NEW YORK -- If your mother has never seen your face -- if you have never had a face to be seen -- if, in a sense, you have never been born -- do you have a mother? If your mother has always called you "son," can you ever really become her daughter? For...
BY RABBI JUSTIN KERBER
• Published January 4, 2012
I noticed something peculiar in the story of our ancestor Jacob's young adult life. "And G!d went up from him." (Gen. 35:13) It looked almost as if God "lifted off" from him. Could it really be, I wondered, that with the ending of Jacob's conflicts with...
By Rabbi Justin S. Kerber
• Published December 7, 2011
Less than a week before the start of the Jewish New Year, Erev Rosh Hashanah, our family was blessed with a new baby. Amid the joy of this fall, as we have entered him into the Covenant of Abraham and formally named him after beloved family members we...
As the Torah portion Vayetzei (Gen. 28:10 - 32:3) opens, our spiritual ancestor, Jacob, is running from his brother, Esau's, wrath after obtaining his brother's birthright blessing by trickery. Jacob makes camp, and has an amazing dream: angels are going...
BY ROBERT A. COHN, Editor-in-Chief Emeritus
• Published August 10, 2011
St. Louis Jewish author Allan Richard Shickman has published a vivid third installment in his critically acclaimed "Zan Gah" series, with the release of "Dael and the Painted People: Zan Gah 3" (Earthshaker Books, $9.95, paper). Shickman's first two books...
