Iran’s President, Mr. Hassan Rouhani, and its Foreign Minister, Mr. Mohammad Javad Zarif, are making many efforts to change their regime’s image. They are trying to portray their country as a peaceful state, which is being treated unjustly by the world, and which has no intention to develop nuclear weapons, neither now, nor in 15…
One Purim, I stood on a street corner and asked passersby if they were Jewish and wanted to hear the Megillah. I met a boy who told me that his mother is Jewish but he was raised Catholic. He had never seen a Megillah scroll in his entire life. That’s why we ask. This past…
A woman watches as soldiers burn her baby alive. The government disparages an established ethnic and religious minority as a dangerous foreign influence. Families run for their lives with no place to go. While there are clear differences between the current experience of the Rohingya people and that of the Jews during the Holocaust, the…
This is the third in a series of essays examining the Bar and Bat Mitzvah in America. A bar mitzvah has many meanings. Mine was simultaneously a religious ceremony, a miniature family reunion, a finish line marking the end of years of Hebrew school and — still, to this day — the largest party ever…
Most of a rabbi’s roles can be halachically and effectively assumed by women, and have been for many years. A rabbi must be learned in Jewish texts and the practical laws pertaining to daily Jewish life — and Orthodox women’s seminaries teach thousands of young Jewish women those laws, and do a top-notch job of…
When I was in high school, we had a teacher, a long-bearded rabbi, who spent weeks of class time focusing on the intricacies of yichud, the Jewish laws forbidding an unrelated man and woman to be in seclusion together. Every configuration, every scenario in which a man and a woman might find themselves alone, was…
This is Part 2 in a series of articles examining bar and bat mitzvahs in America. Until the day I married, my bat mitzvah was the happiest day of my life. I realize that makes me an anomaly, or at least a rare species among American Jews, whose bar and bat mitzvah experiences seem freighted…
Since 1967, about 40% of the Palestinian male population has been detained by Israel. With their men in jail, Palestinian women are left to continue surviving and ensuring the well-being of their families. From confronting increased Israeli violations to earning a living while also being caregivers, Palestinian women have had to pick up twice the…
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