Religion & Holidays
Synagogues may no longer be stuffy and hidebound, but contemporary changes utterly transform for the worse the powerful experience of the Days of Awe.
A brief history of the etrog.
The biblical democratization of rest.
The antithesis of both ancient pagan fatalism and the modern cult of victimhood.
Today’s liberal Judaism may or may not have struck the right balance between tradition and change; but that’s a conversation worth having.
Losing public authority over Scripture.
Benjamin Constant’s On Religion.
“In heaven there will be no law,” an American legal giant once wrote. For Jews, it’s exactly the opposite.
From Chicago to Jerusalem to Athens.
Unless they feel personally welcome, non-traditional Jews won’t care to own anything at all of the tradition.
From Alaska to Jerusalem.
In his rendering of the banishment of Ishmael, the Torah reading for Rosh Hashanah, Rembrandt reminds us of the bond between Jews and humanity at large.
From a naïve confidence to an enduring hopefulness.
