Faith and Practice

We Need a Renewed Judaism Now

Can the Jewish people reshape itself into a movement for world transformation? Read Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s vision of a renewed Judaism.

Arts and Culture

A Fitting End? The Ex's Latest Record Testifies To a Remarkable Career

By Charlie Bertsch

Heard from start to finish, 30 doesn’t suggest a detour from The Ex’s original goal so much as a widening of the route leading there. From the spare punk feel of “Rules” through the more tonally varied performances on “State of Shock”, “Frenzy” and “Ethiopian hagere,” the band’s sound has consistently foregrounded rhythm over melody. Most tracks, here and on their studio albums, give listeners little time to rest. But despite that insistently propulsive character, they are curiously refreshing, a reminder that moving forward often takes less energy than standing still.

Life and Action

Kibbutz Puppy

By Rabbi Haviva Ner-David

After leaving Jerusalem for the countryside, Ner-David’s kids finally get their dog–and their mom learns that we humans truly are not alone on earth.

Life and Action

Angetevka: Bathrooms and Blessings

By Angela Himsel

What do you do in the bathroom? TMI or a source of blessing?

News and Politics

The Sophistry of Daniel Ayalon

By Moshe Yaroni

Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister is well-known for his extremist views. Most recently, Minister Ayalon has reintroduced the term “Disputed Territories” in order to undermine the commonality of Diaspora usage of the term “Occupied Territories.” Moshe Yaroni explains why this campaign has been undertaken, and what its real objectives are.

Life and Action

Fiction: The End of Anti-Semitism

By Aaron Hamburger

What happens when you encourage children to unburden themselves, to dispense with the inhibitions and the fears that stifle their inner literary selves? Aaron Hamburger tells the story of two adolescent boys coming out to each other, however awkwardly, in a Midwestern Jewish elementary school.

Faith and Practice

Tzedakah, Take Two

By Jill Jacobs

With only one day left for tax-deductible giving in 2009, it’s time to look again at tzedakah. There Shall Be No Needy author Rabbi Jill Jacobs answers questions about how much money to allocate to tzedakah, and how to give it away most effectively.

News and Politics

On the 'Right' to Be a Settler

By Louis Frankenthaler

Jewish settlers are increasingly resorting to the use of civil rights discourses to legitimate their illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. An Israeli activist draws our attention to the phenomenon, contending that its purpose is to conceal the denial of basic human rights to Palestinians.

Arts and Culture

The Timing of Transformation: A Record Makes Its Way Back To the Top of the Stack

By Charlie Bertsch

There’s something about Oren Ambarchi and z’ev’s Spirit Transform Me that makes ad hoc montage curiously appropriate. One way to think about a work of this nature, with its lack of melody and wariness of regular patterns, is to regard it as an invitation to tear down the walls created through the division of mental labor. The spirit, in this interpretation, manifests itself in the urge to experience it’s components as a singular whole.

Arts and Culture

Poems: A Crown for Yiddish

By Jacqueline Osherow

Jacqueline Osherow is one of our best-known contemporary Jewish poets. We are pleased to offer here a cleverly woven sonnet sequence in which the poet visits Antwerp to find the mama loschen pristine, and is rewarded not only with “Yiddish cellular” but a new urge to daven, to find the diamond that is really hidden.