The Days of Awe are rich in opportunity for Jewish feminists who see themselves as activists for transformation, both personal and collective. It is striking, even ironic, that on the first day of Rosh Hashana we read the story of a catastrophic feminist failure. Sarah and Hagar are rival wives; one has what the other…
Growing up in my house was like growing up in enemy territory and you were the only one who was captured. My body and mind were always braced for the next attack, frequently without a warning. It didn’t matter what I did or how I looked, there seemed to be nothing right about me. I…
Jews probably began arriving in South Africa around the turn of the 16th century, alongside the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, but the majority of Jewish immigrants arrived in Cape Town from Germany and Holland in the early 19th century. Later, Eastern European Jews, primarily Lithuanians, came in increasing numbers until World War II. In…
Worried bubbes everywhere, take heart: Just because your daughter (or son) is marrying out of the faith, all hope is not lost. Your daughter’s Catholic husband can still be a great Jewish father. How do I know? Because mine is. While maintaining his Catholic identity, my husband has been a true partner in keeping a…
EDITOR’S NOTE: We recently stumbled on the Tumblr and spent too many work hours since clicking through GIFs on kapparot. We asked her to create a survival guide for the High Holidays so you can enjoy her wise words as much as we do. Ahhh, September. It’s that time of year again. No, I’m not…
(JTA) — Jesse Agler was pretty talented as a catcher and pitcher in Little League, yet his parents benched him regularly. That’s because the Aglers had a no-baseball-on-Shabbat rule, one cloaked in sports royalty. “It was a source of frustration as a kid, but I appreciated later what they tried to do,” said Agler, a 33-year-old…
At the Central Conference of American Rabbis, we have to wrestle with the question “What does it mean to be Jewish in America today?” beyond the theoretical. In our charge is the basic structure and tone of worship for the largest group of Jews in the country, the Reform Movement. And when we took a…
Saul Zabar is not a romantic. “There’s nothing poetic about this business,” he told The New York Times in 2008. Try telling that to the crowds swarming his Upper West Side store each Friday: grandmas shoving yuppies, yuppies shoving grandmas, everyone salivating over the lox. Zabar’s turns 80 this year, and Saul Zabar, its 86-year-old…
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