The Torah is a chameleon. Its words, its laws, its protocols and its dictates all reflect the color of the environment in which it was written. One imagines, though, that God Himself is a constant — what He wanted from mankind during biblical times is the same as what He wants from us today. Or…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. If you need to build an ark, the Torah will tell you how. If you need to construct an ephod, the Torah will tell you how to do that, too. But if you want to bake challah, you have to look beyond the Five Books of Moses,…
Torah scrolls valued at about $50,000 each were stolen from a synagogue on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The scrolls were taken over the weekend from the sanctuary of the Chabad of Hawaii, located in the Ala Moana Hotel, according to local reports. One was written in the 1850s in Lithuania and survived the Holocaust….
Shortly after 5:00 am on Wednesday, December 6th, my ringing phone startled me from my sleep. “Wake up,” a member of my congregation said, “The hills are all on fire.” I quickly turned on my television and saw flames engulfing the massive hillsides framing the Sepulveda Pass, the main thoroughfare through the northwest part of…
A Conservative synagogue in Los Angeles has taken in Torah scrolls from other Jewish institutions that are in the path of a major fire sweeping through the city. Scrolls from Leo Baeck Temple, Stephen Wise Temple, the American Jewish University, the Skirball Cultural Center and the Milken Community Schools were relocated to Valley Beth Shalom…
WASHINGTON (JTA) — Jewish sailors aboard the Navy aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford now have a Torah scroll to use during their six- to eight-month stints at sea. The umbrella body for Jewish chaplains, the JWB Jewish Chaplains Council, dedicated the scroll on Wednesday aboard the ship in Norfolk, Virginia. It was dedicated to…
This has been the year of women claiming agency. We began 2017 marching for our rights in Washington, D.C., and we end the year shifting the national dialogue on sexual harassment and assault. We’ve made it clearer than ever before that our voices must be heard, while asserting our right to hold positions once belonging…
A version of this article originally appeared in the Texas Jewish Post. Recently, I’ve been thinking of the many moralistic adages and maxims that pepper our daily conversations with family and friends, curious to see how many of them are consistent with Torah thought and values. What I’ve discovered is that while some of the…
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