Niles Elliot Goldstein
By Niles Elliot Goldstein
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Community What the Bible Can Teach Us About Quarantine
The word quarantine comes from quarantena, or “forty days,” in the Venetian language. It was first used during the Black Death epidemic in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to designate a period that ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore. As a rabbi and a student of religious history,…
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Culture No Jew Is an Island — Especially in the Faroes
I have usually sought God through extreme experiences, on mountain peaks and in exotic lands. As a Jew, and as a congregational rabbi for much of my professional life, that can pose problems. Judaism is a religious tradition where peoplehood is a powerful feature and a primary focus. Consequently, there is a basic disconnect between…
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Culture Chasing ‘The Messiah’ and Bruno Schulz’s Long-Lost Novel
Despite the limited number of literary works that survived his life, cut short by a Nazi’s bullet in wartime Poland, many today view Bruno Schulz as one of the 20th century’s most interesting and imaginative writers. First brought to public light in the United States in the 1970s by Philip Roth, he inspired such prominent…
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News How Kayaking in Alaska Prepared Me To Be a Rabbi
With the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the news again, as President Obama proposed protecting much of the oil-rich land as wilderness, I am reminded of the summer I spent a few years back leading a sea kayaking trip through the Refuge. It was an experience of transformation I will never forget and will most…
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News Rabbi With Midlife Crisis Looks for Answers
We both knew it was over. Though I’d been the spiritual leader of my congregation in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village since its founding in 1999, and while we’d weathered the horrors of 9/11, personal tragedies and a catastrophic recession together — as well as celebrated births, marriages and other joyous events — if I had to…
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