Welcome to Honest To God
Welcome to this new blog about Judaism, the religion of the Jewish people. I’m writing from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the capital of the Diaspora, at the corner of West End Avenue and 100th...
View ArticleCelebrating Gay Marriage
I can think of no social transformation in my lifetime as rapid and sweeping as the acceptance now accorded gay people. I understand if some gay people view their public embrace as less than quick or...
View ArticleThe King’s Torah
The Torah’s authority is bound up with the moral stature of those who teach it. Consider a well-known passage from the Talmud (Yoma 86a) on the verse “You shall love the Lord your God with all your...
View ArticleSummertime, and the Living is Miserable
It’s 100 degrees here in Camp Ramah in the Berkshires. It’s sweltering, humid, buggy and dusty. Pretty miserable. But then, miserable is just what high summer should be on the Jewish calendar. This...
View ArticleSeptember Song
Camp is over, after a great season. Today is Rosh Hodesh Elul, and I’m back in New York. Summer is departing, and autumn looms. (And I will resume blogging. Thanks for patience during a hiatus.) I...
View ArticleHonesty on Paternity (NYT Ethicist)
This week’s Sunday NY Times “Ethicist” column was a fascinating reflection about honesty and deception. The questioner was a man who years ago had an adulterous affair with a neighbor, and he writes...
View ArticleFood Stamp Challenge
Tomorrow after nightfall, we will recite Havdala and conclude Shabbat, and – as always – I will wish my family a shavua tov, a good week. But for me, this coming week will not be so good – or at least...
View ArticleFood Stamp update
Two-and-a-half days into my “Food Stamp Challenge,” and I have to say … it’s not easy. Generally, the experience is attuning my attention to just how plentiful and varied food typically is in my life....
View Article12th of Cheshvan
Yesterday was the 12th of Cheshvan, the 16th anniversary of Yitzhak Rabin’s murder, at the hands of a right-wing extremist, Yigal Amir. That day and the succeeding days are vivid in my memory. We were...
View ArticleMy Food Stamp Challenge
Ansche Chesed folks know that last week I undertook the food stamp challenge – the self-imposed commitment to live for a week as if all I could spend on food and drink was $4.50 per day, the average...
View ArticleNusseibeh, Avineri & the Jewish People
What follows is not news – I’m nearly two months behind things. But then again, everything on the internet is simultaneous, isn’t it? So I think it remains worth discussing. Maybe it’s news to you. On...
View ArticleA Mind is a Terrible Thing to Steal
I’ve been thinking about the widening Long Island SAT cheating scandal, since another 13 people were arrested last week. Now five young men have been charged with taking college board exams on behalf...
View ArticleHorrifying Truths and Your Neighbor’s Blood
We sports fans have had our world rocked in recent weeks with the horrifying sexual abuse reports coming from the Penn State football program, and (on a smaller scale) the Syracuse basketball program....
View ArticleNot So Honest Kars-4-Kids-4-God
The first time I heard the ubiquitous 1877-Kars-4-Kids radio ads, I knew where this was headed. Who solicits donations for “kids” “… please help a kid today” … without saying who was to benefit? Which...
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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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