(JTA) — Thanksgiving seems to have all the right ingredients for a holiday that most American Jews can embrace: It doesn’t fall on Shabbat, its roots and message are nonsectarian, and its only real ritual is a multi-course meal. 

(JTA) — “Why does everybody hate us?” My son Izzy asked me this question after a man with a machete attacked Jews at a Hanukkah party in Monsey, New York, in 2019. Izzy was 12 years old when he flopped onto the couch, kicked up his feet and asked the question no Jewish parent wants to hear.

This article originally appeared on Alma. 

This article originally appeared on Alma.

JTA) — In 1916, in the picturesque German village of Heinebach, a 14-year-old girl named Elisabeth Schmidtkunz penned a sweet message in her classmate Jenny Katz’s autograph book.

Four Jewish friends were in a cafe. One exclaimed, “oy.” The second sighed, “oy vey.” The third moaned, “oy veyzmir.” The fourth said, “if you fellas don’t stop talking about politics, I am out of here!”

(JTA) — I’ve spent most of the last decade focused on grassroots organizing and capacity building inside the American progressive movement. From helping build the largest leadership development organization on the left, to launching a first-of-its-kind organization to mobilize male allies in…

This article originally appeared on Alma.

(JTA) — I grew up Jewish in Alaska. The Jewish community in Anchorage, the city where I grew up, did things their own Jewish way. It was the only kind of Judaism that I knew.

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(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Our oldest son is named Noah, and as a result we collected a lot of children’s books based on the Bible story (which will be read in synagogues this Shabbat). On its face, the story of Noah and the flood, with its parade of animals, is just right for kids. In…

Judaism has two major week-long holidays, but one goes largely unobserved in the diaspora.  While the Passover Seder has become a touchstone of Jewish identity, the same cannot be said for a meal in a sukkah.  The situation is understandable.  The High Holidays grab all one’s attention, leav…

(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — One of the most controversial — and tone-deaf — front-page headlines to appear in The New York Jewish Week during the 26 years I served as editor (1993-2019) was published the morning after 9/11 — 20 years ago.

This article originally appeared on Kveller. 

(JTA) — Every year during the High Holidays, Jews recite a litany of ways we have fallen short in a confessional prayer. Known as a viddui, the prayer is a centerpiece of our Yom Kippur liturgy.

“Who shall live and who shall die … who by water and who by fire … who by earthquake and who by plague …”

(JTA) — On the second night of Rosh Hashanah, in my second year of rabbinical school, while working at my first-ever High Holiday pulpit, I accidentally conceived.

   It’s a new year, a new day. Starting again, a new beginning, a second (or third) chance, an opportunity for a do-over. There are all these words with which we often approach the New Year, but now that it is here and we’ve had our fill of apples and honey and cake and chocolate (ok, that l…

(JTA) — To the rabbis and religious leaders putting the finishing touches to your High Holiday sermons, I’d like to make a suggestion: Use this Jewish New Year to talk about Israel from the pulpit.

(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — It was a beautiful sunny afternoon in Brooklyn this week, when my neighborhood came together for “One Crown Heights,” a day of music, entertainment, rides and activities for children and community conversation. 

(JTA) — We are, once again, in a season of reckoning with sexual abuse in the Jewish community and in the country.

    It’s time for my yearly love letter about the Jewish Federation of Omaha Annual Campaign. I’m not going to be shy about it: everyone should be excited to be part of the Campaign—and I’m not saying that just because I really like all the lay leaders who are involved (although, if you coul…

(JTA) — Ex-Orthodox Jews seem to be everywhere these days. Many critiques of this summer’s hit Netflix reality series “My Unorthodox Life” have pointed out that its release came on the heels of “Unorthodox” (2020), the successful Netflix drama series about a woman who runs away from her oppr…

This article originally appeared on Alma.

(JTA) — I was a writer before I became a rabbi and High Holiday sermons usually come easily to me. Some years I have so many ideas and teachings and hopes to share that I accidentally write more sermons than I need to give.

This article originally appeared on Alma.

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(JTA) — Anyone teaching the past by skipping over the unpleasant parts isn’t teaching history. They are engaged in propaganda.

(JTA) — Last month, Pixar released “Luca,” the animated tale of a sea monster who becomes a boy on dry land. The protagonist must come to terms with the part of himself that makes him different, even reviled. And of course, by the end, Luca learns to love himself, bringing most of the townsp…

(JTA) — Fasting and praying for 25  hours — many of them sweltering — isn’t anyone’s idea of summer vacation. But that’s not the only reason Tisha B’Av (the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av, which begins Saturday night at sundown) is among the least observed days on the Jewish calendar, des…

JTA) — Until a 13-story building inexplicably collapsed in the middle of the night, placing the whereabouts and lives of 159 residents in doubt, few gave Surfside, Florida, very much thought before last week. The town was, after all, a South Florida misnomer. There’s no surfing. The white ca…

This article originally appeared on Kveller.

(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — The two of us have spent most of our lives working for two causes: Israel and the Democratic Party. For a long time we experienced very little dissonance or disagreement. If you were pro-Israel, you were most likely a Democrat. If you were a Democrat, you wer…

(JTA) — To everything there is a season. June is Pride season, one where LGBTQ people proudly refuse to choose between our identities and our demand for the freedom to live equally and without fear. 

(JTA) — It’s June. For me, a lot happens this month. Father’s Day is coming up — my fifth as a father of twin boys. It’s Pride Month, and as a gay Jewish man, married with children, that means something. It’s also my father’s 41st yahrtzeit, the anniversary of his passing.

This article originally appeared on The New York Jewish Week.

For someone growing up on the American system of democracy, Wednesday June 2 left me doubly dumbfounded.  On that day Yair Lapid, the leader of the Yesh Atid (“There Is a Future”) party, told President Reuven Rivlin that he would be able to form a government.  The new government, which was s…

On page 7 of this paper, you might have noticed the announcement for our Centennial Endowment drive. We were all set to do it more than a year ago, but we all know how that ended up. So here we are, in 2021, trying again. We’re asking for your help.

The world moves so fast that what seemed groundbreaking just a week ago already feels like a distant memory.

    My sister and I were driving around Omaha, wasting time, when we got to the intersection of 72nd and Dodge, trying to see how much of Crossroads Mall was demolished. Instead, we saw a “Pro-Palestine” demonstration occupying all four corners of the intersection. At red lights, they would …

   All the news is bad. Anti-Semitism is up by 80%, the headlines tell us. There’s a teacher’s union that announced support for BDS. Random citizens in America and Europe are attacked because they are Jewish and are held personally responsible for lives lost in Gaza. A Holocaust scholar was …

(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — In the 1960s, the Communist Party cut the Russian Jews off from the Jewish people. They prohibited them from wearing tefillin, or celebrating b’nai mitzvah, or expressing support for the State of Israel. They intimidated and imprisoned them. And the Communist…

(JTA) — The horrific violence that has erupted over the past few days between Israel’s Jewish and Arab citizens came as a surprise to many. After all, haven’t we heard recently that the elected representatives of Arab citizens of Israel in the Knesset are the new kingmakers? And that in retu…

    It’s only one of the many stories I’ve read this week: “Israeli flags were burned in front of two synagogues in Germany and the words “Free Palestine” were spray-painted on another one in Spain. This came in the midst of an international reaction to the escalating conflict in Israel.