Abe Mezrich is the author of The House at the Center of the World, a book of meditations on Biblical ideas of sacred space from Ben Yehuda Press.
Abe Mezrich
By Abe Mezrich
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Community Was Esther’s Cousin Mordechai An Ancient Refugee?
We do not tend to think of Mordecai as a displaced person, but perhaps we should. His family, we are told, had been exiled from Jerusalem (Esther 2:6) by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. Mordecai himself embraces this placelessness. Out of home in the world, the man refuses to come indoors. King Achashverosh cavorts in lavish…
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Community What Moses And The First Menorah Can Teach Us About Fighting Terror
On the way home from the funeral, we discussed Amalek. It was Purim time, 1996. Israel was living through one of its worst spates of terrorism in years. Two students, Matt Eisenfeld and Sarah Duker, boarded a bus together and were killed, along with 24 other people. Matt was my friend. He and Sara were…
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Community The Olympics is Based on Bad Ideals. Judaism Has a Better Option
Here’s something dictatorships, economics and the Olympics all have in common: each projects the notion that strength, agility, and efficiency define human worth. There’s a corollary to that shared vision, too. In each of these systems, the less strong are automatically second class. After Gold, there’s just Silver, Bronze, spectator, and pariah. There’s nowhere to…
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Opinion For Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, Faith Was Life — and Life Was Act of Faith
I remember Rav Aharon Lichtenstein often retelling the passage from the Talmud of Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai’s death. The sage’s students surrounded him on his deathbed and asked for a blessing. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai’s odd response is this: May you fear God as much as you fear man. Shouldn’t we fear God much more?…
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Culture Why Robert Stone Was One of Greatest Non-Jewish Jewish Writers
Robert Stone wasn’t Jewish, of course. He was a lapsed Catholic. I am writing about him here because his sixth novel, “Damascus Gate,” was a retelling of the Shabtai Tzvi story, set amongst drug-addled wanderers in Jerusalem in the 1990s. It’s a book deeply engaged with Judaism, kabbalah, and the meaning of monotheism. It is…
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Culture Offer Bread Instead of Money
A man asked me for money on my way into a convenience store one night in the fall of my freshman year at Yale University. I didn’t want to give money to anyone who would use it to buy alcohol or drugs. But I also didn’t want to be responsible for a man going hungry….
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