“Going to college and learning about the occupation for the first time made me reflect back on my 11 years of Jewish education with sadness and anger, realizing that our Israel education had been misleading and one-sided.”
Israeli-Turkish relations have dwindled from seemingly warm cooperation to tense tolerance.
When white supremacists gathered in Charlottesville this summer, they shouted, “You will not replace us!”—eventually shifting the phrase, alarmingly, to “Jews will not replace us!” For most watching across the country, the protesters’ blatant expressions of prejudice were deeply unnerving. But where do their slogans come from, and what are they trying to convey?
In 2010, Rob Densen’s wife was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. The doctors gave her 36 weeks to live, but she lived for 40 months. “She had a genetic mutation for which there was a targeted therapy,” says Densen. “We got that time because 10 or 15 year
The Ten Commandments are appropriately easy to understand, except for Number Ten.
Tell us about your encounters with genetic testing.
During the mid 19th century, the island’s Jewish population reached 900, but after much emigration, by World War II only around 300 Jews were left, all in Hania.
With the High Holidays on the horizon—and with the current political climate in mind—we asked our “Ask the Rabbis” editor to reflect on some of her favorite pieces of rabbinical wisdom.
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.
On the High Holy Days, we confess to offenses ranging from A for “arrogance” to Z for “zeal for bad causes.” The message is clear: We make mistakes beginning with every letter of the alphabet.
For the Jewish community, perhaps the biggest success story in genetic testing is Tay-Sachs: The disease is carried by one in 27 Ashkenazi Jews (who come from Eastern Europe), and nearly always has been fatal. Today, among Ashkenazi Jewish populations, it has been almost entirely eradicated.
Matt Diamond is a 39-year-old financial planner whose sister happens to be an amateur genealogist. After creating a family tree for a school homework assignment, she was hooked and spent the next 25 years digging into her family’s Ashkenazi roots. In 2014, she sent a saliva sample to a genetic testing company, hoping to find more family members through their DNA database. She was shocked when the test identified her as a carrier for the BRCA2 mutation, a fact later confirmed by her medical doctor.
