Category: Other

My grandmother was a delegate to the 1929 World Zionist Congress in Zurich, followed by her first visit to Palestine. She witnessed gunfights from her Jerusalem hotel balcony and met refugee orphans from Hebron during the infamous riots of…

Generally, we would expect the main character of our story to explain how they got to the point where they became the main character. At some point in a narrative, we look to find the motivation of the main character, what motivates their…

I’ve looked at life through both sides now. – Songwriter Joni Mitchell

One long-ago morning during the Hezbollah War, when the skies were baby-blue, clouds drifted sweetly, and fragrant trees were reborn and blossoming, a sleep-deprived…

Should we take down the Israeli flags with yellow ribbons wrapped around the Star of David — and go back to the simple blue and white of our nation’s emblem?

It’s a strange question, isn’t it?

Is the war over?

It’s October 8th. The…

Why Israel’s chosen name matters for memory, meaning, resilience, and renewal

“It is redemption time.” Those words leapt off the page as I read the Israeli government’s decision to officially name the post–October 7 conflict the…

This past Shabbat, Rabbi Aryeh Perlstein, Assistant Rabbi of our shul, Young Israel of North Beverly Hills, gave a speech that concluded with a remarkable story.
Its title: “If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem.”
A familiar line, yet the story…

A culture of casual contempt is eroding Jewish life.

In one of my favorite comedy bits, Modi Rosenfeld contrasts how Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews speak about their rabbis. The Sephardi character…

A gentile’s moral dilemma before introducing a Jewish comedy
Tags: Sweden antisemitism, Jewish life in Europe, October 7 impact, media bias, moral clarity.

In a few days, I’ll step up to…

State-sanctioned discrimination and division thrive: at the Western Wall, women’s prayer space shrinks; on buses, segregation enforces second-class status; public singing by women draws rebuke (never busk on Ben Yehudah, you have been…

Critics sometimes argue that Black Christian abolitionist voices were not “real theologians” because they did not produce systematic treatises, commentaries, or dogmatics like their white counterparts. At best, so the argument goes, they…