You are not obliged to finish this column
Unpacking the Talmudic quote Shaina Taub cited in her acceptance speech at the Tony Awards
Pirkei Avot
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News In His Office, Good Jewish Boy Jared Kushner Reads the Sages
Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser, keeps a pretty Jewish office, according to an exclusive Forbes profile of President-elect Donald Trump’s son-in-law. Kushner’s office is a spartan affair, empty of much decoration, except for framed covers of the New York Observer (the weekly paper that he owns) and signs of his Orthodox Jewish…
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Opinion With All Due Respect, Can’t My Critics Read?
Those who follow me online have observed that I don’t usually respond to my critics. I confess: I have a little fan club that hangs out in the Comments section and on my Facebook page, cursing my ancestry and generally whooping it up, and they seem to be having so much fun that I hate…
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Opinion Dear Pew: I Was Right. Here’s Why.
Well, I promised myself I wouldn’t do it again, but here I am, caught in another round of mud-wrestling over the minutiae of Jewish population statistics. You’re in for a treat. If you’re just joining our broadcast, here’s a quick recap: Pew Research Center published a demographic “Portrait of Jewish Americans” on October 1 that…
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Opinion How the Trinity Impacted Judaism — via Kabbalah
If you don’t follow Philologos, the Forward’s inimitable language columnist, you’re missing one of the outstanding intellectual joys in contemporary Jewish life. I don’t say that idly. Week after week for 20-plus years, with an astonishing combination of erudition, curiosity and wit, he’s used readers’ inquiries into the origins of words and phrases to explore…
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The Schmooze Monday Music: Sounds of the Fathers
At first, I didn’t know how to listen to “The Pirkei Avot Project, Vol. 1.” Taking eight short excerpts from Pirkei Avot, a compendium of rabbinical aphorisms, jazz guitarist Amanda Monaco creates a wise and playful interpretation of some serious material. She uses popular passages, such as Hillel’s saying, “If I am not for me,…
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Opinion Why Obama Disappoints His Allies: Too Little Time, Too Many Fires To Put Out
Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt offers a striking theory on how President Obama chose his agenda for his first two years, and why so many of his allies are so disappointed in the results. Basically, there was just too much basic repair work to be done, given the mess he inherited from the…
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