Interview | Lisa Pleskow Kassow: Director, Trinity College Hillel and Senior Associate Chaplain for Jewish Life
It’s the 70th anniversary of Trinity College Hillel. How has the college changed since you started almost 17 years ago?
Ask The Rabbis | What Is the Most Important High Holidays Prayer?
An especially insightful prayer is Hayom Harat Olam, said after the shofar is blown at the Rosh Hashanah Musaf (afternoon) service: “Today the world is conceived.” It’s a liturgical call to stay open to the pregnant possibilities in this world.
Moment staff picks: Jewish Movies to Watch on a Rainy Day
For pure cheesy pleasure, I’d go with The Ten Commandments, which frightened me so much as a child that I was actually taken out of the movie theater. I’m tougher now and, besides ever since taking my own kids on the Paramount Pictures tour that explained how the filmmakers used pre-CGI techniques to part the Red Sea, I’ve wanted to watch the thing through properly with lots of use of the pause button.
Favorite Movie Rabbis
In Barbra Streisand’s musical Yentl, Nehemiah Persoff, a World War II veteran originally from Jerusalem, plays Rebbe Mendel. Mendel secretly gives Talmud lessons to Yentl (Streisand), a young girl living in a late 19th century Polish shtetl at a time when women are barred from religious study. Yentl ultimately disguises herself as her late brother in order to enter a religious school, where drama ensues.
July/August 2017 | Table of Contents
Culture
Who’s Afraid of Dorit Rabinyan?
The Israeli author became a literary superstar when Israel’s Education Minister called her novel depicting a Palestinian-Israeli romance a threat to Jewish...
Free eBook: Defining Moments in Israeli History: 1967–2017
Moment reached out to an eclectic group to ask: which event most defined the last half-century of the Israeli experience?
What A Holiday of Masks Teaches Us About Visibility
Not every Jew starts out one from birth, nor do all people develop into a body that immediately matches their innate being.
Ask The Rabbis // How Do We Balance Civility With Disapproval For Others’ Politics?
We should learn from our sages.
Letter From Whitefish
A reporter visits the Montana resort town where a vicious neo-Nazi campaign is targeting Jews.
Ask The Rabbis // Is it the job of rabbis to fight intermarriage?
INDEPENDENT
Intermarriage is a reality of American Jewish life that isn’t receding, no matter how valiant the efforts to counter it. The central challenge to American...