A Jewish Agency committee has adopted a resolution calling for a “satisfactory approach” to prayer at the Western Wall. The resolution passed Tuesday during The Jewish Agency for Israel’s Board of Governors meeting in Tel Aviv, reads in part: “Whereas Jewish women and men, of all streams of Judaism, desire the opportunity to pray at…
Sixty-four percent of Jewish Israelis will fast and 46 percent will pray on Yom Kippur, according to a survey. According to Ynet News, which conducted the survey along with a social dialogue organization called Gesher, more than 80 percent of Jewish Israelis would spend the day either praying, reflecting or spending time with family. A…
Twelve years ago, Kevin Hines jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge, suffering from bipolor disorder and wishing to end his life. As soon as he hit free-fall his first thought was, “What have I done? I don’t want to die! God, please save me.” After Hines, who is Catholic, hit the water, he struggled to…
The Golden Gate Bridge is approaching its 75th anniversary. Along with being a wondrous Bay Area landmark, the span is famous as a spot where hundreds have committed suicide over the decades. Congregation Sha’ar Zahav of San Francisco is out to remove the stigma of suicide from religious life. The followinig is a kaddish text,…
When Molly Moses graduated from Harvard University in 2011, she wanted to pray each day wearing tefillin. But she couldn’t afford the several hundred dollar investment required to buy a pair of the leather-covered boxes, which contain tiny parchments with handwritten Torah verses. Moses had borrowed tefillin from friends in the past; now she wanted…
Cursing The Christians? A History of the Birkat Haminim By Ruth Langer Oxford University Press, 388 pages, $74 During a year studying medieval liturgical manuscripts, Ruth Langer found herself drawn to places where words, phrases and even a whole paragraph had been erased or, as she explained in an email to the Forward, “literally blacked…
Equality for Jewish women is not a 20th century invention. A siddur, or prayerbook, from the year 1471 contains an alternative text to the much abhorred “shelo asani isha” blessing that thanks God for “not making me a woman,” a text that is not only misogynistic in content but assumes that the person holding the…
“His/her death left me with a legacy of unhealed wounds, of anger and dismay.” This emotional phrase describes a “parent who was hurtful.” Now it appears in a groundbreaking new High Holidays machzor whose prayers aim to include lesbian and gay Jews, for whom the words might carry even more of an emotional charge. The…
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