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…

Over time, I have come to believe that one of the greatest challenges facing observant Judaism is the false choice we are so often asked to make. We are told that we must choose between fidelity to Torah and openness toward other Jews. We must either defend traditional Jewish belief…

A personal essay on returning to the necessity of Oral Torah and what it means to me Derekh HaTorah: The Path of Torah I Have Come to Walk My journey toward observant Judaism has not been a straight road. It has been a process of inheritance, questioning, reconstruction, disappointment, rediscovery,…

(Shemot/Exodus 13:17–17:16) Beshalach is one of the most dramatic parashiyot in Shemot. In a single sweep we go from the edge of Egypt to the edge of the sea, from terror to song, from miracle to hunger, from triumph to the first real tests of faith in the wilderness. Beshalach…

There is a particular kind of pain that only Jews seem to know how to inflict on other Jews: the slow, grinding bureaucracy of belonging. Not the healthy kind of “We take covenant seriously,” but the ugly kind of “You are one of us—until you need proof.” We have managed…