Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel devoted much of his writing and teaching to calling people to “Radical Amazement,” or heightened awareness of mystery and awe. "We don't live in an awareness that all that is is an incomprehensible mystery and miracle,”...

When my grandfather, Rabbi Benson Skoff, was in the third grade, he ran for class president. He told me that he ran against a girl in his class and that he thought the gentlemanly thing to do would be to vote for her. And he expected her to do the same. She...

While we are awaiting the outcome of the Israel-Iran conflict — at a minimum Israel should demand that the regime renounce its longstanding objective of annihilating the Jewish state — let’s not forget about the Palestinian problem. As an international-relations...

As the Children of Israel leave Mount Sinai, in preparation for their journey to the Land of Canaan, the Torah tells us that: “And they departed from the mountain of the Lord three days’ journey.” (10:33) Commentators explain that this means that...

Baseball great Satchel Paige has been quoted as saying, “How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?” The answer would be an alarmingly high number for some friends and me after a recent lunch.  Let me process the trauma.  Seven...

For the past two years, I’ve had the privilege of developing and teaching a course titled “Israeli Politics in an Era of Polarization” at Washington University, as an Israel Fellow in the Department of Jewish, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies...

Though I have always cared about the future of Israel and Palestine, studying the conflict used to cause me to feel hopeless and powerless. I felt like I would never know enough to be able to contribute to nuanced discussion, much less reimagine the...

What should Israel do when the Status-Quo is anything but? When David Ben Gurion drafted the Status-Quo Agreement following Israel’s independence in 1948, it aimed to codify Israel’s identity as a home for observant Jews: It asserted Shabbat...

Imagine sitting in the crowd of a wedding as two women exchange vows, or witnessing a Jewish partner pledge their commitment to their Muslim beloved. Envision next a ceremony unbound by ritual in which two secular Jews join in matrimony through legal...

My friend has a little wooden sign in her kitchen that says, “Sorry for the mess, but we live here.” It always makes me smile because it acknowledges that life is often a messy business. Between the kids leaving crumpled up homework,...

I get sinus infections. I often get them more than once a year. By the time my symptoms go from bad to worse, I’m on antibiotics, an antihistamine, a steroid inhaler, a nasal spray, a nasal rinse, an anti-inflammatory, an antacid, and chicken soup....

“We can’t let people ever forget,” said Leo Wolf, chairman emeritus of the St. Louis Holocaust Committee and a Holocaust survivor, in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s 1995 coverage of the opening of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center. “We...