Writing of Kafka’s tales, Walter Benjamin pointed out that Kafka’s tangled meanings “do not modestly lie at the feet of the doctrine, as the Haggadah lies at the feet of Halakah… they raise a mighty paw against it.” Benjamin, ultimately, juxtaposed the Jewish law (halachah) with mythic storytelling (aggadah), envisioning the rise of the latter…
I Godology is a monthly conversation between writer Elissa Strauss and Rabbi Scott Perlo in which they explore what it means to be “God-ish” — to kind of, sort of, believe in God. SCOTT: It always strikes me as a strange paradox that the theology of the holidays is expressed through the image of God…
Yom Kippur is all about death? I thought it was about atonement. Yet all you have to do is start talking to rabbis — or reading their books about preparing for the High Holidays — and death takes center stage. I don’t mean DEATH! IN! CAPS! — in the sense of a morbid fixation, or…
It’s not a great week to be a chicken or a goat. That is thanks to a fluke of the Islamic and Hebrew calendars that has set the prescribed time for a Jewish ritual slaughter and a Muslim sacrifice within a single day of each other. This year, the Jewish ritual of Kapparot is performed…
A newly arrived patient suspected of suffering from the Ebola virus sits on the ground at Island Hospital in Monrovia, Liberia./Getty Images As Jews around the world prepare for Yom Kippur — a day when we pray to be “sealed in the Book of Life” for the year to come — the people of West…
Photograph by Shulie Madnick North African and Yemeni Jews, among other Sephardic Jews, break the Yom Kippur fast with a sweetened hot coffee or tea. Balkan Jews break the fast with laboriously extracted chilled almond milk and melon seed drink. Here’s a modern twist on the break-fast beverage tradition — a refreshing recipe from a…
On the top shelf of our living room buffet sit some of our once-a-year religious accoutrements: a Passover matzo set, a white tablecloth for the sukkah and a white apron. This is not your typical kitchen apron; it is my vase shirtsl — literally, white apron: a small, square-shaped, hand-embroidered cotton apron made of fine…
For those who observe Yom Kippur and atone for their sins by fasting for roughly 25 hours, not drinking often proves to be the most challenging part. But for 27-year-old Shaina, who is 12 weeks pregnant with her third child, Yom Kippur won’t differ much from other days: “It’s not a nerve-wracking thing for me,…
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