Whoopi Goldberg knows little about the Holocaust and less about Nazi Racism, but she got half the story right. Contrary to Nazi ideology, Jews are not a race, they are a people and a religion. There are many Jews of color, Black Jews, Hispanic Jews, Asian Jews—not just Jews who are White.

I always assumed our commitment to lead the fight against genocide wherever it happened. It never occurred to me that we were only talking about Jews and Nazis and swastikas. But as we watch from half a world away as the Chinese government commits mass atrocities against its own beleaguered Uyghur population, we must ask why that promise is not a much greater priority for Jews in this country and elsewhere…

In this case, the over-hyped Amnesty report is a rehash of old, discredited and falsely premised allegations of Israel apartheid completely detached from reality. The rehash seems intended to undercut the diplomatic progress the Jewish state has made with its Arab neighbors…

True, letting yourself be overwhelmed by regret is indeed bad for you. But going to the other extreme may be even worse. To extinguish your regrets doesn’t put you on a path to freedom; it consigns you to make the same mistakes again and again.

Slessor’s short essay on the ashtray appears in the new book Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects, a collection of illustrated essays on eighty-five objects that, its editors write, “once populated the world and do so no longer.” To skim its table of contents is to encounter a wide-ranging catalog of lost things…

Consciousness is the scent of pine in winter, the sense of the color blue, the memory of a first kiss, the thrill of an exceptional performance—all of the rich and ineffable qualitative experiences that make a life worth living and that slide through time, knitting one moment to the next.

But while we may all be intimately familiar with what consciousness feels like, explaining why it exists or how it arises from physical and biological processes is another matter.

Rabbi Janet Madden: Close to midpoint in the seven years that it takes to build the Temple—a visionary and costly enterprise in materials, ingenuity and effort—“the word of the Lord” comes to the man charged with its construction.

After the black and white world of slavery, the people will now physically access God through color and beauty. And it won’t just be beautiful—it will also be useful. Every piece of furniture, every beam, every pole, and every curtain will serve a function—even the cherubim.

The Mishkan, which was actually the Nation of Israel’s first temple, was not built with a donation of one single wealthy person, and not even with donations of a group of wealthy and generous donors. It was built – intentionally – from small donations that were collected from each separate individual in Am Yisrael.

What does race really mean? Were Whoopi’s comments antisemitic? Did she deserve to be suspended? We discuss those burning questions and plenty of others, including arguably the best movie of the year– from Japan.

Shmuel Rosner and Prof. Abraham Sion discuss his book: “To Whom Was The Promised Land Promised?: Some Fundamental Truths About The Arab-Israeli Conflict“.

The juxtaposition of the description of the building of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, with the story of the Golden Calf, in Parashat Terumah, raises intriguing questions, says Prof Rav Rachel Adelman.