Author: Rabbi Allen S Maller

“You are the sons of the Lord your God” (Torah, Deuteronomy 14:1)  “Thus says the Lord: Israel is my son, my first-born.” (Torah, Exodus 4:22) Does ‘sons’ mean that Jews, either as individuals or as a people, are Divine? Of course not.…

This year Ramaḍan will be extra special to those other than Muslims because the Jewish week-long holy days of Passover (Pesach), as well as the Christian holy days  of Good Friday and Easter Sunday fall during the Muslim holy month of Ramaḍan. Holy Books Revealed in…

Since monotheistic religions proclaim the existence of the one and only Divine Being, the essence of their revelations would be the same. As the sage of Konya, Jalal al-Din al-Rumi writes, “Ritual prayer might differ in every religion, but belief never changes.”…

Jews and Muslims can take a cue from the words of Jesus as recorded in the Gospel of Mark below: “So the Pharisees and (the rabbinic) scribes questioned Jesus: “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders…

The Qur’an uses the metaphor of a rope that links us to God and also links us to one another: “And hold fast, all together, to the bond with God, and do not draw apart from one another” [Sûrah Âli-‘Imrân, 3:103] This…

In the Hebrew Bible, Prophet Abraham is the first person to be called a “Hebrew” (Genesis 14:13). The term Hebrew comes from the verb ‘to go over a boundary’— like the Euphrates or Jordan river— or ‘to be an immigrant.’ The first thing God told Prophet Abraham in…

Ignác/Ignaz [Yitzhaq Yehuda] Goldziher (June 22, 1850 – November 13, 1921), was a Hungarian scholar of Islam and is considered one of the three founders of modern Islamic studies in Europe. Goldziher was educated at the universities of Budapest, Berlin, Leipzig and…

People who attended religious services at least once a week were significantly less likely to die from deaths related to suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol poisoning, according to a May 2020 research report from the Harvard School of Public Health.  If this…

(Aljumuah offers our series of articles by Reform Jewish Rabbi, Allen S. Maller, as a bridge-building effort to promote good relations among Jewish and Muslim communities. We share much in common due to the same source of our prophets and the revelations they…

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP’S executive order banning refugees from entering the USA left much of the American Jewish community horrified — particularly as the announcement came on International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the head of the American ‘Union of Reform Jews,’…