The young man had practiced his greeting at least twenty times before leaving home. It was supposed to sound casual: “Beautiful evening, isn’t it?” Unfortunately, by the time he reached the vineyards outside Jerusalem, his carefully rehearsed words had become tangled somewhere between his heart and his tongue. When the…

Modern Jews live in a world of labels. We are Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, traditional, secular, progressive, liberal, conservative, Zionist, anti-Zionist, Religious Zionist, Haredi, Modern Orthodox, and countless variations between them. We belong to synagogues, rabbinical associations, federations, advocacy organizations, educational institutions, political movements, and social communities. These institutions and…

The Kuzari is one of the most influential works of medieval Jewish philosophy. Written by Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi around 1140, it presents a defense of Judaism through an extended dialogue between a Jewish sage and the king of the Khazars. Its original Arabic title may be translated as The Book…

Yesterday we kept Tisha B’Av. We fasted, mourned, and remembered the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the fall of Jerusalem, exile, persecution, and the long history of suffering that followed. Tisha B’Av turns our eyes backward and asks us to sit, for a time, with loss. But once…

Tisha B’Av—the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av—is the great day of national mourning in the Jewish calendar. It recalls the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, the loss of Jewish sovereignty, the scattering of Israel, and the long history of persecution, expulsion, and displacement…

For many Jews returning to Judaism, keeping kosher is one of the most visible—and sometimes most intimidating—parts of becoming more observant. Kashrut seems to reach into nearly every corner of daily life: what we purchase, how we prepare food, which dishes we use, where we eat, and even how long…

Parashat Devarim opens with a deceptively simple statement: “These are the words that Moshe spoke to all Israel” (Deuteronomy 1:1). After forty years in the wilderness, the people of Israel are standing near the border of the Promised Land. The generation that left Egypt has largely passed away. A new…

I became a rabbi after several years of formal and informal study. My education did not follow the path of a modern university degree, nor was my final examination a collection of standardized questions with simple answers. Instead, the examination was a long and wide-ranging conversation. We moved through the…

Within Judaism, a woman is neither spiritually secondary nor merely an assistant to the religious life of a man. Like a man, she is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, and therefore possesses inherent dignity, moral responsibility, and a direct relationship with the Creator. When the Torah describes…

On April 12, 1945, General Dwight D. Eisenhower entered a place for which even years of war had not prepared him. He had seen cities shattered by bombs, fields covered with the wreckage of armies, and young men killed in numbers almost impossible to comprehend. As Supreme Commander of the…