Aside from Tu Bishvat, Shmittah is the main opportunity in the Jewish calendrical cycle, broadly defined, for most of us to celebrate, commemorate, and ritually observe our relationship as Jews to the earth and to agriculture. Shmittah also gives us a different way to relate to the land of Israel, as actual land, earth, source …
For me, one of the wonders of Jewish holidays is the ways that they always manage to resonate, each year, with issues that we, as Jews and the world, are living through. That said, the ties between Purim and the horrific war in Ukraine seem especially uncanny. The Megillah, the scroll of Esther, portrays a …
I recently came across this quotation and wondered what it might have to tell us about Jewish law. Does Jewish law fall into one of these categories or the other? Or instead, can the decisions and reasoning behind them of different rabbis of the Talmud and later poskim fall more into one camp or another? …
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 …
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. …
These past two weeks, the critically important climate conference, COP26, has been taking place in Glasgow. Even much more so than previous such conferences, there is a widespread awareness of the urgency of the moment. Each year has seen an increase in extreme climate events, and this summer was no exception, with widespread fires, record temperatures …
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, …
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 …
Today I want to pay homage to a truly remarkable Jewish educator, Chaya Gorsetman, who recently passed away. Chaya taught education at Stern College and taught at New York’s Heschel School, to name just the roles that I know of. She co-authored the book Educating in the Divine Image: Gender Issues in Orthodox Jewish Day Schools, …
A Teacher’s Teacher: A Tribute to Chaya Gorsetman Read More »
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 …