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.

Though we made aliyah in 1997, and since then Israel has been in several challenging security situations, my family and I have never needed to seek shelter in an air raid. Until last week.  

For the sake of Zion I will not be silent, for the sake of Jerusalem I will not be still. – Isaiah 62:1

(JTA) — When I was growing up in Haifa, the city’s mixed population was a steady background, often overlooked rather than noted with wonder. Jews and Arabs lived, worked and raised children side by side, at times together. As part of a secular family, I remember driving to the Arab neighborh…

(JTA) — After Hamas launched seven missiles at Jerusalem from Gaza this week, forcing the unprecedented evacuation of the Knesset and the city’s District Court, a new escalation was inevitable. Once again, Israel’s capital is at the center of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one intertwinin…

    “A top Quebec court mostly upheld a provincial law banning Jews and other religious minorities who work in public from wearing religious symbols such as yarmulkes, crucifixes and hijabs in their places of employ,” David Lazarus recently wrote for the JTA.

(JTA) — April 29 marks the 76th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau, the longest-operating Nazi concentration camp. A lesser-known part of that day is that Japanese-American troops played a key role in the liberation of Dachau and its satellite camps. Japanese-American soldiers also resc…

This article originally appeared on Kveller.

Text Messages is a column sharing wisdom from the weekly Torah portion produced with The Jewish Week. 

This piece originally appeared in Alma, 70 Faces Media’s feminist Jewish culture site. Content warning: anti-Japanese slur.

This article originally appeared in The Jewish News of Northern California.

A version of this essay originally appeared on Alma, 70 Faces Media’s feminist Jewish culture site.

(JTA) — In the 1980s, Dennis Neill, an employee of our family business, came out as gay to my late father, Charles Schusterman. Coming out in Tulsa, Oklahoma, during the height of the AIDS crisis was a risky thing to do, and it could have cost Dennis his job. But my father embraced Dennis an…

A version of this essay originally appeared on Alma, 70 Faces Media’s feminist Jewish culture site.

(JTA) — Masks, quarantine, self-isolation, social distancing — these have become part of our everyday life. So has loneliness, misunderstanding, frustration and irritation. While these feelings may be new and unfamiliar territory for many people, they are quite familiar for those with disabi…

            One day the wind-chill got so low, most folks in Omaha were happy the covid-19 pandemic forced everyone to remain at home. I began to day dream of years long-gone and happy hours, spent reading catalogues from garden stores from all over the country.  These last years I haven’t r…

Text Messages is a column sharing wisdom from the weekly Torah portion produced with The Jewish Week. 

Text Messages is a column sharing wisdom from the weekly Torah portion produced with The Jewish Week. 

    “Is the Jewish deli the new synagogue?” Andrew Silow Carroll asked in his headline for a recent JTA article. He posed the question after speaking with author Rachel Gross, who recently published her book Beyond the Synagogue: Jewish Nostalgia as Religious Practice.

Here is an interesting story:

(JTA) — A poll released last week by Monmouth University showed that 24% of Americans likely will never get the COVID-19 vaccine if they can avoid it. One hopes that as people have more information and know others who have been vaccinated without ill effects, they will change their minds. 

(JTA) — On Jan. 27, 1969, nine Jews were hanged in Tahrir Square in the center of Baghdad as half a million people looked on.  

Even though the Jewish year doesn’t end and begin anew in a few days, it’s difficult not to feel a sense of closure when December 31 rolls around. It comes with the territory and besides, we are all eager to see this year come to an end.

(JTA) — If you would have asked me before Passover — as I packed matzah and other items for Jews preparing to experience their first Seder alone at home — whether we would need to rethink Hanukkah celebrations, I would have laughed you off. December felt a lifetime away and most of us assume…

    The photo was taken December 1, 1931. The text on the back reads:

(JTA) — Just before Thanksgiving, a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court forbade the state of New York from enforcing 10- or 25-person occupancy limits on religious organizations in places where COVID-19 cases are at their highest. In the case of Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo…

This story originally appeared in Alma.

   It’s Thanksgiving week, which normally comes with a pretty standard set of rules. You plan an extensive menu that should include Turkey and pumpkin pie. There should also be cranberries, yams with marshmallows and something called ‘green bean casserole.’ Then you invite friends and family…

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(JTA) — Before I met him, I saw Benjamin McDowell’s name in the news. Inspired by Dylann Roof, the notorious shooter responsible for the Charleston church massacre, he planned an attack on a synagogue that was thwarted by FBI agents.

This article originally appeared in Alma.

(JTA) — Like many progressives in America, as soon as Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed to the Supreme Court Monday night, my social media feeds erupted with anger over the process and fear that her appointment could presage a rollback of marriage equality.

(JTA) — Two years ago, a gunman entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh with hate in his heart and bigotry in his soul. Beset by a false sense of grievance and an imagined threat, he murdered 11 peaceful souls at prayer, taking age-old anti-Semitism to its most vile conclusion. We w…

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   During the week leading up to the 2020 election, I need a distraction and so I find myself making etrog jam. As I carefully pull each seed from the etrog, it occurs to me how being in the kitchen ties me to generations of Jews. Every year, we baby that fruit for the duration of Sukkot, we…

This article originally appeared in The Nosher.

    Jews do not speak in a political monologue. Like so many misconceptions, putting Jews, a broad, cultural or religious identity, into a political box is wrong and approaching bigotry.

    Let’s face it: we’re not all so very nice to each other these days. After several years of hearing the word “partisan” a few times too often, we just can’t figure out how to get along anymore. And that pesky neighbor just put a political sign in his front yard for a candidate you  don’t …

(JTA) — It’s been seven months since we collectively adopted the term “social distance” to mean a specific geographic space between people. But those words took on a new meaning to me when I looked at my phone on Wednesday morning.

    It took most of Thursday morning to write 2/3 of an op-ed, which I subsequently threw in the garbage. I’m not even sure I remember what I wrote—that’s how boring and listless it was.