I have very distinct memories of my childhood nights in the Sukkah. I grew up in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish home in upstate New York. We were not permitted to eat a meal or sleep — even take an afternoon nap – outside the sukkah. After the meal on Sukkot evening, we would put the table…
Advertisements for DvarMalchus.org, a weekly Lubavitch publication based out of Kfar Chabad, were spotted on an Israeli bus today that compared women to ignoramuses. The advertisement said that, according to the Baal Shem Tov, a true leader “awakens the spark of Jewishness of each and everyone in Israel, including simple people, ‘am-haaretz’s (literally, ‘people of…
“The only remedy for your baby is fresh goat’s milk,” the doctor told me. I looked at him incredulously and then put my daughter back in her stroller to hike up the hill to the old leprosy hospital, now an arts and media center in the heart of Jerusalem’s Talbiya neighborhood. My 18-month-old daughter was…
We are living in an age when world leaders regularly deny historical facts — and therefore, defining what the word “lie” means is an urgent concern. It’s also an ancient concern. Both the Torah and the Talmud seem a bit clairvoyant these days in their interest in delineating what a lie is, when it’s okay…
This article was first published in The Forward on May 21, 1999. The terrain reminded me of the Negev, especially as I gazed out over it from high above the desert floor: coarse sand, prickly shrubs, sandstone cliffs. A rope was the only thing that protected me from injury or death. I was leading a…
The violent ejection of a passenger from a United Airlines flight on Monday has received international attention. It has been condemned not just as bad business (which it surely is) but as a symptom of American class warfare and the creeping callousness of American corporate culture. As horrified as I was by the treatment of…
Given that it’s is one if not the most essential Jewish texts, the Talmud can be surprisingly hard to come by. But not anymore: The Jewish start-up Sefaria just released a free digital version into the public domain. The William Davidson Talmud is an edition of the Babylonian Talmud with parallel translations into English and…
NEW YORK (JTA) — For centuries, studying a page of the Talmud has come with a bevy of barriers to entry. Written mostly in Aramaic, the Talmud in its most commonly printed form also lacks punctuation or vowels, let alone translation. And that’s not to mention the Talmud’s size and cost: 37 full volumes, called…
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