I’m pleased to announce the third volume in the “Prayers of Awe” series: We Have Sinned: Sin and Confession in Judaism. Representing the 15th time I’ve collaborated with my father, Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, the book contains my translations of ancient Hebrew liturgical poems, along with detailed notes about why I made the decisions I did,…
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Again, slightly off topic, but I think important for those of us who take the Bible and these issues seriously: Dear Mr. Morgan: I believe you have been promoting bigotry and helping to perpetrate a fraud. During both of your interviews with Pastor Joel Osteen on your CNN broadcast, you let the religious leader tell…
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A classic bit of self-contradictory writing advice goes back to William Safire in the 1970s: “Always pick on the correct idiom.” In English, “pick on” means to annoy, and the right phrasing here is “pick” (which means “choose”). What makes his example work is that the meaning of “pick on” doesn’t come from the meanings…
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Who says homosexuality is a sin? The NLT does, right there in its “translation” to Leviticus 18:22: “Do not practice homosexuality; it is a detestable sin.” But that’s not what the Hebrew says, and I’ve put the word “translation” in scare quotes because I think that what the NLT has here is an interpretation, not…
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