If you are a person who looks to your God for wisdom and inspiration when making the most important decisions in your life, you are surely feeling a great unease in this moment, as we are. As Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders, we are privileged to guide religious life in a country whose political leaders…
For almost two decades, Archie Gottesman and Stacy Stuart wrote the snarky ad campaigns for Manhattan Mini Storage that reached cult status with New Yorkers: “Why leave a city that has six professional sports teams, and also the Mets?,” one read. Another: “Let your personality be the reason people don’t want to come to your…
WASHINGTON — Pleading with American Jews to “have faith that brighter days are ahead,” President Barack Obama bid emotional farewells to the Jewish community at his final Hanukkah parties as president. Jewish community leaders, lawmakers, top Jewish Democrats and major backers of Obama’s campaigns attended two separate parties on Wednesday at the White House. The…
One day, when I was in my early 20s and teaching Torah to religious newbies in Jerusalem, I felt the bedrock of belief shudder beneath me. There’s a reason the sages wrote that the air of Jerusalem makes one wise. I could feel the vibe everywhere. I loved how a cosmetician might share a Torah…
Maybe the Christian Right is right. For almost 40 years now, they’ve been warning us that we’ve entered the wilderness, that traditional religion is being eroded. Did 2013 prove them right? Item One: the Rise of the Nones. This phenomenon — nearly 20% of Americans listing “none” as their religious affiliation — was first documented…
In an effort to push forward stalled gun control legislation, Vice President Joe Biden met on Monday at the White House with faith leaders, including three representatives of the Jewish community. In the meeting, which lasted two and a half hours, Biden discussed at length the current status of the background check legislation which failed…
There are seismic shifts occuring in the American religious landscape that could have profound effects on the way that faith intersects with public life, but you’d never know it from the language and behavior of the two presidential candidates. That’s both a great relief and a cause for despair. The shifts were underscored by the…
My 93-year-old father recently died at home in his sleep. He was Jewish, but he was buried by a reverend in a nondenominational cemetery in Connecticut. A few years earlier, he had told me he had mixed feelings about being buried by a rabbi who’d speak in “that language you don’t understand.” “You mean Hebrew,…
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