Religion

The Month of Return

The Jewish month of Av will soon become Ellul, and mourning for the destruction of the Temples will give way to repentance for our sins.  It is time for introspection; and, as we contemplate our relationships with others and with the Divine, questions about penitence, forgiveness, change, and mortality itself inevitably arise.

Inventing Pluralist America

With the United States of 2012 more culturally diverse than ever, it is tempting to think that the country’s social pluralism was foreordained.  After all, aren’t we a nation of immigrants?

The Postmodern Golem

To Elizabeth Baer, the recent spate of golem literature, going beyond novels to comic books, artwork, even The X-Files, is an “intentional tribute to Jewish imagination as well as to the crucial importance of such imagination in the post-Holocaust period.”

Endearment in the Wilderness

First of all, let’s stipulate that the midbar in Sefer B'midbar, the fourth of the five books of Moses which we have just finished reading, is not necessarily a desert. 

Ye Sacred Muses

Are Jewish mourners forbidden from listening to music?  On the face of it, the prohibition is absolute.  Certainly, it is forbidden for mourners to attend concerts, or performances in general.  But what about liturgical music, the music of the synagogue?

Rav Elyashiv’s Mixed Legacy

Last Wednesday night, in the middle of a blazing heat wave, a quarter of a million people flocked to the funeral of Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv.  At the request of the deceased, no eulogies were delivered, but for the rest of the week, the Haredi press spoke of little other than the man.

Doing Social Justice

Some years ago, when I was helping the daughter of friends prepare for her bat mitzvah, we got to talking about her ‘‘bat mitzvah project.’’  She confided that while her parents wanted her to do something Jewish, she wanted to do something related to social justice.  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.  

Do Jews Curse Christians?

The patristic authority Jerome complained bitterly about the Jews’ condemnation of notsrim (believers in Jesus, “the Nazarite”), in the benediction of the daily Amidah known as Birkat ha-Minim: "three times a day in all their synagogues they anathemize the Christian name."

Text-Message Halakhah

From the ancient moment when the Sages began committing the Oral Torah to writing, through the invention of the printing press, all the way to searchable electronic databases of Jewish texts, each change in communications technology has had an impact on the Torah. 

The Birth of Conservative Judaism

My little corner of Queens, New York, where the six Conservative synagogues that existed two decades ago have dwindled to two, epitomizes the national movement.