I never pray during silent prayer.  At age 6 or 7, while sitting beside my parents in a sanctuary full of worshippers bowing their heads and swaying back and forth, I convinced myself that too many people were talking to G-d at once. I reserved my prayers...

Dear reader, Honey cake is the sweet baked treat many Jews eat on Rosh Hashanah to bring in a sweet Jewish New Year. For many, the cake has come to be a symbol. As children, the smells and flavors that emanated from the kitchens of our families are...

I’ve never really been an angry person per se. In general, I’m more of a bottle-up-your-issues kind of a person (yes, I’m working on it). I have an incredibly long fuse and it’s hard to make me truly angry. This applies even to those days...

This year on May 4, we usher in Yom HaZikaron, or Israeli Memorial Day, marking the observance of silence and respect for the martyrs of Israel’s War of Independence. The following day we celebrate Yom Ha’atzmaut, which commemorates Israel’s Independence...

Ever since the war in Ukraine broke out, actress Mila Kunis has taken on her greatest role yet: activist. One that could be called recurring due to the ferociousness of the war. Kunis and her partner, Ashton Kutcher, have donated time and money to the...

We’ve become accustomed to hot, muggy summers in St. Louis, but temperatures are slowly rising here and around the world—an increase of 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit from 1901 to 2016, according to the EPA. That may not sound like much, but sea levels are...

At the start of 2022, my goals were to be more creative, get more satisfaction out of life and find more happiness. One of the ways I'm doing this is to add more art to my life -- more live music, more book reading, and more visits to art galleries. Along...

June 3, 2022, will mark fifty years since I was ordained a rabbi at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, Ohio. Looking at photos taken at the time, I am appalled to realize I was wearing a powder blue polyester suit. In...

When I saw the plus sign on my pregnancy test, I was shocked. Coming off a miscarriage and two failed rounds of IUI, by the time the third cycle actually worked, I had pretty much written it off. As much as I longed to be a mother, and hoped that...

(JNS) Like politics, wars can make for strange bedfellows. In the Second World War, even a staunch anti-Communist like Winston Churchill saw no problem with an alliance with the Soviet Union. Making common cause with a totalitarian state led by a mass...

It’s a right of Jewish passage to wonder who out there in the world is Jewish too, especially famous people like actors, singers, athletes, and even social media stars and YouTubers. It’s just something we do. So, to better answer the question...