Clik here to view.
Orthodoxy, Heresy and Women’s Equality
Sharp words recently exchanged in the Jewish corners of the internet are extremely revealing about the challenges facing my friends in modern Orthodoxy. And they clarify why I am a heterodox, if...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why I Will Not Simply Accept Intermarriage: Our Community’s Future Should...
Over the past two years, influential Conservative rabbis have begun flirting with performing intermarriages and with relaxing conversion standards, or at least wringing their hands at Judaism’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
What Is Moral Clarity on Gaza?
My comments on Operation Tzuk Eitan or “Mighty Cliff” (which appeared here as well as in Haaretz) triggered many positive responses, a couple of negative assessments from the right and one sharp...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Impossible Choices in Gaza
Please have a look at a message I sent last week to Congregation Ansche Chesed, that is both about the Gaza situation, and about how American Jews struggle to understand its moral challenges. Dear...
View ArticleClik here to view.
My View From Pew
As of this late date in November, 2013, I may be officially the last rabbi in America to blog about the Pew Research Center report on American Jews. Not that I’ve had nothing to say. I’ve just been...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Blessed be the God of the Jews
It’s not every day that a Talmudic parable comes to life in an actual event. But so it seems to have happened this fall in New Haven, CT. As reported in the Orthodox blog Vos Is Neias and subsequently...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Beyond the SNAP Challenge
Today is “a damp, drizzly November in my soul” … well, actually in my neighborhood. My own soul feels pretty good. But here in New York City, the weather is just as Melville describes on the first page...
View ArticleClik here to view.
SNAP To It
This week, for the second time, I am undertaking the “SNAP challenge” of spending on food only the average daily benefit for those receiving food stamps (AKA the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ressurecting The Dead
Hello friends, After a sabbatical from the synagogue and from “Honest to God” — although I hope not from honesty to God — I am returning to JCast Network and to this blog. It’s good to be back. Please...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Moses’ Modesty and R. Simcha’s Two Pockets
This past Shabbat’s Torah section, Be’ha’alotekha, includes the famous description of Moses’ singular virtue [Numbers 12.3]: “This man Moses was very humble, more than any other human being on the face...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Conservative and Reconstructionist Practice, Part 2
Rabbi David Teutsch responded to my comments comparing his Guide to Jewish Practice with the Conservative work The Observant Life with some criticisms of his own. I thank David for writing back, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Do Liberals Jews Behave? Conservative and Reconstructionist Practice
How does a liberal Jew behave? This is heterodox Judaism’s greatest challenge: Does our religion demand any particular way of living? If we do not eat differently than our non-Jewish neighbors, do not...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Too Religious to be Orthodox
This past Shabbat at Ansche Chesed we heard a presentation from Dov Elboim, a well-known Israeli writer, editor and television host, a face of the phenomenon called hazara bi’she’ela, “returning with...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Yom HaAtzmaut, 5772
A variety of important/inspiring/challenging things have made it through across my screen for Yom Ha’Atzmaut. I’d like to share some with you. A truly inspiring figure and one of the great rabbis in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How Do We Mark Yom HaShoah?
Another Yom HaShoah has come and gone, now 67 years since the end of World War II. Not that in all those years we’ve gotten it just right when it comes to marking these most overwhelming events in all...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reel Prayer
I know prayer is difficult for many modern people. We often feel like we’re at the far end of a disconnected pay phone. Yet I still feel the enormous power of prayer to re-orient the self, to help us...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Jew on Ash Wednesday
Today was a holiday in my neighborhood. Not a Jewish holiday, of course, but one I admire nonetheless: Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a 40-day period of fasting and repentance before Holy Week...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Standing At Sinai, the First Time
This past Shabbat at Ansche Chesed, the feminist theologian Judith Plaskow was in our community, to celebrate a bat mitzvah with us. As we read Parashat Yitro – with relates the revelation of the 10...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Honest Again – Forward
I’ve been away from Honest to God for a few weeks, mostly working on a research project for another audience, but I’ll get back into the swing now, beginning with this. Last month I posted the earlier...
View ArticleFasting and Bearing the Yoke
I’ve just completed the easiest fast day of the year – the 10th of Tevet, a minor, sun-up to sun-down fast. (It’s so easy because it always falls around the winter solstice, so the fast usually...
View Article
