Liam Hoare
By the curb in front of the three-story yellow house at Salzburger Vorstadt 15, in the picturesque town of Braunau am Inn in northern Austria, stands a memorial stone taken from the quarries of the Mauthausen concentration camp.
Moment
“I don’t think there’s a lot of evidence that the U.S. response to the pandemic was disappointing because the government was too small.”
Lilly Gelman
Eitan Okun only eats between the hours of 8 and 10 p.m., or, on days when he rides his bike, from 6 to 8 p.m.
A woman sprawls face-down on a table, her face in a breakfast dish and a banana peel near her knee. Soon she wakes and arises with jerky but highly choreographed movements coordinated with a whimsical soundtrack. She turns on the television, a Japanese announcer appears, shuffling papers, and she quickly shuts it off. As she turns away, the television flicks back on of its own accord, and we’ve entered the slightly magical but recognizable world of an Etgar Keret story, recently made into a short film.
Just as the remarkable life she lived, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, sparked a mix of awe, appreciation and political controversy. And the coming days will provide much of the same: a celebration of the life of a trailblazing legal giant who served for many as the nation’s moral compass, and at the same time, a fierce partisan battle over the appropriate timing of choosing Bader Ginsburg’s successor.
The demolition of a statue, the withdrawal of public adulation for the erstwhile hero the statue commemorates, has echoes of a fundamental Jewish principle: the injunction against graven images.
The English word atonement sounds abstract / And kind of Latin, but really it’s just “at one.”
Moment
Our team of rabbis weighs in.
Moment
The passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the eve of Rosh Hashanah 5781 is more than just the loss of an inspirational woman
Moment
While I am mindful of current realities, the opening of doors long closed makes me optimistic about a future in which daughters and sons alike will be free from artificial barriers, free to aspire and achieve in full accord with their God-given talents and their willingness to do the hard work needed to make dreams come true.
Lilly Gelman
“I’m sure any proud member of Jewish Twitter felt similarly disheartened when they saw that both ‘Holocaust’ and ‘Anne Frank’ were trending before 9 a.m.”
Debra Arbit
“Most nights, there was one stray ticket that theaters were happy to sell cheap to a college girl with a debit card and frizzy hair. Not the case at The St. James Theater on West 44th Street, home to The Producers. You couldn’t get this ticket at TKTS and it was years before you could buy resold tickets online. Night after night, The St. James was my first stop to see if there was a ticket for sale. And night after night, the same ticket lady would turn me away. Until now.”
