Jewish Blogs

How Do I Respect My Spouse’s Feelings?

Question:I like to put my family first, and rarely participate in simchot in the evenings. My husband feels strange going alone, even though they are all separate seating. Am I wrong for staying home? Do I need to respect my husband’s feelings and make the effort to accompany him?Answer:Kudos for putting your family first, they do come before simchot. I’m invited to ...

How Do I Balance Giving my Son Rebuke and Elevating his Self-Esteem?

Question:My eight year old son often hurts his friends with words. I know he’s clearly acting out when he feels bad about himself. How do I balance giving rebuke and elevating his self-esteem?Answer:There are a few concrete things you can do.Talk to him before or after he’s in the act, but not while he is acting out. Catch him when ...

How did keeping shomer negiah become a choice?

How did it happen that keeping the laws of shomer negiah became that one thing that many frum people like to brag about picking and choosing. Frum people don’t brag about eating treife, breaking shabbos or torturing their pets, yet when it comes to touching the opposite sex it has become acceptable to be lax in that aspect of halacha. ...

How did Douche Bag become the way to say moron?

There are so many ways to say Douche Bag, you can say D-Bag, Douche, D-Baggy, D-Bagish, Douche-ish, Douchebaggery and all I’m wondering is how a vaginal cleaning device became the nationally recognized way to call someone a moron or an arrogant schmuck?I’m also wondering how many people actually know what a douche bag is and what they look like, I’ve never had the pleasure of using one ...

How Cute Is Your Family? We’ll Be the Judge

This week God may be judging you based on your sins, but here at MJL we are judging you based on your family photos. Specifically, your Jewish holiday photos. Do you have some classics of your kids making matzah balls with Bubbe? Lighting Shabbat candles? Doing tashlikh? Beating the willow? Dancing with the Torah? Do you and your boyfriend take ...

How Can We Reach People Where They Are Holding?

As we noted last week, there were many good articles in Klal Perspectives and Rabbi Eliyahu Fink who is the Rav of the Shul on the Beach in Venice singled out Moishe Bane’s article in a post on his blog.One paragraph that Rabbi Fink quoted from Mr Bane’s article was this one:There must be a renewed emphasis on deepening the ...

How Can we Better Memorialize the Shoah in our Synagogues?

The Holocaust now is memorialized in synagogues mainly peripherally through added events and tacked on references or via artwork in the building vestibule. We think that the Shoah must be more tightly integrated into the ritual and symbolism of every Jewish place of worship.We have pondered over the years how we could make this particular meaningful change in our synagogue. ...

How Can I Make Tefillah Meaningful For My Daughter?

Question:My ten year old daughter finds davening boring. I can’t think of ways to inspire her except to tell her that Hashem is waiting to listen to her tefilot (prayers)and that she can ask for anything she wants, like new shoes or clothes. Can you help me with more ideas?Answer:If your daughter is not extraordinarily spiritual, like most ten year olds, she will not ...

How can I increase my kavana in tefilah?

Question:How can I increase my kavana in tefilah? Can you provide some practical solutions?Answer:Create a mental image that speaks to you and use it to guide you through tefillah. I’ll suggest one but you can use your own.Close your eyes and picture yourself as a young child, way before you realized that your parents didn’t have much control over events. Imagine your father or ...

How Authentically Jewish Is My Chicken Soup?

What does it mean for a recipe to be authentically Jewish? Here at MJL we try to bring you great Jewish recipes, but that means we spend a lot of time thinking about what it means for a recipe to be Jewish. Must it have been made by Jews and that’s it? Must it be something old-world-y, like brisket, or ...

How Ami Magazine Convinced Me to Celebrate Yom Ha-Atzmaut

The editorial in Ami did not promote such celebration, of course. It provided an original and thought-provoking reason to celebrate its non-celebration, so to speak. Survivors of the Holocaust would naturally take great comfort in seeing the creation of the State as a Divine Hand reaching down to comfort the bedraggled remnant of the Jewish people. It took principled courage, ...

Honor the Birther in Your Life

Frankly, the most nonsensical part of the whole “birther” debate is the moniker—who gave these idjuts the right to call themselves such? Now that the whole stupid issue has been put to rest (along with Osama Bin Laden, holy moly!), I have decided to reclaim and redefine the term as such:A “birther” is heretofore only to refer to someone who ...