Jewish Blogs

Rabbi Laura Geller’s Rosh Hashanah Temple Twitter

Here is a rabbi who gets it. Twitter and Facebook are there for the taking. For religion and philosophy, if that is what you want to do. Sure we don’t expect all shuls and rabbis to embrace these systems in the sanctuary on a holiday. It was a mini-dramatic idea and we say the rabbi made her point.Rabbi Laura Geller ...

Rabbi Forbids Participating in Talkbacks and Website Comments Sections

The more I blog, the thicker my skin gets. Overtime, I’ve learned to prepare myself before reading the comment section at the bottom of my posts. With great inventions, we have to take the bad with the good. It’s been wonderful that newspapers and magazines make their articles available to us on the Web, but it also means that individuals ...

Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah – a Star of the Seder

Passover once again. We will soon open our Haggadahs and find the familiar prologue stories to the Maggid section of the Seder. And soon we all will wonder, Who was Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah?Maggid is literally the “telling” of the story of the Exodus from Egypt, the event that we celebrate in our evening of dramatic activity. My teacher Rabbi ...

Rabbi Bleich on Kinyan

Frum attorneys, kiruv people, Partners in Torah mentors, law school profs – you need to see Rabbi Bleich’s latest contribution to Tradition.Kinyan is a leitmotif of so many sugyos, but does not have an effective analogue in Western legal thought. “Conveyance” just doesn’t do it. When we try to teach people whose legal sensibilities are shaped entirely by Western law, ...

Rabbi As Pitchman?

Advertising is all around us. It’s become impossible to find an event or location that doesn’t have corporate sponsorship attached to it. Product placement has become the norm in movies and TV shows. And it seems like everyone has an endorsement deal these days.On Comedy Central’s “The Colbert Report,” host Stephen Colbert begged Apple for an iPad 2 and then ...

Rabba Hurwitz Online

Since last February when the creators of MAKERS launched their website to spotlight the women who’ve changed the face of America and the world, quite of few of these trailblazers turn out to be Jewish.Among the MAKERS are Ruth Bader Ginsburg of course and Barbara Walters. There’s Madeleine Albright (a latecomer to be sure but we’ll take her) and Nora ...

Quite Unconventional

When you attend a convention over Shabbos and several days later you still feel your neshama tingling, you know that what you experienced was rather . . . unconventional. That captures the experience my wife, our daughter and I shared the Shabbos before last at the inaugural convention of Project Inspire (PI) in Stamford, Connecticut.Read more: @ cross-currents.comYou might also like:I Am a ...

Q&A With Miryam Kabakov: Editor of Anthology on Orthodox Lesbians

A new anthology, titled “Keep Your Wives Away from Them: Orthodox Women, Unorthodox Desires,” includes essays by 14 women who identify themselves as part of the GLBQT community. Some remain part of the frum community, and write anonymously. One is from a prominent politically conservative family and talks about her family’s gradual acceptance process of her and her non-Jewish partner.Read More: @ jwablog.jwa.orgTags: anthology ...

Q&A with Bonnie Rosenbaum on Keshet’s Pledge to Save Lives

Today is “Wear Purple Day” or “Spirit Day.” It is a global day of remembrance for Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg, Raymond Chase and Billy Lucas, the six GLBT youth who recently took their own lives because of homophobic bullying. Today I caught up with Keshet’s Bonnie Rosenbaum to talk about the Jewish response and Do Not ...

Putting Israel in the Best Light

Yesterday’s news was focused on photo editing. A national conversation on the ethics of doctoring photos was kicked off when a Brooklyn-based Hasidic Yiddish language newspaper used Photoshop to airbrush out two prominent women — Hillary Clinton and Audrey Tomason — from an iconic photo released by the White House. More than a rant on the extremes to which the ...

Put a Jewish woman in environmental activism “On the Map!”

Next week is Tu B’Shevat, the Jewish birthday for trees. The meaning of the holiday has undergone some major evolution over the years; it started as a tax deadline, was co-opted by Kabbalists and then the Zionists, and is now considered a holiday celebrating the environment and environmental activism in a broad sense. At the Jewish Women’s Archive, our Tu ...

Purim pu-POW!

Oh, it’s my favorite holiday, the Feast of Esther, the time when it’s marginally OK to pass a flask at synagogue.Of course, I did not that share information with the Shalom Schoolers last Sunday, but I did invent a new Purim game totally on the fly:Better than Pin the Tail on the Donkey because it doesn’t involve a mule’s tuchus, ...