"Excuse Me, Are You Jewish?": Why the Lubavitchers Are So Interested in You
While my daughter, Mimi, was walking in a Brooklyn mall recently, pushing her baby in the stroller, she was approached by a modestly dressed girl of about 12 years old. Speaking with a slight accent, the girl asked, “Are you Jewish?”
The Relationship Between Prayer and Your Imagination
When the words of liturgy are taken too literally, the sacred power of prayer is often lost. In his latest book, Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman offers a way worshipers can transcend the limitations imposed by language.
Why We Closed Our Synagogue’s Preschool and Started Over from Scratch
This Month in The Tent: Preparing for the High Holidays
Why I Love the “Once-a-Year" Jews
I imagine how Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur services feel to shul regulars: a fashion-show of strangers, preening, talking, walking in and out, coming late, and leaving early.
The High Holidays Tradition I Vowed Not to Repeat
Jewish law says we are to fast on Yom Kippur. This is based on the biblical law that on the Day of Atonement, “You shall afflict yourselves” (Lev.
How I Try to Create Jewish Memories for my Grandkids
What are your earliest memories of “doing Jewish”? I have a smattering of recollections from when I was 5, 6, and 7, though not much before that. Even from those years, I can only call up bits and pieces: moments, vignettes, colors, flavors.
How Baseball Can Help Us Fulfill the Call of the High Holidays
Two specific events produced more Jewish pride than anything else in the turbulent decade of the 1960s: Sandy Koufax’s refusal to pitch on Yom Kippur in 1965, and not quite two years later, the Six Day War in June