Opinion

• Opinion

  The Seder is a passport to the past and the future

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article In her book, “Illness as Metaphor,” Susan Sontag bans us from using metaphor to describe disease. We need to toughen up, she thinks, and forgo the flight away from the thing itself, the marauding crimes wreaked on the body by maladies too many to count. As Sontag writes,…

  By Ari Hoffman

  3 min read
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  Opinion

  From plagues to Promised Land: Let’s build a world of solidarity

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article I remember a conversation with my son, who is 12 and studying for a Bar Mitzvah that is now in a holding pattern. Last year, at Passover, he told me he didn’t think it was fair that in order to free the slaves regular Egyptians had to suffer…

  By Carin Mrotz Mar 31, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  When a new plague exacerbates the old

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article Every year at Passover seders around the world, as families gather to recount the story of the Israelites’ exodus from slavery in Egypt, we recount the ten plagues that befell the Egyptians: Blood, frogs, lice, flies, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, the killing of the firstborn. As they…

  By Tema Smith Mar 31, 2020 | 4 min read

Columnists View All

• Alyssa Katz What I learned at a Holocaust survivors’ Purim party

  

• Rob Eshman Gavin Newsom isn’t waffling on Israel — he’s voicing sensible ideas in an era of outrage

  

• Dan Perry An abominable new Israeli law is a death warrant for democracy

  

• Emily Tamkin We must rewrite the rulebook for fighting antisemitism — or conspiracists like Joe Kent will win the narrative wars

  

• Jay Michaelson Passover’s 4 cups of meaning

  

The Latest

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  Opinion

  Resistance to tyranny and longing for Zion, then and now

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article Of all the Jewish holidays that could coincide with a once-every-century global pandemic, there is clear divine instruction in its eclipse falling on Passover. It’s been said many times that Pharaoh was the original anti-Semite and that the plagues descended upon the people of Egypt because of his…

  By Amanda Berman Mar 31, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  Even during a plague, choice is destiny

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article In the book of Job, after Job has suffered great losses, his friends come to comfort him. Finding Job sitting on the ground covered in boils, they throw dust up in the air and onto their heads (Job 2:12). A modern Israeli scholar, Meir Weiss, suggests this may…

  By David Wolpe Mar 31, 2020 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  Anti-COVID cleansing gets a lesson from the Torah: We don’t control everything.

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article I’ve slid back into old habits over the past two weeks. I struggle with obsessive hand and body washing, as a way of coping with past sexual trauma. My body feels polluted and tainted, and I wash it obsessively to provide some momentary relief from these feelings. At…

  By Joel Swanson Mar 31, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  This Passover will be different from all others — and there’s freedom in that

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article Passover is the birthday of the Jewish people. We went down to Egypt as a family, but we left Egypt as a people. For thousands of years, we have celebrated that birthday, but this year’s Passover will be different from all other Passovers. During the original Passover, Jewish…

  By Shoshanna Keats-Jaskoll Mar 31, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  In the 11th plague, all the world are neighbors

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article Though we will be without guests this Passover, we will remain with neighbors. The eating of the pascal lamb was a collective event, a bonfire frenzy of hungry spiritual brothers (and sisters). But the story of Exodus begins with neighbors. After all, the Egyptians and Hebrews lived side…

  By Noah Lubin Mar 31, 2020 | 3 min read
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  Opinion

  In the face of coronavirus, our homes must become shuls and yeshivas

  On Wednesday, March 18th, I stood in the street, and I cried. No, I wasn’t at a funeral (back when we even were able to hold those). I’m not usually one to express my emotions that way anyway, even in that sort of setting. There was virtually nobody else around me when it happened, and…

  By Eli Steinberg Mar 30, 2020 | 4 min read
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  Opinion

  Darkness is the absence of recognition

  BG IMG LINK Previous Article Next Article “Moses held out his arm toward the sky and thick darkness descended upon all the land of Egypt for three days. People could not see one another, and for three days no one could get up from where he was.” (Exodus 10:22-23) When he was twelve, Aryeh Even…

  By Noah Efron Mar 30, 2020 | 2 min read
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  Opinion

  For women trapped in abusive relationships, quarantine can be more dangerous than COVID-19

  For most of us, the shelter-in-place order that followed the outbreak of the new coronavirus is a challenge. But for women trapped in abusive relationships, being confined to the home can be more life-threatening than COVID-19, the disease the virus causes. Domestic violence afflicts one in three women nationally, according to the Centers for Disease…

  By Marisa Fox-Bevilacqua Mar 28, 2020 | 6 min read