Category: Other

From Tel Aviv buses to the New York subway, we must ask: do our shared spaces reflect our shared values?

One morning on the A train in Manhattan, my daughter and I sat side by side. She was dressed in a jumper and tights, holding her siddur,…

Red Scare, Blue Scare, Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

The entertainment community is reliving a moment eerily reminiscent of one of its darkest chapters — the McCarthy era. Back then, careers were destroyed as boycotts, blacklists, and…

In times of crisis, the Jewish people have always drawn strength from the vision of our ancestors. Moses’ leadership does not begin with thunder at Sinai or with miracles in Egypt. It begins with a man alone, watching an act of violence and…

The days on the Jewish Calendar are recreations of the past’s lessons and attempts to continue on the proper path toward the future.

Two millennia ago, Jews killed the Jewish governor Gedaliah. Every year around this time, we commemorate…

“Words fly away, written ones remain.” (“Verba volant, scripta manent.”) — Latin proverb

Every covenant needs a witness. When two people make a promise, they call others to stand by and testify that the agreement was made. Words…

YK 5786 would be a great name for a rock band. Joke. But for me, there’s nothing funny about Yom Kippur. Not because the holiday is framed as our last chance in the calendar year to get right with our fellows and…

It’s a wonderful time of year. There is a sense of newness and possibility, the autumn air is crisp and BH school is back in session. I often think about this time of year as a time for learning new things. But this year, I’ve been…

Parshat Vayelech (Dvarim 31:19) gives us a trailer for next week’s parsha, Parshat Haazinu:

And now write for yourselves this song and teach it to B’nai Yisrael to place it in their mouths; in order that this song will be for me a witness…