There is an unaffiliated family from Westchester that I have worked with to help them work out how they should “give a bar mitzvah” to their kid. The very notion of “giving” here is one that speaks to the degree that this ritual has become commodified in the minds of so many people. […]
The principle ethic of building community that I have developed over the years is forged in the early experience of being a young person seeking Torah. In short, it is an ethic that must be unafraid of the commitment to, in the words of our tradition, raise disciples.
I was nineteen years old and […]
Home late tonight from a meeting at the Shul with the Ritual Committee, charged with the task of working in tandem with the clergy (rabbis and cantor) to oversee and make recommendations on the “ritual life” of the congregation. In Beth Elohim, that business is usually about Shabbat and High Holy Days Services and […]
And then there is the poetic side to my existence.
The aspect of my personality that throws itself into experience, rides the emotions and psychological geography of the landscape of life, and every once in a while gives shape to a new lesson or an old lesson learned again or an angle, an insight unseen, a […]
The questions people ask are often the main draw to Jewish work for me. Don’t get me wrong. I love weddings, brises, baby namings, funerals, leading services, teaching, pastoral visits–all the things that one ordinarily associates with the life of religious leadership.
But fielding a question that comes from the depths of someone’s soul […]
There are so many losses that one faces with an individual’s death, among them the ability to hear favorite stories told over and over again in the author’s authentic voice.
George Mosse had a squint and rather proper German “yes?” when you addressed him that his students still love to imitate to this day. […]
Sometimes you have to scratch the itch.
And in this case, it’s about Tony Judt’s op-ed in the New York Times this week, supporting Walt and Mearsheimer, the Harvard and University of Chicago scholars whose paper on the Israel Lobby in the United States set off a controversy.
I say “scratch the itch” because if Arthur Hertzberg […]
The Andrea Meislin Gallery in Chelsea has another great exhibit of contemporary Israeli photography, this time featuring the work of Barry Frydlender, an original artist whose digital composite works require examination.
Get to see it before it closes in May.
In another corner of the art world, Tobi Kahn’s Omer Calendar, a brilliant sculpted meditation on the […]
Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg died yesterday afternoon.
His formal obit in the New York Times appears here.
He was a teacher of mine, a close friend, and a mentor.
Like so many students of history, I first met Arthur on the pages of a book, his Zionist Idea, which up until the last time I saw him (last Tuesday […]
On the shelf in a Jerusalem bookshop sat a small volume of poetry called “Time.” Its Hebrew edition was next to its English translation and I sat there one sunny afternoon in 1985 and was changed forever by the poet Yehuda Amichai.
Having gone to Jerusalem from Madison in search of my Jewish […]