Ushering in a new year can be filled with excitement and anticipation as well as a feeling of renewal. It is with this spirit in mind that the Jewish Light is pleased to welcome a new digital columnist, Sheri Glantz. Glantz, 60, began writing "The Sunny...

(JTA) — I was first introduced to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later to become Pope Benedict XVI, in the late 1980s when he was visiting Jerusalem. Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem, was eager for me to meet with the cardinal, telling me that I would discover...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...