Heresy

The Torah is often used to highlight various ethical values while its many ethically problematic commandments are ignored or explained away. Is there a way to treat the Torah as a moral authority while honestly confronting the ethical issues it raises?

Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated for his controversial beliefs about Judaism, including his rejection of the tenet of Mosaic authorship. However, Spinoza’s real originality is his radical and innovative claim that the origin of the biblical texts holds great significance for how they are to be read and interpreted.

In 1305, the great Catalonian Sage, Rashba, tried to limit philosophic study and interpretation of Torah in Languedoc (southern France). In the process, he and went so far as to excommunicate one of the great scholars involved in such philosophical readings of Torah, Levi ben Avraham ben Hayyim of Villefranche-de-Conflent.

Numbers 21:16–18 speaks about the Song of the Well, but only records a short snippet. Whereas most commentators assume that the song was simply very short, R. Yehudah HeChasid offers the radical suggestion that the song was actually cut from the Torah and placed in the book of Psalms by none other than King David.

The anomalous and paradoxical nature of the twelfth curse – Deuteronomy 27:26.

A Dati Israeli Blogger’s Perspective