How much will a synagogue seat this High Holidays season run you? Quite a lot, in some cities. Curious about the exact numbers, we did a survey of some of the most expensive synagogue sanctuary seats in New York City, comparing price tags according to numbers posted online and those given by synagogue receptionists. The…
As a young White House speechwriter – and a veteran of eight years of Hebrew school – I once tried to help Barack Obama pronounce the hard “CH” sound in “chag sameach.” At the risk of understatement, it didn’t go well. I tried to use “happy holidays” after that. But there was another, far more…
Recently, a friend wrote a piece that appeared in these pages. When I glanced at the comments that were posted, I was shocked by how vitriolic they were toward my friend and toward the other commenters. Almost none of them addressed the substance of the piece. Instead, they were ad hominem attacks on the writer…
Have Your Say is your chance to tell us what you think. This week, we asked you if it’s anti-Semitic to schedule something on Yom Kippur. Here are some of your answers: “If there is a significant specific population and if the event is likely to be of interest or concern to that population, then…
Yom Kippur made me an atheist. Or at least it confirmed for me that I already was one. By age 10, it was clear to me that the persona of a God that punishes the wicked and rewards the good — and the corresponding High Holiday liturgy — was a false explanation of how the…
“We have no friends but the mountains,” is an old Kurdish saying. No friends but the mountains — and Israel — is the reality. There is a deep affinity between Israel and the Kurds. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was alone among world leaders when he endorsed Kurds preparing to vote in an independence referendum….
Seven months after one of Orthodox Judaism’s oldest and biggest institutions barred women clergy from its synagogues, the decision is threatening to create yet another split in a community already riven by the issue of female rabbis. Founded more than 100 years ago, the Orthodox Union is a coalition of synagogues and other organizations, most…
He shined Shimon Peres’s shoes, cooked him breakfast and even helped him shower. As Peres’s live-in caregiver, Ferdinand Capacia knew the 9th Israeli president and Nobel Prize laureate in a way almost no one else did. When Peres died a year ago at age 93, the most tender tribute to the Israeli founding father came…
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