Rabbi Geoffrey Claussen has written an interesting piece on whether or not there’s real hope for an American Neo-Musar movement. The whole piece is here, and here’s a snippet: …The pietistic Musar movement, led by Rabbi Israel Salanter (1810–1883), argued…
Anat Hoffman, who is often the most public face of Women of the Wall (Nashot HaKotel), was arrested this morning during WoW’s Rosh Hodesh Av service. It’s not yet clear what the charges are. The WoW gathering was huge this…
On June 1st, queer Jewish spirituality outfit Nehirim and NUJLS (the National Union of Jewish LGBTIQQ Students) announced that they were going to merge, becoming one outfit–eventually named Nehirim, with a new Director of Student Programming and Student Programming Advisory…
The Women of the Wall just sent out the following memo: MAY 13th — Noa Raz, a Conservative Jew in her early thirties who lives and works in Tel Aviv, was physically assaulted early Tuesday morning by an ultra-Orthodox man…
From today’s Nutjob Anti-Semites With Scary Amounts of Power files, Salon reports, Last week, retired Bishop Giacomo Babini of the Italian town of Grosseto told the Catholic Pontifex website that the Catholic pedophile scandal is being orchestrated by the “eternal…
Since we’re ecumenical folks around here, and since Tefillin Barbie is such an old friend of ours, I thought it might be nice to note that a woman named Julie Blake Fisher has created a whole wardrobe of Episcopal Priest…
This merits a post of its own, but briefly, a new bill has decided to fly in the face of halakha and distinguish converts from those born of Jewish parents vis a vis Israeli citizenship, and to hand the Rabbinate…
Below is an article (tshuvah) by Rabbi David Golinkin of the Schechter Institute in Jerusalem–the seminary that trains Masorti (Conservative) rabbis in Israel. I don’t agree with all of his conclusions (namely, he seems to imply but not state outright…
As the very good dlevy notes in his post about the recent Boston event, Jay Michaelson and I have this ongoing machloket (Torah debate) about religion, spirituality, and a number of other things. As such, the nice folks over at…
A Nazi group in Colorado has adopted part of the state highway. A spokesman for the group says the group is “doing good things.” Be’col Lashon is taking nominations for its “Excellence in Reporting on Global Judaism” media awards. Winners…