Rabbi Richard Hirsh is the assistant rabbi at Congregation M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
Richard Hirsh
By Richard Hirsh
-
Community What Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band Can Teach Us About Teshuvah
It was the summer of 1967. Wearing some flowers in your hair. Free music in the park. Acid trips. Haight-Ashbury. The Monterey Pop Festival. “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” And it was also 50 years ago today, “Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play.” A half-century ago, the Beatles released the soundtrack to the…
-
Opinion Purim Is No Laughing Matter In The Post-Truth Era
For centuries Purim, which celebrates the narrow escape of the Jews of ancient Persia from an edict of extermination, has been played as comedy and carnival in which a serious story of near-genocide is deflated through costume and parody. But this year, Purim does not seem quite so humorous. There is too much at stake….
-
Culture We Are Not All Alike
Avrum Burg draws a number of distinctions in his analysis of parashat Bo. The core of his argument is that “Every struggle for freedom is a struggle to seize the mastery of time” and coordinate with this, and that “command of time is the essence of freedom.” A subsidiary argument contrasts in a similarly binary…
-
Opinion I’d Give It a 7… It Had a Good Beat, and You Can Daven to It
What we frequently refer to as the High Holy Days are more accurately described by their Hebrew appellation: Yamim Noraim, the “Days of Awe.” Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are supposed to be significant because of the weighty confrontation with ultimate issues that they embody, especially issues of morality and mortality. For many rabbis, however,…
Explore
Most Popular
- 1
Opinion Outrage over Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed on sexual assault of Palestinians is missing the point
- 2
News They texted about Torah and mitzvahs. Feds say they were insider trading
- 3
Opinion I run The Jewish Theological Seminary. Here’s the real story about President Isaac Herzog speaking at our commencement
- 4
Culture At Eurovision, Israel’s near triumph shows the limits of tolerance
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Feds charge man with organizing synagogue attacks in Europe and NYC on behalf of Iran
-
Yiddish אַ שוועבנדיקע הילצערנע שיל בײַם ווענעציער ביענאַליי פֿון 2026 A floating wooden synagogue at the 2026 Venice Biennale
אין פֿאַרגלײַך מיט די פֿיזישע פּאַוויליאָנען געשאַפֿן פֿון אָפֿיציעלע לענדער איז דער ייִדישלאַנד־פּאַוויליאָן געבויט אויף אידעעס
-
News Mamdani Nakba Day video prompts pushback from Jewish leaders amid rising tensions
-
Yiddish World Molly Crabapple’s book is well researched but ideologically biased