When medical students in the Middle Ages opened a body and pointed out discrepancies between what they saw in front of them and the traditional descriptions of Hippocrates and Galenus, they were reprimanded by their teachers: “Would you trust more your fallible eyes than the wisdom of the ancients?” It was only in the 16th century that Andreas Vesalius, father of modern anatomy, established the revolutionary medical notion that observed facts should outweigh received beliefs. Thank Vesalaius the next time your doctor prescribes you a pill or an exercise regimen rather than a leech or a purge.

Haaretz, Apr 20, 2016

Zionism is one of the most inspiring and justice-oriented movements in human history, and we faithful Zionists need to defend its good name.

Cross-posted at The Times of Israel, April 19, 2016

Every culture has etiological myths, foundational stories that relate the origins of the people in question. Those stories — which generally have a supernatural dimension — are not merely explanatory, but convey something essential about how that group sees itself.

JFN President & CEO Andrés Spokoiny's annual address to the 2016 JFN International Conference was entitled Empowered Humility: Leveraging Your Limitations in Philanthropy.

Cross-posted at the Times of Israel, March 22, 2016

Purim is a holiday in which we are not afraid to be ridiculous. We don funny costumes; we drink ourselves into oblivion; we are boisterous and noisy. Purim is all about ridicule.

Cross-posted at eJewish Philanthropy

If I had a penny for every time someone talked to me about creating “the next Birthright” or “the next PJ library,” I’d be a millionaire.

Cross-posted at eJewish Philanthropy

Sometime in the cretaceous, flowers “discovered” that bees could be an amazingly useful tool in their reproduction. Those flowers then started an arms race to develop the most brilliant colors and the tastiest, sweetest nectar, so as to attract the pollinating bees. Some 30-odd million years later, somebody crashed the party: the hummingbird.

The Jewish Week, January 19, 2016

William O. Douglas, the longest-serving U.S. Supreme Court justice, said that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” But as a proverbial Jewish mother might note, too much sunlight can also give you skin cancer.

The Jewish Journal, December 31, 2015

I made a bet with myself that I could resist using the Star Wars craze as an analogy to write something about the state of the Jewish world. The moment I lost that bet was when I discovered, in Terror in the Name of God, Mark Juergensmeyer’s landmark book about religious extremism, the concept of “cosmic war.”  Then I realized that, just as Darth Vader and Han Solo are involved in a cosmic struggle, so too are we. Sadly.

Cross-posted at the Times of Israel

In 1972, during Richard Nixon’s visit to China, Premier Zhou Enlai was asked what he thought about the French Revolution. He responded, “Too early to tell”. His answer is celebrated to this day as an illustration of the supposed Chinese ability—and the Western need—to take the long view of history.