As the discussion of Bar/Bat Mitzvah continues to unfold, let me share another story.
Yesterday afternoon one of our rabbinic interns who teach our 7th graders invited them to look at the three maps of the Land of Israel that hang in my office. They are there intentionally, since the whole conversation about Israel today […]

Studying with a group of 7th graders yesterday, there was near universal objection to people other than “invited guests” coming to Bar/Bat Mitzvahs.
“It’s our special day and it’s a private service,” one said. “Why would someone not invited want to come?”
You can’t be upset when you hear this. They’re only 13; […]

Come on out Wednesday night January 31st at 8 pm to meet New Yorker Magazine’s Washington correspondent Jeffery Goldberg, who will be talking about his new book, Prisoners, as well as other matters related to Israel and the Middle East.
Jeffrey is always smart, interesting, and worth the conversation.
And in addition to his book, which is […]

City Councilman David Yassky has a proposal in to make the city’s taxi cabs “green.” For the record, their color would remain yellow.
He suggests in an email to constituents this week that you take a moment and let the Mayor know how you feel.
So if you are up for cleaner air and doing something […]

Haredi women and the Reform Movment in Israel have filed a petition in order to outlaw the public discrimination of Haredi women on buses, according to Yediot today.
“He treated me exactly as if I were a black woman in the United States South 50 years ago,” one of the petitioners described of her experience being […]

The line to get in to the closing of the Annie Leibovitz at the Brooklyn Museum wove in and out of galleries as the masses coagulated in public spaces to peer at America’s premier celebrity photographer. Meanwhile, as an afterthought, those bumped from the glow and shine of fame were forced to face humanity […]

No one likes a playground bully, which is what God is getting accused of last night and today when we sit down to study Torah. It’s not a bad moniker: funny, irreverent, and somehow getting to the core of what is troublesome when we try to grasp where Torah may be trying to […]

Here’s a glimpse.
Day starts at 8.45 am at work, which is fairly typical. I met with a family to talk about their son’s bar mitzvah. Then a couple, to begin to plan their wedding. Then a dad to talk about his kids experiences in Religious School and ways to improve it. […]

My uncle once told me that when my great grandfather sat in Shul, he kept small copies of Shakespeare tucked into his siddur. I love that story–apocryphal or not–because it gets at the core, even a century ago, of the American Jewish relationship to prayer.
Arthur Hertzberg used to argue, when talking about American Jewry, […]

In this coming week, Jews gather to study the shift from the individual to the communal, from the small tribal family wandering back and forth between Israel and Egypt to become, in slavery, a PEOPLE ISRAEL, a pariah nation to Pharaoh who enslaves them.
Let’s pause for a moment and bless our Congress, which […]