Maybe the Christian Right is right. For almost 40 years now, they’ve been warning us that we’ve entered the wilderness, that traditional religion is being eroded. Did 2013 prove them right? Item One: the Rise of the Nones. This phenomenon — nearly 20% of Americans listing “none” as their religious affiliation — was first documented…
I admit, I am a BuJu. I admit, I am a BuJu. Of course, I am not alone. Not only do a disproportionate number of American Buddhist teachers come from Jewish backgrounds, but many Jews practice both Judaism and Buddhism, and many more practice a Jewish spirituality influenced by Buddhist-derived meditation practices and values. The…
Are there toilets on the Temple Mount? I needed to find out. You see, a main character in a novel I was writing, “In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist,” is a toilet cleaner on the Temple Mount. Naturally, I wanted to know what the bathroom area looked like. As much as possible, I wanted the…
Dear readers, I’m thrilled to introduce myself as the new editor of the Sisterhood blog. As the deputy culture editor of the Forward, I’ve been covering gender and Judaism for the past two years, writing about topics like halachic infertility, Hasidic feminism and transgender Jews. But my path to the Sisterhood actually began long before…
The Pew Research Center’s recent independent survey of Jewish America is the most comprehensive national poll of the U.S. Jewish population in more than a decade, and we are pleased that it has captured the interest of the American public, and beyond. Our survey builds on the Jewish community’s long and proud tradition of conducting…
A little over a month ago, I began an experiment in what I thought of as Doing Jewish Things. I wondered, if I observed certain customs or ventured into areas of Judaism I had previously ignored, would it have any discernable impact on my life? Would I feel better, more engaged, less inexplicably guilty about…
Asking if religion is good for women, as Moment magazine recently did, is like asking if music is good for men. There are no clear answers when asking about the relationship between an incredibly fluid concept with a rather broad category of living beings. Still, this doesn’t stop many of the contributors to the symposium…
Law enforcement took note that the members of a drug ring in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn were keeping unusual hours. What drew attention was not when the pushers were doing business, but rather when they weren’t. According to the New York Daily News, a group of apparently Jewish men have been indicted for running a shomer…
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