalogue its due; most of us admire the Ten Commandments just enough to avoid taking them seriously. If we grasped how radical they truly are, we'd find them an offensive stumbling block to us middle-class moderns, who live in a rebellious age characterized by sociologist Daniel Bell as "the rejection of a revealed order, or natural order, and the substitution of the ego, the self, as the lodestar of consciousness."


We have lost the fear of the Lord -- and the absence of 'holy fear' makes us terrors unto ourselves and one another. Why? Because we know what humans who recognize no authority but themselves are capable of.



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Another dangerous book this summer, this one for grown-ups, is David Klinghoffer's marvelously lucid Shattered Tablets: Why We Ignore The Ten Commandments at Our Peril. It weaves theological insight with the author's reflections on living in a society (ours, alas) that has cast off the Decalogue's authority.


Mr. Klinghoffer is a religious Jew, but his argument is as sociological as it is theological. The Ten Commandments are far more than a list of taboos, Mr. Klinghoffer explains. They reveal what it means to live a fully human life, both as individuals and in community — and as commandments (not suggestions), they provide us with the psychological means of doing so.


That is, the justice of the commandments is guaranteed by the G-d who issued them — an all-powerful being who will judge individuals and cultures by these laws. The old-fashioned phrase "the fear of the Lord" meant precisely the respect men owed to G-d and his laws — a respect that, properly understood, bound their consciences and compelled their obedience.


Mr. Klinghoffer cites the work of noted Baylor University sociologist Rodney Stark, who found that across global cultures, the degree to which individuals believe in a personal G-d indicates how likely they are to behave morally. You don't have to believe in G-d to be good, but it demonstrably helps. Mr. Klinghoffer identifies the loss of the Ten Commandments' as responsible for America's cultural crises.


No surprise there: What else would you expect a believing Jew (or Christian) to say? But here's the thing: This is essentially the same conclusion reached by the late Philip Rieff, an agnostic who was one of the 20th century's most important social critics.


Mr. Rieff, a sociologist whose most important work dealt with psychology and religion, taught that all cultures develop from prohibitions, that is, the creative tension between the commanding "Thou shalt not" and the assertive "I will." We now dwell in an anti-culture, according to Mr. Rieff, in which we no longer feel the pull of old prohibitions against the expression of individual instinct and will to power.


In biblical terms, we have lost the fear of the Lord — and in Mr. Rieff's telling, the absence of "holy fear" makes us terrors unto ourselves and one another.


By placing the Self in the place of G-d, said Mr. Rieff, Western man has passed into a perilous state in which his fear, anxiety and loss of ultimate meaning can only be endured through pleasure-seeking and other therapeutic means. We latter-day Americans are wealthy and cultured, but we quickly approach a state of barbarism, which Mr. Rieff defined as "the sophisticated cutting off of the inhibiting authority of the past." Popular American Christianity, with its Jesus-As-Best-Friend rather than Sovereign Lord, is in Mr. Rieff's view an ersatz substitute.


What both the believing Jew Klinghoffer and the unbelieving Jew Rieff affirm is the absolute requirement of religious grounding to maintain a moral culture. We will live in holy terror — the fear of the Lord — or we will live in terror of ourselves and one another. Why? Because we know what humans who recognize no authority but themselves are capable of.


"How a culture thinks about G-d will go a long way toward determining how it thinks about other people," writes Mr. Klinghoffer. For all our historical crimes and failings, no culture in the history of the world has treated the individual with as much respect as the Western civilization, which derived its worldview largely from the Bible. If we lose the image of G-d as revealed in the laws He declared on Sinai, we will lose the Western image of the human person.


And then?


Many of us think of the Ten Commandments as noble sentiments from simpler days, worthy but naive concepts we left behind in Sunday school. Funny how the older you get — especially if you have children — the ideas you once dismissed or forgot about turn out to be the most important ones of all.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


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Rod Dreher is assistant editorial page editor of the Dallas Morning News and author of the forthcoming "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum).

PREVIOUSLY

08/15/07: Playing the anti-science card
08/01/07: How the U.S. can avoid its own version of the fall of the Roman empire
07/24/07: Conservative author: Big business can be as dangerous a threat as big government
07/09/07: All quiet but the doleful pleas of a father who knows
06/28/07: When we let conspiracy theory masquerade as news, we fall prey to much more than deception
06/20/07: Stranded on Delta: They may love to fly, but it certainly doesn't show
06/13/07: When did conservatism start to mean never having to say you're sorry?
05/08/07: PBS darling gets abused by PC police
05/02/07: Impervious to beauty and deadened to depravity
04/20/07: What I know about being a loner
10/28/05: How the conservatives crumble

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