Author: Toby Katz

A few days ago Yaakov Menken wrote about the Documentary Hypothesis, and I meant to get back to that. Several of the comments on his posts seemed to assume that if any mistakes or...

Ori Pomerantz wrote: Oral Torah seems to limit capital punishment to the point where it would almost never happen. IIRC, capital punishment requires two witnesses with foreknowledge of the crime who warned the would...

What kind of cutesie name is Tookie anyway — for a murderer? Why have the media over the last few days tried to make us feel sorry for this creep? The US government sentenced...

Regarding Ori’s question, I reject the forced choices — I think the majority of Jews would join Orthodox shuls without becoming observant. That is option 3. And I think that would be a vast...

Tortured women in the Bible, tortured readings of the Bible text, my my. I was asked a question about Hagar a few weeks ago, and since Hagar is first mentioned in this week’s parsha...

The more sad news we hear out of New Orleans, the more I get the shivers thinking about the fact that Katrina passed right through my city. The eye of the hurricane was right...

Someone forwarded a letter to me — unfortunately without the signature — by some pundit “explaining” that Katrina hit New Orleans because Louisiana is the home state of Condoleeza Rice. This catastrophic hurricane with...