For years, I’ve taken care to light the Hanukkah candles with my children. I fry latkes every single night for eight nights and make sure we sing all the right songs. I buy doughnuts filled with jelly and sometimes even make my own. And I hate every moment of it, because it was at Hanukkah…
Why do we light Hanukkah candles? We tell our children how to light and when to light but we don’t tell them the real reason we light. Most people believe that we light Hanukkah candles because a single pot of oil – which was meant to last one day to light the Temple’s Candelabra –…
…I wanna rock your gypsy soul Just like way back in the days of old Then magnificently we will float Into the mystic. —Van Morrison Pop singers waxing eloquent about love and sex freely borrow from the religious vernacular. Religion returns the compliment. In many synagogues these days, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah has been adopted as…
A follow-up to an essay published last week, “Do Pluralistic Jewish Organizations Stop At The Orthodox?” A few months ago, I attended a lecture by an acclaimed academic, an Orthodox Jewish female leader. She recounted a story: Highly credentialed with degrees from Ivy League institutions, she was invited to be on a panel discussion at…
My first venture into nondenominational spaces was, like most young Jews, at my college Hillel. I grew up Haredi, so I was interested in meeting other types of Jews and other kinds of Jewish ritual and practice. But I didn’t meet anyone like me. Since then, I have participated in many non-denominational spaces and events,…
At age 18, David Lindenbaum finds himself suspended in between two universes that pull him in what he senses as opposite directions. On one side, there is his faith — a fervent Jew, Lindenbaum always wears a kippah (“Even while I’m sleeping,” he says with pride) and tries to maintain his religious identity also when…
Frank Amedia, a former Christian policy liaison for the Trump campaign who believes the president is an instrument of God is sticking by his cherished leader in the wake of a violent white nationalist gathering in Virginia — and says Trump himself is acting as a prophet. “Bad on both sides, wake up church,” Amedia…
They say that everything is bigger in Texas. Not so for the separation of church and state. In that great state, the families of motorcyclists killed in traffic collisions can pay a fee of $350 to have a sign with their loved one’s name on it erected it at the scene. After one year, the…
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