Elliot Cosgrove is senior rabbi at Park Avenue Synagogue in Manhattan in New York City.
Elliot Cosgrove
By Elliot Cosgrove
-
Opinion What I wish I had said to a young non-Zionist Jew about Israel
On Israel’s 75th birthday, your questions are exactly what we need
-
Community Cosgrove: I skipped Sunday’s pro-Israel rally and got on a plane to Israel instead
When I received a call from a colleague asking me to attend, address, and mobilize my community for a pro-Israel rally on Sunday, I paused a beat before answering. I love Israel, and, as Woody Allen once said, most of life is just showing up. Israel needs friends, always, and especially now. So why did…
-
Opinion Can we bend the boundaries of Shabbat without breaking them?
Never did I imagine, before the pandemic hit a year ago that the Shabbat services I lead would become such a multimedia production. The cameras, the lighting, the monitors, Zoom, livestream, YouTube, Facebook, and most of all, the technicians who work behind the scenes to make it all happen. I am so incredibly proud of…
-
Community How can we heal America? Look to the Egyptians who aided Moses.
Shocking as this past week’s storming of the Capitol by domestic terrorists may have been, it was not a surprise. There is a direct line between the actions and personalities of last Wednesday and those of Charlottesville in August of 2017. Trump’s video, issued while rioters were in the Capitol, telling them “We love you….
-
Community As the Peace Corps turns 60, we must revisit its lessons
In the early hours of October 14, 1960, 60 years ago, Senator John F. Kennedy arrived at Ann Arbor’s Michigan Union to spend the night, having debated the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon, earlier that evening. Despite it being 2:00 a.m., some 10 thousand students stood assembled waiting for him. Kennedy had not planned to speak,…
-
Life American Judaism is ready for disruption – and Covid has accelerated the need for it.
Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan was 48 years old when the stock market crashed in October 1929. The toll of the Great Depression was felt acutely, but by no means uniquely, by American Jewry — and Kaplan, as founder of the Society for the Advancement of Judaism (SAJ) was at the heart of it. The synagogue building…
-
Community Which verse would the President quote?
As a rabbi watching President Trump standing, Bible in hand, in front of Washington DC’s St. John’s Episcopal Church, I wondered what scriptural verse the President could draw on for inspiration. We were, as we remain, in the midst of a national crisis. A double pandemic, Covid-19 and the virus of systemic racism. The moment…
-
Community ‘What she lacked was the goodness of possibility:’ Parallels with Ruth in a pandemic
“I went away full and have returned empty” (Ruth 1:21) This Shavuot, when the Jewish people open up the book of Ruth, it will be Naomi’s cry that will resonate in our souls. There is a natural catastrophe, resulting in geographic displacement and economic insecurity. The deaths of Naomi’s husband and two sons are devastating,…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Fast Forward Zelenskyy joins Canadian Parliament’s ovation to 98-year-old veteran who fought with Nazis
- 2
Forverts in English Hilarious video about the bris of a convert on Rosh Hashanah
- 3
News Canada was ashamed to have saluted a Ukrainian who fought for Hitler. But that salute didn’t come from nowhere
- 4
Film & TV Lee Grant is 97-and-a-half and just as fierce as ever
In Case You Missed It
-
Forverts in English Zoom course to teach students how to write Yiddish articles and essays
-
Fast Forward San Francisco Giants fire Jewish manager Gabe Kapler after disappointing season
-
News Canada was ashamed to have saluted a Ukrainian who fought for Hitler. But that salute didn’t come from nowhere
-
Culture The most prominent Jew in Latin America wore a crucifix at a recent campaign event. Is that kosher?
Engage
-
Catch Up on Yiddish Events
-
It's trivia time!
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
