From the Newsletter | The Brilliant and Formidable Alice Shalvi
When she died on October 2 at age 96, Alice Shalvi left behind scores of mourning family members and friends in Israel and abroad, hundreds...
Wisdom Project | Rabbi Arthur Ocean Waskow, 89
“It took me a long time, but I learned how to love people,” says Rabbi Arthur Waskow. “I realized I had been not-soft, not-loving. I’d been sharp and smart, maybe even partly wise, but not loving.”
First Jewish Miss Wyoming Heading to National Stage
Hazel Homer-Wambeam hails from a small but mighty Jewish community in Laramie, Wyoming. With only 1,150 Jews in the whole Cowboy State and no synagogue...
The Tradition of Respecting the Dead
Through plagues, pandemics and wars, Jewish communities have found ways to adapt their traditional practices to the events of the time. Today, with the spread of COVID-19, many Jewish traditions have had to change.
Sharing the Narrative: How Muslims & Jews Can Remember the Holocaust Together
In January, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), in partnership with the Muslim World League (MWL), brought 62 Muslims and 20 Jews from 28 countries together for a two-day interfaith mission in Poland.
Ask The Rabbis | How Has Pittsburgh Changed Jewish Life for Your Community?
Our reaction to the events in Pittsburgh began with mourning for the victims. From mourning we moved to the legitimate fear that comes from living in a nation where easily procured weapons of mass death terrorize people of color, Muslims, LGBTQ people and—as always—Jews.
Book Review | The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, 3 vols. by Robert Alter
The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, 3 vols.
by Robert Alter
W. W. Norton
2018, 3500 pp, $125
When I first learned that Robert Alter had completed the...
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...
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?”
Ask The Rabbis | Should Jews at the Seder Ask God to Smite Our Enemies?
Pour out Your wrath upon the nations that know You not, and upon the families that call not on Your name; for they have devoured...
Book Review | A History of Judaism by Martin Goodman
A History of Judaism
Martin Goodman
Princeton University Press
2018, 656 pp, $28.08
Surveys of religious literacy show that, as a group, American Jews do not know very much...
Omar Meets Omer
Today, there's more proof that The Wire--the obscure HBO series about Baltimore's drug dealers, cops, newspaper reporters that one day will get a lot of...