Introduction A red calf is born in Israel, and the news travels the world. Websites track its coat. Rabbis inspect it. Millions of people ask the same question. Could this animal change the future? That is the power of the red heifer. It is a single cow mentioned in a single chapter of the Torah. … Read more
In 1948, something happened that had never happened before in recorded human history. A people who had been scattered across the entire world for nearly 1,900 years came back to their ancestral homeland and declared a state. Not a new state. Their old one. On the same land, in the same city, with the same … Read more
Ask most people what Judaism says about life after death and they will tell you one of two things: either that Judaism focuses on this world and does not really say much about the next one, or that it teaches the immortality of the soul. Both answers miss what is actually one of the most … Read more
Every few generations, Jewish history produces a moment of collective holding of breath. A figure emerges, or rumor of one spreads, and for a brief and electric season, ordinary Jews from Portugal to Poland, from Yemen to New York, begin to ask the same question: could this be him? Could this be the Mashiach, the … Read more
Most people who have heard the phrase Olam Ha-Ba believe they know what it means. They imagine something roughly equivalent to the Christian heaven or the Islamic Jannah: a positive afterlife destination for the righteous, contrasted with Gehinnom as a place of punishment for the wicked. This understanding is not entirely wrong, but it captures … Read more
There is a piece of land in the middle of Jerusalem that measures roughly thirty-seven acres. It is less than a third of a mile long. You could walk across it in about ten minutes. And yet there is arguably no piece of real estate on the surface of the earth that carries more religious, … Read more
What Is Jewish Eschatology? If you have ever wondered what Jews believe about the end of the world, you are not alone. It is one of the most searched religious topics on the internet, and for good reason. Jewish eschatology, which is the study of what Judaism teaches about the end of days, is a … Read more