Opinion | How Trump Mainstreams Anti-Semitism
President Donald Trump has brought the mental habits of anti-Semitism from the political fringe into the White House. And yet this is the same Trump...
Jewish Word | Shamash
n the 1946 film The Big Sleep, based on the Raymond Chandler mystery of the same name, Carmen—the promiscuous, drug-addicted younger sister of Lauren Bacall’s character—sizes up Philip Marlowe, played by Humphrey Bogart, and asks him, “What are you, a prizefighter?” Bogart responds, “No, I’m a shamus.” “What’s a shamus?” she inquires. “It’s a private detective,” he answers. Yes, Bogart is using the Yiddish version—more popularly spelled “shammes”—of the Hebrew word, “shamash.”
The Weird and Wondrous World of Jews and Magic
The first time I came face-to-face with Jewish magic was when I moved to Israel in my early 20s. It was the fall of 1995...
How Have Female Clergy Transformed Jewish Life, Ritual and Practice?
Forty-six years after the first American woman rabbi was ordained, Judaism is transformed.
Ask The Rabbis | What Sins Should We Atone For In Our Use of Social Media?
“Do we gossip? Do we repost stories about friends, family or colleagues that ought not be repeated? Do we believe everything we read?”
Context | Is Judaism Pro-Life or Pro-Choice?
Where you stand on most issues depends on where you sit. It’s a truism that dates back far before our polarized age. Women’s issues tend to pose this problem with particular clarity; you might say that it’s not so much where you sit as what set of organs you sit on.
From The Editor | September/October 2018
In practice it requires women to maintain the peace by bending to the will of the males around them. Although my mother was a feminist for her time, she still subconsciously bought into the notion that shalom bayit was the duty of women and girls.
Jewish Word | Fake Jews
This past spring, Trayon White Sr., a Washington, DC city councilmember, sparked an outcry by blaming a late season snowfall on the Rothschilds, the famous Jewish banking dynasty, who, he explained, control “the climate to create natural disasters they can pay for to own the cities.”
The Equality Myth
The story of Israel’s founding usually goes something like this: Sun-kissed male and female pioneers plowed the fields by day, danced the hora by night,...
Book Review | Harvey Milk by Lillian Faderman
Last April, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to name the main terminal at San Francisco International Airport after Harvey Milk, the gay rights martyr who was assassinated 40 years ago. The decision further (and literally) cements Milk’s legacy as the best-known LGBT activist in American history.
Book Review | Gateway To The Moon by Mary Morris
Entrada de la Luna, New Mexico, is a small town with a big mystery. Why do its Spanish Catholic families light candles on Friday night? Why doesn’t anyone eat pork? The answers, it turns out, lie half a millennium ago, in 15th-century Spain.
