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Our reading list in 2020, like the rest of our lives, was colored by the triple whammy of pandemic, racial justice protests and the presidential election. But given the unpredictability of these 12 jam-packed, crisis-filled months, how did the thinkers, researchers, preachers and their publishers of the books we clung to know to furnish us with such timely analyses? As several of the authors of the most interesting books have noted, the answer is all too grim: In many cases, we only reaped what we had long sown. But among our favorite histories, travelogs and memoirs below, there are as many solutions as there are jeremiads, and books as fun as they are enlightening. ....
In ‘Can Robots Be Jewish?’ rabbis weigh in on a Jewish pastime: disagreement The questions in this collection, part of Moment Magazine’s long-running feature ‘Ask the Rabbis,’ offer a model for what is fundamental to Judaism. Image courtesy of Creative Commons December 16, 2020 (RNS) It is an axiom of Jewish life that Jews love to disagree. There’s the famous Jewish joke about a shipwrecked Jewish sailor on a desert island who builds two synagogues the one where he prays and the one he won’t set foot in. Or take Hanukkah, the eight-day holiday, which ends Friday (Dec. 18). Some Jews view it as theologically breezy, a “holiday of lights,” full of spinning dreidels and jelly doughnuts. Others view it more seriously, as a ponderous morality tale about the triumph of religious fundamentalism over assimilation. ....