There are as many different types of Jews as there are Jewish individuals, so my Yom Kippur is both shared and unique.
It’s difficult to explain to those who have never lived in a place where they are cultural or religious minorities the dilemma of choosing to work on an important holiday. Where I live, for many people, holidays are something you get off work as a matter of course: everybody gets…
This High Holiday season, I thought about a joke.* Three rabbinical students are praying on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The first student, a pious individual who has spent years and years studying Torah and Talmud and who spends all his spare time going over learned commentary, is moved…
I blame Rosh Hashanah for the fact that this blog entry is a day late. The Jewish New Year is so involved. It’s not like the secular new year, where traditions include champagne and a party. Instead, it’s a joyous but serious occasion that involves synagogue services and starting the…
I’m over sacrifice. In fiction, that is. I’m not quite as excited as I used to be about climaxes where Mr. Spock gasps out his last words on the other side of the radioactivity-shielding glass or Harry Potter whips off his Invisibility Cloak in the middle of a Death Eater…
(Monday post = better late than never! On the other hand, it seems I have pneumonia, so maybe that’s more of a reason than an excuse?) I feel the same way about Christmas as I feel about drinking scotch, scrapbooking, or keeping kosher: it’s a chosen activity that makes some…
One time I prayed: every other weekday, in Hebrew school
A little while — well, over a year ago, I wrote a blog entry on why, despite considering myself to be an agnostic atheist and having political opinions divergent from many supported by the Torah or mainstream Judaism, I still consider myself to be a Jew. Every time I read…
The concept of PostSecret is simple: individuals from around the world write down their secrets on postcards and send them, anonymously, to Frank Warren, the artist who dreamed up the project. Some are visually arresting; some are just words scrawled on a card; and some are a mix of the…
When presented with a neat set of categories, characters, or individuals that seem to parcel the world into four, it’s difficult not to want to place oneself in one: my element is Earth, I’m melancholic, I’d get Sorted into Hufflepuff, I’m Bea Arthur, I’m Miranda, I’m Ben Grimm, I’m Agravain,…