I believe that prolonged solitary confinement is a violation both of the Eighth Amendment, prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, and a violation of religious ethics, which maintain that every human being is made in the image of God and thus entitled to be treated with dignity.

When I witnessed a gun homicide, I struggled with how best to incorporate my own mourning and my sense of community loss into my Jewish worship.

Anna, a sophomore from Boulder, CO, wrote in her winning d'var, “The refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East is the biggest migration crisis since World War II – when we, the Jewish people, were the strangers.” We spoke with her to learn how her perspectives on this topic have developed since she wrote her d’var three months ago.

There was such joy in his voice as Rabbi Kevin Hale talked about going to the river near his house to wash himself in a mikveh (ritual bath) before writing the name of God in the Torah scroll he worked on.

Letters gather into words.

Whether we know them or not, everything we wear tells three stories. 

1. First is the story of who made the garment, and where and how they made it, and whether they earned a wage to support their family in the process.  
2. Next is the story of what the garment

Yom Kippur has concluded. The break-the-fast has been consumed, and the prayers about becoming the person we could be are now a memory. Now you – and every other Jew and Jewish family – must decide whether to kvetch or kvell.

Kvetching is that typically

Everywhere I look, I am surrounded by apologia.

A professional football player cold-cocks his wife in an elevator and drags her unconscious body down a hotel hallway. He issues an apology, yet it is clear that he is sorry only that he was captured on video.

Kol yisrael arevim zeh lazeh. This oft-quoted Talmudic teaching – “All of Israel is responsible, one to another" (Babylonian Talmud, Shavuot 39a) – never resonated so deeply for me as when I said goodbye to family and friends in the winter of 2003-04 and set