“It was Grandfather’s [watch], and when Father gave it to me he said I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire … I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all your breath trying to…
When behavioral economist Dan Ariely once found himself in Johannesburg, he requested a meeting with South Africa’s chief rabbi, Rabbi Warren Goldstein. A secular Israeli-American Jew, Ariely asked the standard question that he liked to pose to rabbis: “If I was going to keep only one religious commandment – which one would you recommend?” Goldstein,…
Illustration by Lior Zaltzman A friend of mine on Facebook joked, “Can you fulfill pirsumei nisa (the commandment to publicize the Hanukkah miracle) by posting pictures of your menorah online?” It’s a fun, quasi-halachic question that juxtaposes an ancient commandment with contemporary technology. But it’s also a reflection of how much amateur photography has become…
Jews can be pretty proprietary about guilt. We’re almost proud of it. If an outsider, after binge-reading Philip Roth, came to the conclusion that guilt is what fuels our emotional engines, we would experience that particular delight of feeling completely understood. And yet, when it comes to guilt, the thing we might feel most guilty…
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