A Cappella Graduates with Honors
by Rachel E. Gross
It was 2006 when Rabbi Sue Silberberg of the Indiana University Hillel got the call. Our nation had an urgent request:...
Unrecognized Genius
Moment remembers DNA pioneer Rosalind Franklin, economist Anna Schwartz & comedy writer Lucille Kallen—three of the many women who did not receive the accolades they deserved in their lifetimes.
Book Review // Knish: In Search of the Jewish Soul Food
Knish:
In Search of the Jewish Soul Food
Laura Silver
Brandeis University Press
2014, pp. 275, $24.95
by Gloria Levitas
Reader alert: I am not now nor have I ever been a knish...
Jewish Word // “NJB”
Maybe you know one. Maybe you want one. Maybe you are one. Go to JDate.com, and you’re guaranteed to find one: “Message me if you are looking for a nice Jewish boy who values family, respect and loyalty.”
Ask the Rabbis // Sin
“In contrast with other views, we are not born sinners, but by virtue of the human condition and our free will, we are bound to act sinfully from time to time.”
Our Man in Warsaw: Konstanty Gebert
Born in 1953 when Poland was under communist rule,Konstanty Gebert viewed his Jewish lineage as a “biographical accident” until he was 15.
2014 Spotlight on Poland
PREVIEW OF THE CORE EXHIBITION OF THE MUSEUM OF THE HISTORY OF POLISH JEWS
My personal journey to Jewish identity has taken place by way of the past. Like many immigrants from Eastern Europe, my grandparents and great-grandparents rarely spoke of the Old Country, leaving me to spend years trying to piece together the clues. This longing to know more about my family’s origins led me to genealogical research and DNA testing, to towns and shtetls in Ukraine, and to Moment.
Opinion // Max Steinberg: A Real American Hero
Not so long ago, American Jewish children learned from their parents to love the State of Israel. Even secular, assimilated American Jews gave their kids charity boxes to collect nickels and dimes to plant trees there, as the parents do in Woody Allen’s 1987 film Radio Days. But that was a time when Jews remembered the tragedy of the ship St. Louis, with its hundreds of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazis and not a single country willing to take them in.
How Has Jewish Thought Influenced Science?
How has Jewish thinking influenced science? Moment poses the question to scientists and scholars Yehuda Bauer, Jonathan Ben-Dov, Edward Bormashenko, Jeremy Brown, Allison Coudert, Noah Efron, Shmuel Feiner, Gad Freudenthal, Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Susan Greenfield, Menachem Kellner, Daniel Matt, Judea Pearl, Jonathan Sacks, Gerald Schroeder, Howard Smith, Hermona Soreq, Moshe Tendler and Yossi Vardi.
Mohammed Dajani Daoudi // Evolution of a Moderate
Once a radical Fatah leader, the Palestinian professor has come under fire for taking his students to Auschwitz to teach reconciliation.
Book Review // A Bintel Brief
A heartfelt letter sent to a newspaper editor a century ago has long stayed with me. I happened upon it decades after it was written. With his soul in torment, a New York factory owner had turned to the editor for advice. He was not paying his workers— like him, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe—nearly enough for them to make ends meet. He had a business to run, and there were limits to the wages he could afford. Still, the suffering of his employees and their families tore at his heart. What should he do?
Jewish Word // Haredi
The term haredi comes from the Hebrew root meaning “to tremble” (hared) and a verse in Isaiah, in which God says, “But to this one I will look, to him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at my word.” “Haredi really means those who are in awe, or who tremble or quake,” says Samuel Heilman, professor of sociology at Queens College of the City University of New York.