“Isn’t that Franny from Fire Island?” my husband asked as a well-dressed woman stepped up to the bimah to greet the rabbi. I looked closer. Indeed it was Franny, looking great. “Just please don’t tell me that you don’t recognize her with her clothes on,” I said, before he could. That nasty beach joke was…
The High Holidays are designated for spiritual stock-taking, but this year synagogues are wrestling with a decidedly non-spiritual issue: money. The Days of Awe also happen to be the season in which many synagogues garner enough income — in the form of ticket sales, membership renewals and Yom Kippur appeals — to sustain themselves for…
For generations, inherited recipes have allowed American Jews to preserve links to their immigrant ancestors and envision the lives they lived before arriving on these shores. But is grating potatoes for latkes really the iconic Jewish experience we like to think it is? It may be that a more ubiquitous rite of passage is discovering…
Is Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement, or the day of Post-Traumatic Stress? For me, a “recovered” anorexic, it’s both. Liturgically, Yom Kippur is powerful, a day characterized by introspection, asking forgiveness, profound considerations about how to right wrongs and improve oneself. It makes sense it’s a day of self-denial, including 25 hours without food….
In an apparent first, the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. sent High Holiday greetings to American Jews. The card, from Reema Bandar al Saud, the ambassador, (also known as Reema bint Bandar) was first reported by the Josh Lederman of NBC News. It’s not clear what format the card was sent out in, or who…
The high holidays are a great time for reflection, community, spirituality, and celebration. But for many Jews of color, parents and partners from other faith traditions and those experiencing Judaism for the first time, it is also a time to stay on high alert. Many will have had their Rosh Hashanahs marred by shattering experiences…
In my decades as a congregational rabbi, I always knew it was time to order our challot for the season the moment I started drafting my five High Holiday sermons. I knew that there would be no time to bake one, much less several, though I did manage to prepare our family version of seasonal…
The Jewish year is coming to a close and we’re about to party like it’s 5780. But first — lets find out if you remember the biggest, wildest, and weirdest headlines of this Jewish year. If you’re a little rusty and want to remind yourself just how things got so whack, take a look through…
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