For most American Jews today, Shavuot is not exactly a big-ticket holiday. Observance lags behind springtime Passover, and it pales in comparison to Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, the fall “high holidays.” But 150 years ago, Shavuot was the one day...

It’s difficult to imagine that anyone dreams of becoming a census taker, of going door to door counting the number of inhabitants and recording their ages, their genders, their relationships, and then counting the number of rooms in their homes, even...

Nissan and Tishrei are arguably the most well-known Hebrew months because of Pesach and Rosh ha-Shanah; others like Tish’a b-Av, the 9th of Av, are known by their date, like the 4th of July. As we begin the fourth book of the Torah — B-midbar / Numbers...

I signed up months ago to write this week’s d’var Torah. I remember thinking what a fun parasha this would be to share with you all. I love the discussion of the jubilee year and of the gifts made to the sanctuary, and of the idealism that closes...

The religious philosopher Mircea Eliade speaks about religion as attempting to transform the chaos in our world into the cosmos. Essentially, he says that we take that which is unknown — that which can be different and scary — and try to make it known. We...

We must have become numb to gun violence. Hardly a day goes by without another mass shooting in a school, shopping center, place of worship or public square. We don’t even know what qualifies as a mass shooting these days. Deaths attributable...

We marked Yom HaShoa, Holocaust Memorial Day, on April 17-18. I don’t remember the details of the story, but I do remember some of the names. He was a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. We met him on sabbatical to Israel, mid-’90s. I was studying music...

What moment was the G.O.A.T. in Jewish history? We often focus on our “lachrymose history,” tallying up tragedies, expulsions, destructions, and slaughters. It might be harder to come up with good moments. There is a certain intense relief and...

It happens every year. By day two of Passover, thousands, maybe millions of Jews begin to feel a little … stuck. You know, constipation.  While no formal, peer-reviewed studies have been published on the link between Passover and constipation,...

(New York Jewish Week) — Miriam Tohill, a Jewish chaplain intern at Rikers Island, is looking forward to co-leading Passover seders for Jewish inmates this year for the first time. But conditions at the New York City jail complex are not ideal. For...

(JNS) The Torah reserves some of its most elegant poetry for nautical phenomena amid the Red Sea parting. Exodus 15 describes the “heart of the sea” and Divine nostrils blowing “majestic” waters. Immediately after Miriam’s song celebrating the...

After years of analyzing Rachel Bloom’s musical sitcom “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” we have created this audio Passover Haggadah filled with songs from the show. It comes with rules, of course. In this episode, Erin and Esther carefully considered...