Charles Finney was America’s best-known preacher in the 1830s when he invented the altar call. At the end of a revival meeting, he’d invite worshippers stirred by the gospel to come before an altar placed in front of the hall and publicly swear their commitment to Jesus Christ. Finney did this to showcase — critics…
A large, open plaza across from Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park, where Occupy Wall Street has made its encampment for three weeks, proved to be the perfect setting for Kol Nidre on Friday night. Earlier in the week, when Daniel Sieradski, Occupy Wall Street protester and self-styled “new media activist,” wondered on Facebook and Twitter whether he…
The Yom Kippur service at the ongoing anti-corporate protests in downtown Manhattan will be used to expand the scope of the activists’ “occupation” of the Financial District, according to the service’s organizer. Activists who have been camping at a public plaza near Wall Street asked Dan Sieradski, the Jewish new media activist who has organized…
If American Jewish popular culture is any indication, Kol Nidre is the one prayer American Jews happen to know well. Over the years, they’ve encountered it on long-playing records, like those produced by the Victor Talking Machine Company in the 1920s, and at the movies, where the cinematic plot hinged on whether the not-so-loyal son…
I’ve been spending the morning pacing around the house singing Kol Nidre while my two-year-old son Jacob toddles about playing with his toys. Just like every year, it seems, the High Holidays arrive to find my life in a startling upheaval of activity, with the world swinging back into movement after the sultry months of…
We’re back for Week 2 of our High Holy Day songfest as promised, this time in two parts. Part One includes Bob Dylan, Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt and Joe Cocker, plus the legendary Cantor Moishe Oysher, Jerry Lewis (in a serious moment, sort of), Larry David and the Red Army Chorus performing with the Leningrad Cowboys….
Craig Breslow, an Oakland Athletics relief pitcher, has been called the smartest man in baseball more than once. And after graduating from Yale with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and nearly matriculating at NYU’s medical school, the title isn’t necessarily unwarranted. But Breslow, a “proud” Jew and New Haven native, is getting some…
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