It began with a phone call on a cold winter day in January 1998. The purpose of the call, from a neighboring Mormon bishop I’d never spoken with before, was unusual: He was requesting a minyan. As president of a small lay-led congregation in Idaho Falls, Idaho — one of the only two Jewish congregations…
The plane was rapidly approaching Tel Aviv airport. Leafing through the newspapers distributed earlier by the flight attendant, I couldn’t escape the headlines. They were filled with reports about the latest violence erupting between the charedim and “secular” Jews, the tensions with the Arab-Israeli population, the dissatisfied immigrants from the former USSR and Ethiopia, the…
Attending a shiva call (comforting a Jewish mourner) is one of the most meaningful acts of condolence. In Judaism, we are taught that when a member of our community feels the pain of loss, we are obligated to be there to provide comfort and solace. Each shiva is different, depending on the traditions and beliefs…
When the rabbis, priests, imams and mystics created religious rules and customs surrounding loss and mourning, they did so with varying approaches to respecting the dead and creating the structures for mourners to reconnect to local community. But they never saw the Internet coming. Beyond the religious texts and self-help books, the Internet has vastly…
Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, marked the “sheloshim” of her husband’s death with an emotional post on the social media site. “Today is the end of sheloshim for my beloved husband — the first thirty days,” Sandberg wrote about her husband Dave, the CEO of SurveyMonkey, who died of a head injury in…
The scent hit me before I saw it. Sweet, suffusing, almost overpowering. I turned around, and there it was: a lush, magnificent, profusely blooming lilac. I had to stop and smell it. I was instantly transported to the backyard of my first house, the one we left when I was seven. Hanging over, and growing…
Photograph by Katarzyna Bialasiewicz/Thinkstock As Jews around the world gathered to celebrate Hanukkah last month, traditional foods such as latkes, sufganiyot, sfinge and other deep-fried delicacies lined our dinner tables. Today, modern Jewish food is celebrated as more than just the krepelach and pickled herring from Eastern European kitchens. It is recognized as a rich…
Digital Spy It was my first shiva call, and it shocked me out of my wits. Sarah, one of the residents in the Jewish retirement community where I’d been conducting seminars on world news, had passed away. A cheerful lady in her 90s, she had always brought an international aspect to our weekly discussions. I…
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