 | 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 |
On the day before Independence Day in Haaretz: Building an Israeli identity that can encompass Israelis from ultra-Orthodox to post-Zionists may rest on a paradox: We are all at home, citizens of the Jewish state, but we must also feel that we are still in exile, as we have not yet arrived at the realization [...]
You tell the wise child when she asks about the laws of the holiday – we don’t have dessert, ’ain maftirin achar ha’pesach afikoman,’ we don’t have an afikoman after the meal. No dessert! Yet, the Talmudic sages use the Greek term - afikoman – for what we do eat at the end of the meal, the broken [...]
Thoughts on autonomy, independence and the Israeli Elections 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
Recently, Rabbi Shlomo Aviner answered a question from parents who had a child with Down Syndrome. They wanted to know if the blessing marking good tidings or renewal – ‘shehechayanu’ – traditionally recited upon the birth of a child be recited for their newborn. Rabbi Aviner responded that the blessing should be recited, but accompanied [...]
Elie Jesner and I write about a non-triumphalist Hanuka for Israel in the twenty-first century in the Times of Israel. 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
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
My piece on celebrating World Down Syndrome Day 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
‘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 [...]
