The founding editor of the Yiddish Daily Forward, Abraham Cahan, used to say that he wanted his newspaper to convey an American style of Yiddish in order to move the process of Americanization along at a faster pace. Cahan knew that his success as editor of the Yiddish Forverts would be measured by whether […]

There is an amazing exhibit of photographs at the Andrea Meislin Gallery
Yuval Yairi’s show is called “Forevermore: the Hansen Project.” This original Israeli photographer spent nearly two years inside an abandoned leper hospital in Jerusalem, taking digital stills with a video camera and capturing so many layered aspects of Jewish life and history […]

One of my early summer reads was Dan Pink’s A Whole New Mind. I don’t know if it was the bright orange book cover calling to me or his resume ( a speechwriter for Al Gore and contributing editor of Wired Magazine) but I bought it and was not disappointed.
Cleverly, the book opens in […]

While recently studying Torah with someone, the question was asked, “Rabbi, do you believe this stuff?”
Good question.
My answer was this: It matters less to me whether or not the biblical character Abraham ever walked the earth than it does that we have a sacred record of his actions and his arguments with God, which, […]

On a recent trip up to the Jewish Theological Seminary to meet with the dean of the Davidson School (which trains Jewish educators) I learned a fascinating statistic: according to the school’s dean, Steven Brown, linguists have determined that it takes on average 127 repetitions of a word before its meaning is integrated into […]

One of the more challenging stories in the Torah occurs in this week’s portion–Shelach Lecha (Numbers 13.1-15.41). Here the context is the Israelites moving through the desert after the Exodus, and they are beginning to survey the situation in the Land of Israel, preparing for their return after more than 400 years in exile […]

There are terrible things that happen anywhere, tragedies both great and small. God knows, each day in the news we are confronted with them.
But in Park Slope last week, there was a particular tragedy–the death in a biking accident of 28 year old Elizabeth Padilla, who was killed while riding down Fifth […]

Okay. Let’s just put this out there. On Sunday night June 12, for Shavuot, we studied Torah in a bar. And the most unusual thing of all is that it didn’t feel strange.
For the festival of Shavuot, which commemorates the Giving of Torah at Mount Sinai, and which takes place […]

Earlier Wednesday I was downtown to speak to a young person about the direction of his life. And afterward, in order to give myself time to reflect on the conversation, I walked slowly uptown on Trinity Place, past Ground Zero and the hoardes with digital cameras, poised to catalog our special local/national tragedy. […]

The baseball season is only beginning to hit its stride but I’m putting in my vote for the Rolaids Relief Award.
I’m assuming I’m not the only person who’s noticed, but here it goes: Stacy Schiff is an amazing op-ed writer.
While Maureen Dowd is on leave finishing another book, the New York Times […]