Jewish Blogs

Are You Having the Purim Blues? I’m Just Not in the Purim Mood

I have the Purim blues, it crept up on me like it always does, but this year more than ever I’m just not in the mood for Purim. I’m not sad or anything, in fact I’m quite happy with my lot, but I have no interest in getting drunk at the local shul seuda. Like some folks, I can blame ...

Purim and the Oscars

Yesterday was another fun Purim holiday celebration, but I didn’t post a Purim satire this year (last year’s edition). I also usually post a list of my favorite Purim YouTube videos before the holiday, but there really weren’t ten quality videos I could find to make my Top Ten Purim Videos list. A few standouts included Temple Israel in West ...

My Shero: Rabbi Susan Silverman

Look, Susan Silverman already had me at “Hello, I survived the same screwed up childhood as my sister Sarahand instead of growing up and talking about shaved tuchus puckers, I became a rabbi.”But Rabbi Susan has earned even more of this Yenta’s mad respect for her delightful act of civil disobedience at Jerusalem’s Western Wall last week. To protest the ...

Thank You, Judy Blume

Best-selling author Judy Blume is among the Jewesses with attitude featured in “MAKERS: Women Who Make America,” the film that premieres on PBS tomorrow night.Blume’s characters accompanied me while I navigated my way through puberty. They pondered the same questions I was too afraid to ask aloud, and seemed to understand the awkwardness I felt. As I watched video clips ...

The Last Year in Jewish Technology

Once again The Jewish Week asked me to try and summarize the last year in technology from a Jewish angle. This was not an easy task since technology is increasingly so much a part of our lives and it affects all areas of our world including religion. I decided to come up with the ten big Jewish/Technology-related stories. What follows ...

For Judith Malina, Place is a State of Mind

For Judith Malina, place has always been a state of mind. This tiny giant of the theatre world has epitomized the life of a nomad over her 66 years of work with the Living Theatre. Her peripatetic career has taken her company to five continents; she herself has gone from serving time in prison to performing in South American prisons, ...

Humor and the Holocaust: Where the Line’s Drawn

The New York Times article in yesterday’s Sunday Review section titled “The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking” uncovers the recent scholarly discoveries that the Holocaust was in fact even more catastrophic than researchers once thought. Such news almost 70 years after the Shoah reaffirms what a horrific, devastating era this was in human history.The Holocaust researchers, according to the Times article, “have ...

Why Do We Say When We Pray, “Let My Soul be Like Dust to Everyone”?

At the conclusion of the Amidah prayer, three times a day, we say the concluding prayer of Mar the son of Ravina as found “with monor variations (Steinsalz)” in b. Berakhot 17a.Rabbi Yissocher Frand comments on this:Tosfos [Brochos 17a] comments on the prayer recited at the end of the Shmoneh Esrei: “My G-d, guard my tongue from evil and my ...

Was Ludwig Wittgenstein Jewish?

At the Times, philosopher Paul Horwich asks, Was Wittgenstein Right? His answer is that most philosophers vote no, and yet Wittgenstein’s reputation is stellar.We want to know, was Wittgenstein Jewish? Despite his extensive Jewish heritage, according to Jewish law, no, Ludwig Wittgenstein was a not Jew. He was a Catholic.His mother and maternal grandmother were Catholic. Despite that, Wittgenstein rejected religion, yet ...

Just When You Thought the Holocaust Couldn’t Get Worse

Growing up Jewish, you know about the Holocaust.You pray for the Six Million at synagogue. Your parents or your youth group leader (or my in my case, both) take you the museums their piles of eyeglasses and locks of hair and barbed wire installations.Maybe you even have a relative who was there, who tells you stories about stealing bread in ...

Shabbat Around the World

I’ve experienced Shabbat in some very interesting places. One of the most memorable Shabbat lunches I can recall was in the home of a Chabad rabbi and his family in Kharkov, Ukraine. This was in August 2005 when I led a small Hillel/JDC mission of University of Michigan students to the Former Soviet Union.The food at that lunch was delicious ...

Is Marijuana Kosher for Passover?

Via Earth Times with a big smile. Passover pot is not a problem for Sephardic Jews. Is cannabis kosher for Passover for Ashkenazic Jews?Is pot kitniyot? It’s up to the rabbiJERUSALEM (UPI) In Israel, rabbis are trying to determine if hemp and its cousin, marijuana, are on the list of legumes that some Jews must abstain from during Passover.This year, ...