Passover is a holiday of remembrance, of ritual re-enactment: this, we say, is what our ancestors experienced. This is what they felt and knew, what they tasted in their blood. The movement from slavery to liberation, from the soul’s winter to spring. We must never forget, we say, we must always remember, be thankful for our freedom, never take it for granted. “In each generation,” the Haggadah enjoins, “we should feel as if we personally had come out of Egypt.”
In “Time Telling in Feminist Theory,” Rita Felski suggests that there are four main ways feminists discuss and use time: redemption, regression, repetition and rupture. They are aptly named as they behave similar to their labels. Redemption is the linear… Read More ›
This week’s Torah portion is Vayikra (Leviticus 1:1 – 5:26). Vayikra is essentially one long discourse on animal sacrifice with an occasional grain or oil offering included. This killing of animals, their subsequent burning and the shared eating of their… Read More ›
The Torah parshah for this week is Tetzaveh (Exodus 27:20 – 30:10). Mostly it describes the priesthood, both of Aaron and his sons. It details how they should be consecrated, what they should wear, the difference between the garb of… Read More ›
Almost every day, I walk in Central Park. There are certain trees there I’ve come to know: the gnarled cherry trees by the reservoir, the bending willows and tall bald cypress by the pond, the sycamores that drop their bark… Read More ›
The parshah for next week is Beshalach (Exodus 13:17 – 17:16). There are a lot of very important events happening in just four chapters. In fact, one could write a blog on any one of the following topics: the Israelite… Read More ›
Parshah Vayigash covers Genesis 44:18 to 47:27. It involves the reunification of Joseph with his brothers and his father, the immigration of Jacob’s entire family to Egypt and Joseph successfully leading Egypt through famine. In other words, the parshah provides… Read More ›
This parshah contains the account of Jacob’s marriages to Leah and Rachel, (who happen to be his cousins) as well as the birth of his 11 sons and one daughter. It describes the long amounts of time Jacob worked for… Read More ›
In the book, Women v. Religion: The Case Against Faith and for Freedom, editor Karen L. Garst puts together the voices of women from a variety of backgrounds in an effort to present a case against faith. While the introduction… Read More ›
The Torah parshah for this week (to be read on 15 September) is Vayelech (Devarim/Deut. 31:1 – 30). September 15th is also Shabbat Shuvah (return), the Shabbat that falls between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It is the time of… Read More ›
What does it mean to be an Arab-Jew in the twenty-first century? For me, it means recognizing and honoring Arab culture: the music, food, language, and customs my parents brought with them when they emigrated from Cairo in 1952; it means feeling a strong bond with other Egyptians, North Africans, and Middle Easterners, refusing efforts in the U.S. and elsewhere to demonize and “other” any of us. It means respecting the claims of displaced Palestinians and protesting Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. It also means not seeking to equate our displacement with Palestinian displacement, as some Jews from Arab countries have sought to do, in a transparent effort to discredit Palestinian suffering.
This is the first part of a series of reflections on the weekly Torah portions. For those of you unfamiliar with Judaism, we read the Torah in sections. There are 52 parshot (or portions), one parshah (portion) is read each… Read More ›
2.24.2017 During a meditation before bed, I saw an image of a candelabra similar to what Jewish people use for Hanukkah. It was yellow/gold in color, engraved/etched onto a surface. All at once I saw the imagery of a star,… Read More ›
For almost four years, I’ve been living with the long-term effects of an inner ear lesion. The lesion is long gone but its side effects are not. Throughout the day, I feel a combination of unsteadiness and sudden, unpredictable sensations… Read More ›
Sometimes, being overwhelmed with guilt makes one unable to act. Other times, guilt manipulates and attempts to control. It might offer a sense of responsibility and concern. More often than not, guilt comes bundled in small doses of should-haves and… Read More ›
For over ten years, I’ve been teaching a work of early Jewish mysticism known as Sefer Yetzirah, or the Book of Creation. There are widely differing opinions on the book’s origin and dating, but many scholars date it to the… Read More ›
My birthday was last Wednesday. Perhaps more than any other time of the year (yes, even more than Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), the days and weeks leading up to my birthday are filled with personal reflection. Not that religious… Read More ›
A number of years ago, I had the opportunity to take a class with Chava Weissler, a scholar at Lehigh University who studies Jewish history, community, and sacred practices– particularly those practices related to women. My fellow students in the… Read More ›
In ancient times, Pesach was one of three pilgrimage holidays, the others being Sukkot and Shavuot. According to the the Torah, Israelite men were required to travel to Jerusalem to bring offerings to the temple. Supposedly, this reconnected these Israelites… Read More ›
Queen Esther An orphan child, who became a well respected queen, Esther, the Queen of Persia, was a woman of integrity, Wisdom and courage, a beautiful woman, truly supreme, favored by God, She had a awareness of dependability, steady strong,… Read More ›
The Book of Esther tells a story in which women’s power is not so much repressed as asserted. The king who banishes one queen finds himself submitting to the will of another. Numerous women writers of various ethnic, religious, and racial backgrounds in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries have found inspiration in the stories of both Esther and Vashti’s disobedience to an autocratic king.
In the ancient world, snakes represented fertility, creativity, rebirth, wisdom and, even, death. They were often closely connected to female goddesses, priestesses and powerful human females who were the embodiment of such powers. For example, there is the Minoan goddess/priestess… Read More ›
My cat is a hunter. You can see it in her eyes. She plays fetch considerably better than the dog and seems to enjoy playing with her “kill” – throwing it up in the air, batting it around and pouncing… Read More ›
The #metoo campaign is empowering. I am enthralled (albeit sorrowful at the suffering), with the fact that thousands of women are bringing attention to the normalcy of sexual harassment and sexual assault. Yet, two months ago, my elation was squashed…. Read More ›
Last week Sunday, my partner and I were in Budapest, Hungary. We stopped at the Dohany Street Synagogue, the second largest synagogue in the world and the largest in Europe. After we bought our tickets and proceeded through security, we… Read More ›
Two weekends ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the Jewish Museum on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The Jewish Museum has long been a favorite museum for me. My wife and I took our daughter to this particular exhibit because… Read More ›
On Rosh haShanah and Yom Kippur (the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement), and on the festivals throughout the year, traditional Jewish liturgy includes the Thirteen Attributes of the Divine. Exodus 34:6-7 is the first to mention these… Read More ›
It is quite common, I think, for Jewish feminists to gravitate to the first creation story of Genesis/Bereshit as an example of human equality but struggle to claim this same passage as an example of the goodness of embodiment. Genesis/Bereshit… Read More ›
My partner and I are getting married in a little over a month. She, a lawyer, and I, a professor, live in the Czech Republic. Technically, we aren’t getting married because the Czech Republic doesn’t have marriage equality. Our relationship… Read More ›
I had few expectations before my visit in the winter of 1999 to Cairo’s Rav Moshe Synagogue, also called the “Rambam.” I only knew it to be an obscure synagogue and yeshiva associated with the renowned twelfth-century theologian, sage, and physician,… Read More ›
