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Alice Shalvi pioneered religious feminism in Israel. Everyone else is still...
(JTA) — I first met Alice Shalvi, the mother of religious feminism in Israel, in the mid-1990s during a meeting of ICAR, the International Coalition of Agunah Rights, a coalition that she founded to...
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A queer Israeli textile artist’s Lavender Diaspora sukkah explores identity...
(New York Jewish Week) — On Friday evening, several dozen people huddled underneath umbrellas and raincoats in a new sukkah in Brooklyn that had survived the day’s record-setting rainstorm. The...
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10 years and 318 million words later, Sefaria brings Torah study into the...
(JTA) — When I spoke earlier this week with Sara Wolkenfeld, chief learning officer at Sefaria, she referred to a “story in the Talmud” about Rabbi Elazar Ben Azariah. I wasn’t familiar with Elazar or...
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How do we forge ahead after calamity? The Jewish way of mourning offers a...
(JTA) — On Monday morning, we began our day at Maharat, the women’s Orthodox yeshiva, with heartbreak. As we absorbed reports of the devastating Hamas attack on Israel, we decided to cancel class and...
View ArticleSeeking justice for Israel’s slain and missing without losing our moral compass
This article initially appeared in My Jewish Learning’s Shabbat newsletter Recharge on Oct. 21, 2023. To sign up to receive Recharge each week in your inbox, click here. (JTA) — They say that while...
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How to conduct a Jewish wedding when Israel is still burying its dead? These...
(JTA) — The Hamas attacks that claimed over 1,400 Jewish lives on Oct. 7 set off an intense period of global Jewish mourning. As Israel assembled troops for a possible ground invasion of Gaza, and...
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The rabbi who survived the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting 5 years ago...
(JTA) — In Pittsburgh, “10/27” has become a shorthand for the massacre, on Oct. 27, 2018, of 11 Jews as they gathered for worship at the Tree of Life synagogue complex in the city’s Squirrel Hill...
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These Bronx 8th-graders traveled 4 hours to pay a shiva call to the family of...
(New York Jewish Week) – Alyssa Halpert, an eighth-grader at SAR Academy from New Rochelle, had never met, nor even vaguely knew Maurice Shnaider when she traveled 100 miles to his house to make a...
View ArticleIn dark times like these, Jewish tradition suggests a new way of seeing
This story was first published on My Jewish Learning. (JTA) — This past week we entered the Hebrew month of Kislev, the month here in the Northern Hemisphere when we often experience the longest,...
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How to give thanks when the Jewish world is grieving
This story was originally published on My Jewish Learning. (JTA) — It’s a nice coincidence that one of Judaism’s most profound utterances on appreciating the holy is read from the Torah right around...
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An Orthodox congregation in Manhattan launches a matchmaking initiative as a...
(New York Jewish Week) — Since Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, there has been an outpouring of fundraisers and activism from New York synagogues and Jewish institutions. Some shuls are holding...
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‘Awakening of unity’: Hamas attack, war spark outpouring of support for...
(New York Jewish Week) — When 3,000 Orthodox men packed into a New Jersey event hall late last month to mark a milestone in their 7 1/2-year cycle of Talmud study, they added an unusual component to...
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Rabbi Laurie Phillips, founder of a Manhattan ‘synagogue without walls,’ dies...
(JTA) — Rabbi Laurie Phillips, whose search for a new model of Jewish engagement led her to found the New York-based “synagogue without walls” Beinenu, died Nov. 26 at her childhood home in Southfield,...
View ArticleDavid Ellenson was my rabbi. I can’t believe we won’t learn from him anymore.
(JTA) — It is the 24th of Kislev, one of the darkest days of the year, when we cannot wait to bring in the light of Hanukkah — and I just received the call that my teacher, my mentor, my rabbi, David...
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Jewish liturgy includes a curse against our enemies. We can be OK with that.
(JTA) — I often take solace in prayer: It gives me the opportunity to express my deepest longings to God, even if immediate results are never the goal. As the Israel-Hamas war has worn on, I have...
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When Dr. Martin Luther King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel taught my dad to...
(JTA) — Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose 50th yahrzeit we marked this past year, was for almost 30 years a member of the faculty at The Jewish Theological Seminary, which I lead. There he inspired many to...
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More than 1,300 attend a free Shabbat dinner at Ayat, a Palestinian...
(New York Jewish Week) — More than 1,300 people made their way to Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, last Friday night to take part in a free Shabbat dinner at Ayat, a local Palestinian restaurant owned by...
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Why the Conservative movement is changing our approach to interfaith marriage
(JTA) — At the recent convening of Conservative/Masorti movement leaders, we were holding a workshop on new approaches to engage intermarrying couples when a participant spoke frankly about her own...
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A tiny Orthodox synagogue, a relic of the old Jewish Lower East Side,...
(New York Jewish Week) — One of the few surviving congregations on a block of the Lower East Side once known as “Shtiebel Row” is in danger of losing its minyan, the quorum of 10 men above bar mitzvah...
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On a visit to Israel, I learned to curb my certainty and listen to our...
(JTA) — I recently returned from a synagogue mission to Israel. Before our departure, I asked our 20 travelers why they were going. “I want to be able to bear witness,” one of them responded, “so first...
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