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Pursuing the Silences of Jewish Women’s History

One good read begets another is the bookworm’s version of שכר מצוה מצוה (The reward of performing a mitzvah is the mitzvah itself). In this case, historian Jonathan Krasner starts his recent article on day school archives in HaYidion with a reference to Laura Arnold Leibman’s book The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in …

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Defending Judaism

One of my occasional hobbies is to glance at auction catalogs of Jewish books. In them, I learn about fascinating works that I never heard of, as well as editions of famous tomes that are particularly rare, early, and valuable. Reading the descriptions of the works and their provenance provides its own sort of education. …

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Antisemitism Today

As someone who personally experienced antisemitism growing up in a small suburban US town, I try hard not to let fear and anger determine who I am or negatively shape my outlook. Instead, I have tried to channel those painful memories into positive actions. My embrace of Jewish life is certainly informed by that effort, …

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Middlemarch, Torah and the Art of Teaching

Over the Sukkot holiday, I took the opportunity to read Middlemarch, George Eliot’s (aka Mary Ann Evans’s–various motives for her pseudonym can be found here) monumental novel about a small town in England ca. 1830. The book is famous for its realism, including the author’s research into political, medical, and other details of the time. Admittedly, it is at times …

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Climate Optimism?

I find it regrettably easy to feel despair and hopelessness when pondering the ecological state of our world (let alone our political state). The impact of climate change is already disastrous; it’s hard to envision how the inevitable increasing warming won’t bring even greater damage, suffering, and waves of extinction. For decades, political leaders have …

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