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Nov 13, 2024 | 
jewishnews.co.uk | Danny C. Rich |Louisa Walters
It’s finally over! In perhaps the most consequential election for the world today, Donald Trump will return to office as the 47th President of the United States of America in January 2025. The traditional question: “Is it good for the Jews?” is arguably less important than three other matters from a Jewish perspective – democracy, the State of Israel, and age.
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Oct 11, 2024 | 
jewishnews.co.uk | Danny C. Rich |Louisa Walters
Yom Kippur, in common with all Jewish festivals, has its customs, rites and rituals which are designed to assist us in marking the moment and recalling its themes. The most well-known custom of Yom Kippur is its fast, a form of self-denial that arises from the Book of Leviticus’s requirement ‘to afflict one’s soul’.
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Oct 1, 2024 | 
thejc.com | Danny C. Rich
Ha’azinu is the final Shabbat parashah (since the last two chapters of Deuteronomy are read only on Simchat Torah). In the style of biblical poetry, Ha’azinu warns Israel of the consequences of its anticipated failure to keep its part of the covenant with God.
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Aug 30, 2024 | 
thejc.com | Danny C. Rich
The challenge of writing a piece several weeks before publication is that events, particularly as recorded by social media, gather pace more quickly than the written word. As I prepared this article, the United Kingdom experienced its worst incidents of public disorder for more than a decade.
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Jul 25, 2024 | 
thejc.com | Danny C. Rich
In what was to be his final speech on the day before his assassination, the Reverend Martin Luther King declared: “I just want to do God’s will and He has allowed me to go up to the mountain and I have looked over, and I have seen the Promised Land.
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Jun 20, 2024 | 
thejc.com | Danny C. Rich
Our memories can play a range of diverse tricks. This parashah introduces perhaps the major theme of much of the Book of Numbers. The Children of Israel refuse to accept the authority of Moses, challenging him with regular complaints about the unpleasantness of their desert experience.
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May 16, 2024 | 
thejc.com | Danny C. Rich
It is arguable that Emor is one of the weekly Torah portions which has least relevance in the modern world. Parashat Emor, particularly its first two chapters, is specifically aimed at the Cohanim and Levi’im, the priesthood, rather than the Israelite people as a whole.
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Apr 11, 2024 | 
thejc.com | Danny C. Rich
For some time now — and more particularly as patients report difficulty in obtaining an appointment at the local GP surgery — the rabbinate is sometimes considered the fourth emergency service without charge at the point of delivery. Does this represent a return to the biblical model of priesthood? Parashat Tazria prescribes the role of the priest in diagnosing and ritually purifying sufferers of skin complaints, known in biblical Hebrew as tzara’at.
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Mar 7, 2024 | 
thejc.com | Danny C. Rich
There is an old joke which opens: ‘How many Jews does it take to change a lightbulb?’ although the Synagogue council version asks: “How many times must we ask the rabbi to change the lightbulb?”! I am no practitioner of DIY whether at home or in the shul but the Torah in Parashat Vayakhel feels to me like a comprehensive and practical manual, in this case for the construction of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle.
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Feb 1, 2024 | 
thejc.com | Danny C. Rich
What is a rabbi? If readers of this column were asked such a question they would respond in this or a similar vein: “A rabbi is the spiritual leader or religious teacher, with particular regard to Jewish law”.
