From the category archives:

Jewish Holidays and Culture

No Place for Old Folks

March 9, 2010

During last week’s Purim celebrations, I began to feel my age. Not the Megillah reading – you can appreciate that no matter how old you are (especially if you’re hard of hearing…helps drown out the din of the groggers). No, it was the party afterward.
Every year, my wife Jody and I go dancing at the [...]

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eBooks and Sex

January 26, 2010

I’ve written in the past both about eBooks and sex, two of my favorite subjects. My stated position on eBooks is that they will supplant printed books entirely within 20 years, probably less; newspapers and magazines will be entirely digital as early as 5 years from now. My recent article on sex explored how premarital [...]

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Cliff’s Air Conditioner, Climate Change, and the Jewish People

January 19, 2010

My friend Cliff called this week to say he was getting rid of an old air conditioning unit and would I want to take it off his hands…at no charge? Cliff knew that I had spent much of the summer sweltering in my top floor home office.
I have an air conditioner already but, at only [...]

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Introducing SiddurWiki

November 18, 2009

When my father died in March, I posted an article on how it has been difficult for me to say Kaddish on a regular basis. Instead, I proposed to sponsor a series of events that over the course of the 12 months of mourning would serve the goal of “ilu’i nishmato” – to “elevate the [...]

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Oud v’Rikoud

November 12, 2009

The annual Jerusalem International Oud Festival has become the leading event of its kind on the ethnic music calendar. Now in its tenth year, the festival, which kicks off tonight, lasts for 16 days and includes shows in both Jerusalem and Nazareth. But those of us fortunate to have attended last week’s “Boogie Nights” dance [...]

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A Mohel in Jerusalem

November 4, 2009

Last week our mohel, Rabbi Chanan Feld, passed away in Berkeley. I say “our” mohel – he presided over our now 18-year-old son Amir’s brit mila (ritual circumcision) in 1991 – but he really belonged to the entire northern half of California where he touched the lives of literally thousands of new parents and their [...]

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Sexuality and Orthodoxy

October 13, 2009

Sex sells. And in Jerusalem, with its large religious population, a session on if Orthodoxy can come to terms with sexual activity – both in and out of marriage – drew an overflow crowd at the recent Gateways Festival of Jewish Learning and Culture.
The festival is a remarkable event: two days of pluralistic learning throughout [...]

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Wacky Rabbi

October 7, 2009

What non-leather footwear did you don this Yom Kippur? Crocs, you say? Oy va voy! You just violated the latest fashion halacha from none other than esteemed Lithuanian leader Rabbi Yosef Sholom Eliayshiv who banned the popular rubber shoes for being “too comfortable. “
The ruling, according to an article in Ynet, came in response to [...]

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Business Advice for Social Entrepreneurs

July 29, 2009

As the 16 “social entrepreneurs” took to the stage last Thursday to present their 15-second “elevator pitch,” I was filled with a profound sense of Jewish pride.
Here were some of Israel’s best and brightest, hand selected by the Presentense organization which aims to arm young people who want to do good with solid business skills [...]

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Passion for Hebrew

July 21, 2009

I have long had a love hate relationship with Hebrew. I first arrived in Israel in 1984 as a backpacker with no plans and lots of time to indulge in the fine art of bumming around. I did a few Jewish learning programs, wrote scripts for videos, worked in a deli and, somewhere in the [...]

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