Why Unity Is Impractical And You Can, Too
On The Mysteries Of King Solomon And Koheles
I write this in my Sukkah, wearing my intellectual sleeping cap and bunny slippers, as the birds chirp all around on this glorious first morning of Chol Hamoed. Why, oh why, would Jews choose to read Koheles, Ecclesiastes, most nihilistic of all twenty-four scriptures, during a festival of joy? Granted, it is not my custom; Chabad […]
Love and Fear in Elul (part 1)
Bear with me: Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush helped me understand a mind-bending discourse on love and fear.
On The Topic Of Having A Band At Slichos
With thanks to Eli Berger, who wanted me to write something about Jewish aesthetics. If live music can stir our emotions and slichos is meant to be an emotional prayer connecting us with our creator, it might seem like being against a band at slichos is pure stodgy contrarianism. But the truth is, unsurprisingly, more […]
Writing about it won’t help. I’m so angry. I’m so angry for being born and for being in this place. Not really. not authentically. Not in a way that I’d want to reverse the process of being born or being in this world. See, even that’s not real. And that’s part of why I’m angry. […]
I have extensive experience at both normative and late-starter Yeshivos (religious schools for Jewish men). While I find, socially, that I simply get along better with other Baalei Teshuva (Jews raised as non-religious who become religious later in life) due to shared interests and experiences, and I completely understand the tendency of Baalei Teshuva to […]
How The Jew Haters Desperately Need Our Help
There is a certain type of mourning that elevates. Just as upon observing proud triumph or awful beauty we feel ourselves wrenched from our narrow horizons and pushed upward toward a higher view, so, too, in recalling or witnessing bitter tragedy are we forced to acknowledge, by the power of a story, that the universe does […]