Updated November 26 CelebrateMercy is a small Muslim not-for-profit with only three full-time staffers, but in the past year and a half, it has created crowdfunding campaigns that have raised $400,000 for Jewish cemeteries, synagogues and a Holocaust memorial. The campaigns started in February 2017, after more than 100 headstones were overturned at a Jewish…
It was a sunny afternoon in March 2003. Birds were singing outside, and the first flowers had just started to blossom on our quiet street in Vienna. At that time, I lived in an old apartment built around the turn of the past century, with high windows and even higher ceilings. It was located in…
The Weavers, an American folk music quartet, sold millions of records in the late 1940s and early 50s. Its two Jewish performers, Ronnie Gilbert, Fred Hellerman, were joined by two non-Jews, Lee Hays and Pete Seeger. In the 1960s, Bernie Krause, another American Jewish singer, replaced Seeger in the group. Their hits included “Goodnight, Irene”…
For most of my life, I didn’t consider gratitude a particularly Jewish emotion. Quite the contrary. I grew up a secular Jew, my cultural knowledge filtered through Neil Simon and Philip Roth more than the Talmud or rabbis. So to me, anxiety, guilt, resentment, constant nervousness about diseases like sciatica and bursitis — those were…
'Cast a Giant Shadow' is like 'Exodus' with a shpritz bottle
A few weeks ago, I bought tickets to take my kids to what promised to be an exciting performance at a local Jerusalem theater. “Aggadot L’Yeladim,” the advertisement read – legends for children. The Hebrew word used for legends, Aggadot, is the term used in Talmudic studies to refer to the literary parts of the…
Robin Hood is well known as a defender of oppressed populations. But one aspect of his story that has mostly been lost to time, however, is his role as protector of Jews, who figured prominently in ballads and dramatic texts that began appearing in 15th- and 16th-century England. Aside from his fundamental mission of tikkun…
Shabbat was approaching, but Rabbi Jeffrey Myers didn’t have time to write his Saturday morning sermon. And this wasn’t just any Shabbat — it was the first Shabbat after the shooting that killed seven of his congregants, and four others. But on Friday afternoon, he officiated at a funeral. Then he was attending a shiva…
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