What do you do with a ketubah, or Jewish wedding contract, after a divorce? That question took on urgency after my partner Naomi and I moved from her home in Westchester County, NY to a condo north of Boston. Storage space available for my movie…
Category: Other
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Search for Closure: Nobody Wants My Broken Ketubah
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Israel prevented CF, not eliminated it
A recent social media thread has been circulating widely, claiming that “in ten years, Israel almost got rid of cystic fibrosis among newborns.” The implication is provocative: that through aggressive genetic screening and IVF policy, a nation…
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Trumps Obnoxious Insult of Pres. Herzog
And the word about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s pardon came down from on high out of mouth of the President of the United States on February 12th in a press gaggle at Mount Olympus, colloquially known as the Oval Office, as he opined about an…
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The Hebrew Slave
The laws related to the Hebrew slave, are quite fascinating and clearly represent that such laws could only come from Hashem. Aside from creating a system to rehabilitate a convicted thief, it is also designed to help an impoverished person to…
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Shalom Brothers: Mishpatim – Men Who ‘Didn’t Know’
Parashat Mishpatim is Torah at its most unglamorous—and most urgent. No miracles. No spectacle. Just case law after case law about harm, liability, and repair. It’s as if the Torah is saying: if you want a holy society, stop talking only…
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One day, everyone will have this book at the bottom of their closet
The 2025 US National Book Award winner about the Gaza war tries to shame its many readers into accepting its warped conclusions; eventually, truth will out
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Why We Stood Taller When Israel Entered the Olympic Stadium
I have watched Olympic opening ceremonies for as long as I can remember. There is something timeless about them—the steady cadence of nations entering the stadium, one after another, each carrying its history, its burdens, its dreams. Albania….
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When Our Leaders Stopped Making Regime Change Work
Regime changes were made by America from its start. They worked well — imperfectly of course, like all big things in life, but quite well in the main part. This continued for nearly two centuries. Regime change was still working brilliantly in…
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Sentences
It makes complete sense that after last week’s parsha of Yitro in which we received the Torah, that we would start delving deeper into its various statutes. It might seem strange that the first couple of laws that are given to us have to do…
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The Robins’ Traditional Songs: The Jazz Singer and a Fiddler on the Roof
“Tradition presupposes the reality of what endures.” – Poetics of Music, Igor Stravinsky (1947) 1964 was the greatest year in the history of Broadway. Audiences could hear Albee, Chekov, Shakespeare, Sondheim, Tennessee Williams, see Barbra…
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