I am not an overly religious person, but I do remember the biblical story from The Book of Esther. For Jews, it’s a story we hear every year on the holiday of Purim. To summarize: once upon a time there was a powerful king who was easily manipulated by his entourage. His wife, the Queen…
I am responding in this series to frequently asked questions about some gender-bending translations of Torah texts I have proposed in a few articles since 2008, and in an Op-Ed in The New York Times, “Is God Transgender?” (August 12, 2016). So far, we have looked at Eve as “he”, Noah repairing to “her” tent,…
I’m acquainted with at least three people who voted for Donald Trump. I’m thinking of these three because of the way I came to know them – as fellow volunteers at a homeless shelter. I met the first many years ago, when we were serving food to homeless children at a Manhattan synagogue. The kids…
— Two Torahs valued at $30,000 that had been stolen with some $50,000 of silver religious pieces were returned to a New Jersey synagogue. Thomas Dobles, 39, a former caretaker at Congregation B’nai Jacob in Jersey City, was arrested Aug. 25 as part of the investigation into the theft, WABC-TV reported. The pieces of silver…
In every Torah portion, there’s an alcoholic drink just waiting to be discovered. So says amateur bartender Andrea Frazier and her fellow Kiddush Club devotees on Chicago’s South Side. Frazier has created a boozy, parsha-themed blog, “Tippling Through The Torah,” whose premise is that the weekly Torah portion can best be appreciated when accompanied by…
A video by Israeli feminist organization Women of the Wall reveals an Orthodox man ripping a prayer book to shreds in protest of women reading at the Western Wall and an American girl’s bat mitzvah. Established in 1988, WOW gathers once a month at Rosh Hodesh to read from the Torah in protest of Orthodox…
It appears to me that Sid Schwarz’s framing of strategies employed by successful Jewish organizations and programs is useful. Given that Beth Am is a synagogue attempting to establish its relevance in the current marketplace of Jewish ideas and with this current generation of American Jews, I believe we employ each of these strategies. Indeed…
I found Rabbi Shulem Korn in Queens as he was assembling one of his famous Torah Trucks. A white pickup was hooked to an ornately decorated trailer, a dramatic scene of Mount Sinai, surrounded by lightening, emblazoned on the side. I’d been trying to track down the rabbi for months, celebrated in New York for…
די ווילנער דאָקטוירים יעקבֿ וויגאָדסקי און צמח שאַבאַד זענען אויך געווען געזעלשאַפֿטלעכע טוער.
יעקבֿ פֿינקלמאַן באַשרײַבט אויך זײַן לאַנגיאָריקן פֿאַך — ווי ער האָט צוגעשטעלט וויסן אין טעלעקאָמוניקאַציע איבער דער וועלט
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