How Midrash and Commentary Help Us Read Between the Lines
As Rosh HaShanah approached last year, I was living in southwestern China, where I celebrated by eating apples and explaining the Jewish New Year to my Chinese roommate.
What Can We Learn From the Juxtaposition of Joy and Sorrow?
Several times during the year, the Jewish calendar places joyous and challenging holidays near each other. What lessons we take from this juxtaposition?
Galilee Diary: Uncertainty
by Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Galilee Diary and Ten Minutes of Torah)
Galilee Diary: On the Waterfront
This Sukkot, Support Environmental Protections from Border to Border
Question: On Sukkot, we remember our ancestors' struggles to balance their lives with the surrounding environment in order to produce a bountiful harvest each year. But most of us no longer grow our own food or live at the mercy of natural phenomena in the same ways.
A Jewish Response to Political Scandal
As we witness public figures dismantled by the revelation of ugly episodes from their pasts, we parents must distill these events and their aftermath for our children.
Yom Kippur and the Gift of Forgiveness
Yom Kippur in Vietnam
Yom Kippur, 1965, I was a Navy medical officer stationed aboard a destroyer off the coast of Vietnam.