Notes on Jewish Belonging – Between Berlin and Ben-Gurion: What Jewish Belonging Feels Like Right Now Memory behind me. Home ahead. And a comedian in the middle reminding me why Jews keep returning. I spent some time this past week in Berlin —…
Category: Other
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Laughter in Berlin, Hope in Israel
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OK, Mamdani has rizz. Now what do we do about it?
On the night Zohran Mamdani was elected the next mayor of New York City, he walked onstage before a sea of supporters that greeted him with enthusiastic applause. “He isn’t bad looking,” said my wife, looking up from her phone at the TV….
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Two Years
For two years, I have largely stayed away from posting on Facebook. I have purged many “friends” — the ones who didn’t have the bandwidth to utter even the most banal of condolences when we were slaughtered, yet had an opinion about genocide or…
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Tefillah Is Not ‘Prayer’; It Is Self-Judgement Before the King
You already know the words of the Amidah, the bows, the steps. Now meet the soul of the word itself. The verb we use three times daily is לְהִתְפַּלֵּל, lehitpallēl (Yemenite pronunciation). Its root is פ־ל־ל, p-l-l, which in…
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Plano ISD’s Antisemitism Problem – Still a Problem
Plano ISD’s Antisemitism Problem Is No Longer Denied—But It Is Still Ignored When I first wrote about the dangerous rise of antisemitism in Plano ISD, many insisted the problem was exaggerated or “misunderstood.” Others…
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Gratitude for the Things We Do Not See or Perceive
Gratitude is easy when life is smooth, when the blessings are obvious, when the moments sparkle, when everything lines up the way we hoped. But the real test, the one that reveals who we are and who we want to be, comes when the world…
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Brown University – The Jewish Ivy?
On the weekend of November 7-9, Brown University hosted its unprecedented celebration of “130 Years of Jewish Life at Brown.” At some point during Shabbat dinner, between the ridiculously decadent noodle kugel and Robert Kraft’s talk about…
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Israeli Democracy Under Strain
Israel is facing one of the most perilous democratic moments in its history. This is not business as usual. It is a democratic emergency. In recent weeks alone, we have witnessed attacks on journalists and academics, punitive legislation…
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UNforgivable
This Tuesday is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women: a date and subsequent ten days of activism created by the United Nations to raise awareness regarding the specific sex-based violence that women face across the…
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Triggering & Brilliant: Slam Frank
Where satire, identity politics, and pure absurdity collide. I went to see Slam Frank in NYC. If you don’t already know, Slam Frank is an off-Broadway satirical hip-hop musical based (loosely, wildly, deliberately provocatively) on the story of…
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