Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr.

The Bible says much about Jacob, a lot of which seems to be negative. Virtually all if not all is obscure and can therefore if one is so moved, be interpreted to depict Jacob in a positive or negative manner. Here are examples of just some of the many obscurities. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

Many people, if not most of them, are convinced that they know quite a lot about God and the people mentioned in the Bible. They would be surprised and some even angry to discover that most if not all that the Bible states about them is obscure. It clearly wants us to think about all that is in scripture and to act properly. The following are some examples about God: [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

Most people do not attempt to define words, even words they use daily, such as religion, spirituality, and the various words used to describe God. As a result, they usually have only misconceptions about God. The following are some words used to describe God in Judaism. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

The very introduction to the Bible is obscure. We would have expected the introduction to tell us why God created the world and what God expects from humans, a problem that bothered the famous Bible commentator Rashi (1040-1105), but instead chapters 1 and 2 and other parts of the Bible are obscure, as can be seen in the following items. The obscurities are apparently purposely opaque to prompt us to think, and by thinking improve ourselves and society. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

As with all of the prior men and women mentioned in the Bible, including Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, patriarchs whom we might expect that the Torah would give us plenty of information about, there is nothing about Isaac’s wife Rebekah that is crystal clear. Every fact and every event is obscure. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

By Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin BOCA RATON, Florida — The biblical story of the flood during the days of Noah raises many questions, especially about divine punishments, and the answers help us to understand how to interpret biblical events. Some of the questions are: Why did divine punishments vary in delivery? Some examples are as

Virtually all, if not all that we are told about Isaac is obscure, as with Abraham and Jacob. The Torah leaves out explanations for behaviors, leaving it to us to imagine what occurred and to derive meaning from our own ideas. The following are some examples of opaque events. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

A careful analysis of Abraham’s nephew Lot raises the question of whether or not he was a righteous man. What did he do to merit saving when the people among whom he lived died by fire? We may think we know about him, but actually virtually everything the Torah tells us about him is obscure, requiring us to make up our own interpretations and learn lessons from them. There are rational interpretations by rabbis and scholars as well as mystical and midrashic ones. Which should we accept? The following are some questionable items. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

Most people think they know a lot about Abraham the father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. They are mistaken. The events recorded about Abraham in scripture are generally if not always obscure. When the Bible does not clarify exactly what is happening, people tend to imagine details and come to think of them as really happening in the Bible. [Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin]

By Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin  BOCA RATON, Florida — One of the most lamentable recent events was the death of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, who was born in 1948 and died on November 7, 2020. He was a British Orthodox rabbi, philosopher, theologian, award-winning author, international religious leader, respected moral voice, and public figure. He