Pastors contradict the counsel of the Lord without batting their eyelids. They plant church parishes like supermarkets in every street corner. They build cathedrals and church monuments like World Trade Centres, each one striving to be the biggest and most splendiferous in the universe. They gather thousands, even millions, of “worshippers” in front of television cameras every so often on the mountains of Kilimanjaro. They are the new spiritual superstars; the mega-pastors of the mega-churches. While the emphasis of some mega-churches on branch-networking and exponential growth might be a wonderful policy for a fast-food chain, as a framework for a…

My first visit to Israel was when I was 12 years old. The group was led by my father, a rabbi from Philadelphia. We had been invited to participate in an archaeological dig near the city of Beit Shean, in the country’s north, near the Jordan River Valley. Soon after we arrived, one of my friends happened upon a pottery shard, really an ostracon, a fragment with writing on it. The archaeologist on site said something to him in Hebrew. My father translated: “He said you are the first person to hold that in over 2,000 years.” Such shocks of…

It all seems like memories from a distant past. But it’s not. This time last year we were in a lockdown. The world was under the monstrous grip of the Coronavirus. Rumours and speculations about the origin and nature of this invincible foe were rife, leaving data and science in the dust. Fear ruled the world.The situation in Europe, especially in Italy and Spain, was particularly dire as the virus overwhelmed their sophisticated medical systems. While researchers and scientists struggled to crack the pathogen, dead bodies that could not be accommodated in morgues began to spill onto church pews and…

I have listened to several women saying "sex is not food," and that they could do without it for the rest of their lives if not for the need to procreate. "Children, for me, is the basic reason I need a man. Otherwise, their wahala is way too much than the short moment of sexual enjoyment they offer." A mother of two told me recently when she accompanied her friend to a counselling session. Her friend had made up her mind to quit her marriage because, according to her, she's suffering in silence over the years without her man caring…