Congratulations to Andy Postman, a friend and fellow Brooklyn Jew (though proudly raised in Queens), who had a good day at the ballpark of local writers. He was two for two with a walk.
The first solid hit was Janet Maslin’s review of Eugene O’Kelly’s Chasing Daylight, an end-of-life memoir that Andy helped write for […]
Oh Rabbi–You’re so boring and predictable.
Maybe so.
But there are lessons everywhere these days in how to get what you want.
One way is to set a goal and not hope to achieve it for twenty years.
How many of the young ones in the Jewish world have that mind-set?
I know I didn’t from the age of 25-40. […]
More on last night.
Today a friend pressed into my hand an article from Commentary Magazine by Meir Soloveichik, entitled “How Not To Become a Jew.” He uses the case of Columbia graduate student Lauren Winner, who grew up a Patrilineal Jew in a Reform congregation in the South, moved to New York, converted to […]
One of the great challenges of teaching is figuring out how to read a room, how to guide a conversation, how to change direction when necessary.
It requires careful listening.
Tonight I combined two ideas: the Jews class, which meets weekly to talk about Jewish life and study texts; and first-timers who ordinarily don’t have a […]
Walking out onto the sidewalk in the bright sunlight following Hannah Engle’s funeral today, I realized immediately that I was in a sea of young people. By nearly twenty years, I was one of the older people in attendance to listen to a profoundly moving collection of words said in loving memory of Hannah.
Remarkably, […]
While reading an email about Hannah Engle’s terrible and tragic death, the JTA announcement came up about Andrea Bronfman having been killed by a car early this morning in Manhattan.
Chanan Tigay’s article does a fine job summing up Andy’s work as a philanthropist, as a lover of Israel, as a collector of art, and as […]
Sometimes you absord a lesson in an hour; sometimes a day; sometimes a week, a month, a year, sometimes never.
Today feels like never.
The day began with a phone call from a colleague asking if I heard the news about Hannah Engle, a bright young woman working on her MA in Jewish Studies and MPA in […]
Wednesday night at class a question arose about the development of Shabbat ritual.
When did we start lighting candles?
When did we start saying kiddush?
When did we start singing Shalom Aleichem?
When did we start ordering deli and watching football?
But really: Where does “Shabbat Shalom” come from?
Philologos, who writes an awesome column each week in the Forward […]
Should we all hold our breath and wait for our neighbors down at 770 Eastern Parkway at Chabad Headquarters to deal publicly with such characters as Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe?
We’d pass out from lack of air before such lunacy is denounced.
There’s an underbelly to the warm, soft, fuzzy Jewish efforts of Chabad emissaries, […]
I wish I could make this stuff up.
The week began with Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert exercising his first real hold on power by cracking down on illegal settlers in the Palestinian marketplace of Hebron. He was sending a message as the leader of Israel that Sharon’s vision for reigning in settlements would continue […]