
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D.
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Dr. Lawrence A. Hoffman was ordained as a rabbi in 1969, received his Ph.D. in 1973, and is now Professor Emeritus at the New York campus of the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion, where he served for almost half a century. His teaching and research interests include liturgy, ritual, and worship; spirituality and theology; evolving American religion; and synagogue..
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D.
1w ago
Last week, while lecturing in Miami, I went to see Nova, a traveling art installation described as “an in-depth remembrance of the brutal massacre at the Nova Music Festival on October 7…. the largest massacre in music history.” I say ..read more
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D.
1M ago
“No one likes middles: reaching middle age, for example, or watching our own body middle expand.” So said the late (and great) Rabbi Dr. Michael Signer, bemoaning the unpopularity of his own area of expertise: the Middle Ages. In ethical ..read more
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D.
1M ago
I no longer stay up late on New Year’s Eve. The Times Square ball can drop without me. But I watch with amazement as so much of the world descends into a sort of drunkenfest – and at inflated prices ..read more
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D.
1M ago
I no longer stay up late on New Year’s Eve. The Times Square ball can drop without me. But I watch with amazement as so much of the world descends into a sort of drunkenfest – and at inflated prices ..read more
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D.
3M ago
What keeps us going in times of despair; when (to cite Deuteronomy 28:67), “In the morning we say, ‘If only it were night’, and in the evening we say, ‘If only it were morning.” Or as the Talmud puts it ..read more
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D.
4M ago
Maybe Forrest Gump was right: “Life is a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re gonna get.” I think about life at this time of year, with the High Holiday hopes in my rearview mirror and the immediacy of ..read more
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D.
4M ago
Time has weight and the Jewish year just ending has been the heaviest year in recent memory. Every day brought fresh rockslides of headline news crashing round about us. When you are buried in rubble, you struggle to get out ..read more
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D.
4M ago
I do like to write about “home,” especially when Rosh Hashanah rolls round and people head home for the holidays. Never mind the reality: broken homes, dysfunctional families, aging parents, and the mystery of undying sibling rivalry. Charles Henry Parkhurst ..read more
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D.
9M ago
It’s time to see the campus protests in perspective. Why do students protest? And how does a Zionist like me respond?
The “why” has many answers.
Start with the human urge to matter. When you’ve given or heard your share of eulogies, you realize that except for their immediate families, most people, for most of their lives, don’t live for anything terribly profound. They work, travel, golf, take the kids to the doctor, figure out what’s for dinne ..read more
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D.
10M ago
This is not the first time the word “Zionist” has come under attack. Back in 1975, 72 nations supported a United Nations resolution that called Zionism “a form of racism and racist discrimination (35 nations were opposed; 32 abstained). The resolution was reversed in 1991. But here we are again, no UN resolution this time round (at least so far), but, instead, international student protesters, many of them Jewish. Most of them have never known a Jewish state governed by anyone except Benjamin Netanyahu – who is part of what I fear most: but more on that later.
&nb ..read more