Archive
My rabbi made a bold move during his d’var Torah on the first day of Rosh Hashanah services this year. After a brief word on Park 51 earlier in the service, in which he condemned the bigoted opposition in the strongest terms I could have imagined, I wasn’t expecting too much more fire and brimstone, especially on […]
A basket in the Lower East Side’s Bialystoker Synagogue chronicles a century of weddings, as recorded in the kippot. [NYT] Less than half of all Israelis see themselves as secular. “8% of Jewish Israeli adults define themselves as ultra-Orthodox, 12% as religious, 13% as traditional-religious, and 25% as traditional but ‘not very religious,’ according to […]
Today is the Fast of Gedaliah, traditionally observed because Yishmael ben Netanyah, a Jewish extremist, murdered Gedaliah ben Ahikam, the final Jewish Babylonian-appointed governor of the Land of Israel, and the last Jew to govern the land before 1948. I think, though, that the rabbis instituted the fast because they needed a cool-down period after […]
Looking at a map of the United States, one notices a clustering of Jewish populations at the corners. The well-known nucleus is New York City. But Jewish settlement extends throughout the Northeast, even creeping north of the border, to Toronto and Montreal. In South Florida, Miami and the beaches and cities that surround it host […]
I’m a new face here at New Voices. None of you know me, and I don’t know any of you yet.The first thing I want to do is say that I hope your New Year has been sweet so far. Because let’s face it, shall we? For some of us, 5770, in many ways, totally […]
God bless Benji Lovitt for pointing out this gem of Israeli advertising to the blogosphere today. Benji’s blog, What War Zone???, is a never-ending buffet of satire on Israel from the perspective of an American oleh. I highly recommend it. He’s doing a US comedy tour soon and looking for venues. Hillels are perfect, I […]
In 1948, “Nuremberg,” a documentary on the Nazi war crimes trials, showed in Berlin. 62 years later, it’s finally playing for American audiences, and the film has lost none of its relevance.
J.J. Goldberg has assembled his favorite selection of (mostly Christian) music about repentance to help us all get in the mood for the season. [J.J. Goldberg] The other Goldberg, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, was invited by Fidel Castro to come chat in Havana. It seems that Castro really liked Goldberg’s story about Iran a few […]
This post is in response to David Wilensky’s post from earlier today. David, you and I both know how most people read news articles: they usually don’t. Maybe they’ll read the headline, maybe–if we’re lucky–they’ll read the lede and the nut graf and maybe–if they actually care–they’ll read an entire article. The truth, though, is […]
Rabbi Jason Miller, blogger of RabbiJason.com, heard that an article in Time Magazine isn’t good for the Jews. After having read a few posts about the article, he decided to throw his several hundred words of cents in. He has cleverly titled his post, Time not on Israel’s Side. (Get it? See, the name of […]