Rachel Binstock says that the 39 melachot are what create the meaning of Shabbat, but it is rare for Jews to practice the original forms of labor during the other 144 hours of the week because modern technologies have made them mostly obsolete.
Bricha guides didn’t allow refugees to carry lights, not only to be invisible to border guards but also so they could not see the plunging drop-offs beside the trail.
Some Jewish artists are unwilling to be confined to what artist Rachel Libeskind calls the “claustrophobic limbo” of Germany’s past.
At times I feel like I am not among Jews but impostors meticulously reading from a script. At other times, their utter faith makes me question my own.
“A legion of spanking new white charter buses gleamed in the moonlight, standing by to deliver pilgrims to Uman. Since I was heading the same way, I asked if I might join them, but my gender made me forbidden cargo.
Putting on The Moss Maidens—the production that won the Best Play and Best Ensemble awards at SheNYC, a recent theater festival—felt particularly cathartic for the play’s Jewish cast and crew members.
My parents never spoke “Jewish” at home—they wanted their kids to be American. But the year the survivors lived with us, I learned Yiddish in teaching them English.
During the trial, prosecutors called on 60 witnesses, and survivors testified to their horrifying experiences inside the synagogue.
