People sometimes point to the ending of the book of Esther as a Jewish massacre—the disturbing part of the story that is supposedly suppressed in
People sometimes say that Hannukah celebrates the fight against “assimilation,” or against “Hellenism.” When you read 1 Maccabees, you get a somewhat different picture. Certainly,
In part inspired by the polemics that surround Hannukah, this year, for the first time since childhood, I reread the two books of Maccabees. I
Quite a few religious Jews seem to be confident, for reasons I cannot wholly understand, that the wicked societies of S’dom and Amorah, which mistreat
Why do we get rid of hametz (leavened products) for Passover? Joseph seems to be the first person in the Bible to accumulate grain and
Several years of pandemic have eroded in-person, congregational prayer in the United States; synagogue attendance remains stubbornly down, and despite a boom in online services,
White American Jews have a racism problem. This statement surprises no one but white American Jews, who have been raised to tell hazy stories about
It is hard to imagine the reader competent to review Noam Sienna’s new book, A Rainbow Thread: An Anthology of Queer Jewish Texts From The
(The below is a slight adaptation of my sermon for Yom Kippur morning; it argues that concerns of economic and social inequality are perhaps more
Shmuel Rosner misunderstands the Exodus, prioritizing national solidarity above “worn-out political debates”— and is badly mistaken.
View More