Ben Rothke, at The Blogs

Apr 18, 2024, 4:08 PM

Book review – Letter and Spirit: Evasion, Avoidance, and Workarounds in the Halakhic System

Noted information security guru Bruce Schneier writes in A Hacker's Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society's Rules, and How to Bend them Back that all systems will have ambiguities, inconsistencies, and oversights, and they will always be exploitable. Systems of rules,...

Mar 28, 2024, 5:11 PM

Book review: Dark Clouds Above, Faith Below

Rav Kook was known for many things. Some of them include his love of the land of Israel, his love for his fellow Jews, and that he was a significant Torah scholar. The same can be said for Rabbi...

Mar 10, 2024, 8:42 AM

Book review – From Creation to Redemption: The Deeper Meanings of the Haftaros

To those uninitiated with Aggadah, the non-legalistic stories that appear in the Talmud, they may initially seem like random anecdotes in an attempt to give over a message. But the Maharal in his commentary explains that the particulars in Aggadic narratives are...

Mar 7, 2024, 6:32 PM

Book review – Circumventing the Law: Rabbinic Perspectives on Loopholes and Legal Integrity

When the Almighty said in Devarim 6:4, "Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one," he made it eminently clear that he is one and absolutely one. Anyone reading the verse should be able to...

Feb 8, 2024, 3:17 PM

Book review – Talmud Reclaimed: An Ancient Text in the Modern Era

While the Jewish Bible is the most acclaimed book ever written, its companion text, The Talmud, is perhaps one of the most maligned religious texts ever. From after it was canonized until today, countless lies and conspiracy theories have been spread...

Jan 25, 2024, 2:58 PM

Book review – Ethics of Our Fighters: A Jewish View on War and Morality

There is a UPS commercial from years back with two consultants proposing a solution to a client. When the client informs them that he wants them to do the work, they embarrassingly and incredulously reply, "We don't actually do what we...

Jan 18, 2024, 3:27 PM

Book review – The Shochet: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Ukraine and Crimea

You will be hard-pressed to find a book with a more uninteresting title than The Shochet: A Memoir of Jewish Life in Ukraine and Crimea (Touro University Press). While the title may be boring, this is, in fact, an...

Jan 5, 2024, 12:27 AM

Book review: Being a Nation State in the Twenty-First Century

The Talmud in Tamid quotes Alexander who asked the Elders “Who is a chacham (wise person)?”. They replied to him one who sees and anticipates the consequences of his behavior. Previous to October 7, the previous few years in...

Oct 19, 2023, 7:32 PM

Book review – Eighteen Days in October: The Yom Kippur War & How It Created the Modern Middle East

50 years ago this month was the Yom Kippur War. It was one of the darkest times in the modern state of Israel. As the Bar-Lev Line on the Suez Canal was being dismantled by the Egyptian Army like...

Sep 14, 2023, 2:30 PM

The 5 best books of 5783

The term People of the Book, which sounds much better in Hebrew, Am HaSefer, is indeed apt. Walk into any Jewish bookstore, and new titles are arriving daily. The year 5783 is coming to a close, and the year, like previous...

About Me

I’m a senior information security and risk management professional, based in New York City. I speak at industry conferences, and write on information security, social media, privacy and technology. My book reviews are on information security, privacy, technology, and risk management. My reviews for the Times of Israel focus on Judaism, Talmud, religion and philosophy.

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