Jewish Blogs

Lost and Found

A young girl brutally separated from her parents and twin sister as World War Two approaches; a new lifestyle, a new identity. And then comes the pain of rejection and loss as a child abandons the carefully constructed secular world her parents embraced and turns, instead, to Orthodox Judaism. An elite French family, also struck by the same stinging slap ...

Lonely Man of Faith: Meet the Gregarious Man of Faith

My great teacher Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik is known in part for his essay, “The Lonely Man of Faith.” The article was published in 1965 in the Orthodox journal Tradition and then as a book with an introduction by Professor David Shatz. (A film about the Rav with the same title was produced by Ethan Isenberg.)Koren-Maggid publishers have reissued the essay ...

London Olympics, Munich 11 and Tisha B’Av

This Saturday night begins the sundown to sundown Tisha B’Av fast. It is a longstanding tradition marked by a day of communal mourning and reflection.I wasn’t around 2,000 years ago when my people’s Temple was destroyed and thousands perished.But, I am around today and that is why I will take the time to honor those who lost their lives in ...

Liturgy is not Theology

We’ve been teaching liturgical analysis. Self-evident to us that liturgy is not theology, they are two distinct domains. Yikes, you can take a photograph of your blackboard and post it online.Simple. To analyze a liturgy you must ask about its idiom, its emotional content, and its position in a larger dramatic structure. Liturgy is comprised of emotionally resonant categories. That ...

“Listen To Your Mother”

The Jewish Women’s Archive was the community partner for the Boston New Center for Arts and Culture’s last program of the season on May 6, “Listen to Your Mother,” featuring StoryCorps founder David Isay. He played a number of clips from StoryCorps interviews and closed the evening with a “sneak preview” of StoryCorps’ newest venture which will be broadcast on ...

Link to the Soncino Talmud in English Online at Halakhah.com

The Soncino Babylonian Talmud English translation is online – at a site that is not anti-Semitic or polemical.Download the Talmud in English free at http://www.halakhah.com/Contains the Sedarim (orders, or major divisions) and tractates (books) of the Babylonian Talmud, as translated and organized for publication by the Soncino Press in 1935 – 1948.Read More: @ tzvee.blogspot.comReaders found more information by searching for:soncino talmud ...

Like Only A Jewish Girl Nose

I was pretty much bowled over by last night’s episode of Glee’s willingness to pitch fastball taboos and knock ‘em straight outta the park.No, not the awesomeness of making it OK to be gay (and even OK if you are and don’t want to tell anyone yet.) Not the Bad Ass Big Girl unapologetically running for Prom Queen. Not even the ...

Like A Rolling Stone

Mick Jagger and a popular avant-garde magazine turned the expression “rolling stone” into a household word. But, did you ever stop and think about what a rolling stone really signifies?A person is walking down the street; he sees a white, roundish looking stone in the middle of the street. He has an irresistible urge to kick the stone as he’s ...

Life In The Fast Lane

In a blur of colors and a roar of engines, the Formula Ford race cars sped around the race track at the Riverside International Raceway in California. Hitting 125 miles an hour, George Gottlieb* pulled his car away from the pack. Lap after lap, the other cars tried to keep up with him but to no avail. After ten laps ...

Licking ice cream cones in public is unztnius

This happened when I was on a little vacay, but in Israel some zealous folks decided to trash an ice cream store in Mea Shearim because that’s what zealots do these days to places they deem unztnius. Seems like everyone is trying to one up each other on how frum they can be by using violence and destruction. I wish ...

Liberal Jews say you must use an organic lulav and etrog

Irreligious liberal Jews are up in arms over the fact that most of the arba minim being used for succos are not grown organically or sustainably, they are a plight upon the land and doing a mitzvah with something that is not grown properly is really more of a sin than not doing it all. In Israel the organic, sustainably ...

Letter to the editor in the Five Towns Jewish Times

It has come to my attention that a recent article published in this paper by Rabbi Aryeh Zev Ginzberg has resulted in much negative reaction. Several rabbonim encouraged Rabbi Ginzberg to write his article, and he wisely chose not to state their names and expose them to the anger he feared might result from his words (though they were respectful ...