Image courtesy of Sanford Kearns Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree This year, or so it seems to me, the American Jewish community is awash in new editions of the haggadah, the age-old ritual text that structures the Passover seder. At one end of the spectrum, there’s the stunning Washington Haggadah, a facsimile edition of…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree When people talk of travel as broadening, they usually have Paris in mind, not Toledo, Ohio. But as I discovered recently, travelling to the heartland of America can be just as eye-opening. I had come to the University of Toledo to deliver an illustrated lecture about the Ten Commandments…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree There aren’t too many novels that can lay claim to a second, much less a third, lease on life as both a film and a play, especially when the subject at hand has to do with religion and faith. But “The Chosen,” Chaim Potok’s novel of Orthodox Jewish life…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Just the other night, amidst the glorious surroundings of the Music Room of The Phillips Collection, whose walls are bedecked with one masterpiece after another, over 100 people gathered together under the aegis of George Washington University’s Program in Judaic Studies to hear Professor James Loeffler of the University…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree In my household, Sundays are usually given over to two rituals: reading The New York Times and taking in a museum exhibition. I suspect your household is no different. But, as I explained recently to a group of George Washington alumni who had come together on a rainy Sunday…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Princeton’s Cotsen Children’s Library is justly celebrated for the range of its holdings, the imaginative reach of its curators and its stimulating conferences, like the one I had the good fortune to attend just the other day, which explored the ephemera — the stuff — of childhood. From its…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree The recent revelation that iTunes has created an app that seems to substitute for confession underscores the power of technology to redefine the very notion of ritual practice. So, too, has “Tweet Your Prayers,” in which electronic kvitlakh, or personal petitions, can be sent to the kotel, the Western…
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Word from on high is that the Walt Disney Company is planning to open a theme park in Israel. Talk about bringing coals to Newcastle! For years, religiously-minded Americans had created facsimiles of the Holy Land on American soil. As early as 1881, a “miniature representation in relief and…
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