Barbara Ballinger and Margaret Crane, Special For The Jewish Light
• Published January 3, 2023
We've written about a new year as a time to make obligatory resolutions in a quest to be better people. We know that resolutions can be about almost anything and even now, a few days past Jan. 1, you may already have broken one, two or a few of yours....
(JTA) — About a decade ago, I served on my synagogue’s rabbinic search committee. Normally I am allergic to any activity at which minutes will be taken, but it was a great experience, thanks to the care and intelligence that my fellow committee members...
(JTA) — Jewish eras can be defined by events (the fall of the Second Temple, the Inquisition, the founding of Israel) and by ideas (the rabbinic era, emancipation, post-denominationalism). A community reveals itself in the things it argues about most...
Ellen Futterman, Editor-in-Chief
• Published December 21, 2022
Sunday night I did something I don’t often do these days. I watched a movie — with commercials — on “regular” TV. It happened to be “The Sound of Music,” one of my all-time favorites, which clocked in at four hours on ABC.
I realize I could...
By Rabbi Elizabeth Hersh, Spe
• Published December 20, 2022
Editor’s Note: This commentary is a composite of participants’ responses to the Newmark Institute trip to Washington, D.C. Quotes from those responses are interspersed in the text below in italics.
“This was a life altering experience...
By Amy Fenster Brown, Special For The Jewish Light
• Published December 18, 2022
Happy Hanukkah! The candles are lit, the wax is dripping, the latkes are sizzling, and the house will smell like it for a week. Let’s celebrate the miracle of Hanukkah with eight random thoughts, one for each night, from my brain to yours.
I don’t...
Rabbi Isaiah Rothstein, JTA
• Published December 15, 2022
(JTA) — As a young child I often wondered why people light the hanukkiah, or Hanukkah menorah, in so many different places. Some light the candles on their front porches and driveways, some in the streets, others at in city parks, and a very select...
Editor’s note: Amy Fenster Brown was part of the Light’s 2015 Class of Unsung Heroes because of her outstanding volunteer contributions. Here, she writes about what she knows, though she isn’t one to tout her many achievements.
It’s our favorite...
Andrew Silow-Carroll, JTA
• Published December 8, 2022
(JTA) — The recent Israeli elections, the fifth in less than four years, returned Benjamin Netanyahu to the driver’s seat for the third time.
The twice and future prime minister appears able to cobble together a coalition that has been called the...
Stand up to book banning efforts
In Nazi Germany, 25,000 books were burned in one night in 1933, the beginning of a series of censorship actions during the Holocaust. Now 90 years later, we are seeing a worrisome rise in censorship attempts across the...
Dear Reader,
Today is Dec. 7th, the date President Franklin Roosevelt told us "will live in infamy" referring to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that killed 2,403 Americans.
Since 2008, I've celebrated the life and the story of one Marty...
Grief. A concept one can’t fully know until it snakes around and pierces your heart like a rabid animal.
I thought I was prepared for the inevitability of grief as I cared for my husband, Burt, with frontal temporal dementia (FTD) these past several...
