Text Messages is a column, produced with The Jewish Week, sharing wisdom from the weekly Torah portion.
(JTA) — When do you call the rabbi?
Sometimes to complain. (We’re Jews, after all.) But usually, a life-cycle event has taken place. A birth,...
(JTA) — In the partisan changeover that resulted from the 2020 U.S. elections, there were bound to be some tests and challenges for those of us who identify within the broad spectrum of “pro-Israel.” The first is now upon us: a proposed bill emerging...
Amy Fenster Brown, Special to the Jewish Light
• Published April 21, 2021
It's not raining at my house right now, it's pouring. Don't even ask me if the old man is snoring. I've got two teenage boys and between them there are three broken bones, two separate jacked up dental issues and puberty hormones I'd rather not discuss.
Our...
On Tuesday afternoon, not even 24 hours after starting its deliberations, a multi-racial Minneapolis jury of seven women and five men found former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin guilty of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree...
(JTA) — Earlier this year, when my father was in the last weeks of his life, he told us a story that none of us knew or remembered. In the 1960s, when he was running a regional roofing company in Florida that became a multistate, multimillion-dollar...
Text Messages is a column sharing wisdom from the weekly Torah portion produced with The Jewish Week.
(JTA) — In the years following the reckonings with sexual harassment and assault prompted by the #MeToo movement, there has been debate over...
Jewish tradition teaches“Kol yisrael arevim zeh bazeh,” meaning that we are all responsible for each other (B.Talmud Shevuot 39a). Our collective experience for the past year has taught us just how important this lesson is.
As all of our...
BY AMY KUO HAMMERMAN, SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH LIGHT
• Published April 14, 2021
Recent tragic and scary events in America have raised awareness of anti-Asian racism in our society. The history of anti-Asian discrimination, exclusion and exploitation is easily found through a Google search. I have found, however, that we learn and...
Marty Rochester’s March 24 opinion piece, “Oy vey: The excesses of identity politics,” cries out for rebuttal on a number of fronts. Since I’m having trouble deciding whether I am, in Rochester’s words, a “garden-variety liberal” or a “left-wing...
Mazel tov! The whole shtetl buzzed with the news. Chanka, the butcher’s daughter, was engaged to Yankel, the carpenter’s son. It was a local match, so the whole town got involved in the wedding preparations. A week before the wedding, Chanka...
In Marty Rochester‘s column, “Oy Vey: The excesses of identity politics (March 24),” he criticizes President Biden for picking a diverse cabinet with the insinuation that because it is diverse, it is not the best cabinet he could have picked. In...
This piece originally appeared in Alma, 70 Faces Media’s feminist Jewish culture site. Content warning: anti-Japanese slur.The term “Jewish American Princess” has been debated within Jewish communities for as long as it has existed. Many bemoan...
