Find a Teacher for Yourself
As a rabbi and professor of rabbinic literature, I am naturally drawn to interpreting texts. The best moments…
Jews
14 articles
The Grand Mosque of Paris
In these days, when tensions – expressed or unexpressed – are running high between Muslim and Jewish communities,…
Religion Is Not a Zero Sum Game
The Turkish term for “tolerance” is “hosgoru” which means seeing or looking for the good side of another…
The Medicine for This Sickness: A Reaction to the Recent Violence and Killings in Nigeria
These days, we are witnessing a kind of violence never before heard of in our land. Young men…
Myth or Reality: The “Invasion” and Spread of Islam in Spain
The majority of Spaniards, as well as people worldwide that have heard about “Muslim Spain,” know about the…
Fasting on Ramadan and Yom Kippur
I am a Reform rabbi who has been studying Islam for more than 50 years. Reform Judaism is…
Islamic Relations with Jews and Christians
The Qur’an expresses a range of positive and negative attitudes toward Jews and Christians. The doctrine found in…
Al-Andalus
Maria Rosa Menocal (2002) argues that Al-Andalus (711–1492) was a “utopian-like” society in which Jews and Muslims lived…
A Reform Rabbi Learns from Muhammad
All Muslims know that the Qur’an often refers to the “people of the book” and their prophets. In…
The Status of Dhimmis in the Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire recognized three groups of non-Muslim minorities: ahl al-kitab (People of the Book), ahl al-dhimma (protected…
Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire
Why and how civilizations rise and fall is a hard question to answer. To do so, one must…
The Necessity Of Interfaith Dialogue
People are talking about peace, contentment, ecology, justice, tolerance, and dialogue. Unfortunately, the prevailing materialist worldview disturbs the…
Islam’s Tolerance Toward Christians
The Qur’an calls Christians and Jews “the People of the Book,” meaning those who have a Divinely revealed…
Blissful Years of The Jews in The Ottoman State
The world has been the scene of many massacres and countless acts of genocide since mankind appeared on…