 | Open Minded Torah: Of Irony, Fundamentalism and Love A beautiful book, an exhilarating hybrid... Jonathan Rosen, author of The Talmud and the Internet ...a book for people who want help listening for the elusive, important silences that course beneath the clamor of everyday life... Judith Shulevitz, author of The Sabbath World Enlightening and enthralling... Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks |
‘Do you really have seven children?’ ‘How do you remember their names?” ‘My Favorite Child‘ – in the Jerusalem Post Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post
‘Please remove me from your list.’ After writing my last piece in the Jewish Daily Forward about women in the ultra-orthodox community, I received a lot of emails like that. Friends in the community in which I live wrote of their disappointment: some suggesting that I had turned a few stories into generalizations, others [...]
Simon Rocker reviews Open Minded Torah in the Jewish Chronicle: ’Kolbrener will make an agreeable literary companion over a weekend, an elegant exponent of 21st-century Torah, rooted in traditional Jewish commitment while open to wider civilisation.’ Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the [...]
‘When Women Can’t Even Say Thank You’ – my piece in the Jewish Daily Forward Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post
I am now looking at the Memorial Book, published in Tel Aviv in 1967, for the community of Govorovo in Poland. My mother’s grandparents and most of their family were murdered by the Nazis. I am now looking at pictures of my great grandfather, my namesake, Velvel Blumstein, and my great-grandmother, Feiga Blumstein, and, across [...]
My name badge at Limmud says ‘William’ in big block lettters, my last name smaller below. There is no title, no university affiliation. In this way, the design of the name tag reflects Limmud principles – inclusive and without hierarchies. Someone mentioned to me privately that he had come here with the sole purpose [...]
My recent Jerusalem talk on John Milton’s Paradise Lost – on beginnings and endings and what happens in between. Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post
On authenticity, peace and living with imperfection – Newt’s Invented States in the Washington Post ‘On Faith’ Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post
Two days ago, on December 11, Judge Joseph Shapira of the Jerusalem District Court ruled, after a four-year legal drama, that Naomi Ragen in her novel Sotah knowingly copied from the work of the author Sarah Shapiro, Growing with My Children. Though not publicized, I was the literary expert for Sarah Shapiro, the plaintiff, and I provided [...]
What the author of Paradise Lost might say about religion in if he were alive today -in ‘On Faith’ in the Washington Post. Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tweet about it Subscribe to the comments on this post
