12 Aug
Moment Magazine

From the Archives: My House Shall Be a House Of Prayer For All

By Lynne Schreiber From Moment Magazine, December 2005 One day last summer, as my friend Katie and I sat beneath an umbrella at a sidewalk café sipping coffee, I mentioned that I needed a quote for a talk I was to give on spirituality in America at my Orthodox shul. Katie, whom I'd met at a poetry seminar in college before I became observant, lit up. "Rabbi Levy said something once about God being in the silence," she said. "You should ask him for the source." It took me a moment to remember why Katie, a member of an Episcopalian parish in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was quoting a rabbi. Her church, St. Clare of Assisi, shares a sanctuary with a Reform synagogue, Temple Beth Emeth. Once a year, Beth Emeth's rabbi, Robert Levy, delivers a sermon to St....

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01 Feb
History, Latest

The Golem in the Attic

By Kayla Green Tucked away in the snowy cobblestone streets of Prague’s Jewish Quarter stands a synagogue that is as old and significant as it is beautiful. With its high, pointed brown roof and few windows, the Old-New Synagogue  maintains old-world style without revealing its true age; built between 1270 and 1280, it is the oldest synagogue still in use in Prague. It defined the Jewish Ghetto, survived the Pogroms and the Holocaust and continues being used today. Embedded in the Shul’s ancient walls lies the history of Prague’s Jews, making it a riveting symbol of the community’s remarkable past. From the beginning, the Old-New Synagogue reflected the troubles of the Jewish community in Prague; hardships and anti-Semitism hindered the process of building the synagogue in ways still visible in its physical structure.  Because it was illegal...

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06 Dec
Arts & Culture, Culture, History, Latest

An Ancient Synagogue in Damascus

By Samantha Sisskind If you go to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City in Damascus, Syria, you’ll find hardly any obvious traces of Jewish life.  There remains a school that is unidentifiable as a Jewish institution, a few doors with the Star of David engraved in the granite lintel of the doorways, a small unobtrusive synagogue, abandoned houses and storefronts and some dusty narrow streets.  If you didn’t know it was there, it would be virtually unrecognizable as a relic of a once-vibrant Jewish community with a heritage and history centuries long. However, the major monument to Jewish life in the country lies in the National Museum of Syria, just a few minutes outside of the Old City. At the very end of the classical period wing, past the Greek, Roman and Palmyrene exhibits, you’ll...

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23 Jul
Uncategorized

Judaism's Price

By Symi Rom-Rymer I’ve never really thought about how expensive it is to be Jewish.  I’m not talking about the cost of being culturally Jewish, but rather about the financial burden one must assume to be at least a semi-observant, synagogue-belonging Jew.   One reason is because I don’t have any kids, so I’m not shopping around for good Hebrew schools.  Also, I didn’t make it a habit to scan my parent’s temple bills as a child.  So I was content in my bubble of ignorance until I picked up a copy of Newsweek and saw this: The Cost of Being Jewish. In TCBJ, author Lisa Miller argues that to belong to a synagogue today, one typically must pay upwards of $3100 a year.  To her, that fee, especially in a recession, is “troubling…and onerous to families having...

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