Rabbi Salkin is a contributing editor to Religion News Service; the co-founder and co-director of Wisdom Without Walls, an online salon for Jewish ideas; and the author of, most recently, Tikkun Ha’Am/Repairing Our People: Israel and the Crisis of Liberal Judaism.
A different version of this essay appeared in the blog Martini Judaism: for those who want to be shaken and stirred, published Religion News Service. What is the sound of America cringing? Larry David now knows. And, it’s not pretty. This last Saturday night, comedian Larry David was the guest host on NBC’s “Saturday Night…
The matzah crumbs are still on the tablecloth on the dining room table. The leftover charoset still sits in the refrigerator. The haggadot from the seder still sit in a corner of the kitchen counter. The text from the haggadah cries out to us: “In every generation, a person must see himself or herself as…
On my desk, there is a small black and white photograph depicting the late Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld of Cleveland, his face bloody from a beating that he suffered at the hands of segregationists in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, during the Freedom Summer of 1964. It is now more than a half century later, and from what I…
Let’s face it: social conservatives always had suspicions about President Donald Trump. They looked at his marital history, his media persona, his vulgarity — and they concluded that Donald Trump was not a true conservative. In fact, some of the strongest and enduring critiques of him have come from social conservatives, such as David Brooks…
In his recent column in the Forward (“How Could Modern Orthodox Judaism Produce Jared Kushner?” ) Beinart examines Jared’s recent, little-more-than-a-week long record as a member of the Trump administration. He looks at what the administration has thus far produced, and how Jared has stood by and watched it happen. In Beinart’s telling, Jared is…
When Rabbi Seymour Rosenbloom, a retired rabbi from Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, performed an intermarriage ceremony for his stepdaughter and her fiancé in 2014 more than a glass got shattered at the end of the wedding ceremony. Rabbi Rosenbloom’s membership in the Rabbinical Assembly wound up in pieces as well. In December 2016, the rabbinical body…
This piece is part of a series about the issues in the 2016 presidential election. A (now disgraced) comedian once did a routine about Noah, who was incredulous about God warning him about the coming flood. Finally, famously, God asks Moses: “Noah, how long can you tread water?” I have been thinking about that question…
This time, it was at a social services center for the disabled, in San Bernadino, California. Two people went on a shooting spree. They killed at least 14 people, and they wounded 17 others, before they were killed as well. Earlier the same day, there had been a shooting in Houston. Not to mention a…
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