Reading the feminine voices into Kohelet
Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) is best understood in the negative space, in the missing voices. Kohelet is a choir of voices trying to make...
Klavan’s Conversion and Kol Nidre
Kol Nidre is the prelude to the Yom Kippur prayers. Lewis Black called it the spookiest piece of music ever written. The tune and setting...
History, written by survivors
Like the blind man who was handed a piece of matzah, I read Kinot (Lamentations) and wonder “Who writes this sh*t?” Starving mothers...
The religious zealot’s tragedy
“Why are you here, Eliyahu?” A lifetime of religious passion culminating in a miraculous stand on Har Carmel has accomplished nothing....
The Passover story’s amazing story
The Passover story tells of our liberation from Egypt through great drama and public miracles. But the story of the Passover story is...
But I would miss them
I finally understood the last line of the Book of Jonah this year, and it’s changed my Yom Kippur and will change my Sukkot. G-d gives...
The forbidden woman and the patriarchy: Shmuel’s final masterpiece
Shmuel is awakened by a fugitive seeking sanctuary. Shmuel bears much responsibility for David’s predicament, but it’s not clear what he...
Humiliating the Sotah and the Torah’s dark side
It’s 3,000 years ago, you’re a local tribal leader, and you want to combat honor killings, what do you do? You already made murder...
The Last Kaddish
When Buchenwald was liberated, Elie Wiesel recalled, some people ran to the soldiers. Some ran to their families. Some broke down and...
The Book of Life and Love, not Knowledge and Righteousness
“I have placed before you today the life and the good and the death and the evil,” Moshe tells us. “Choose life.” Maybe those are two...
The Ashrei of Tisha B’Av
My favorite verses of the year are the start of the Ashrei that follows the Kinot of Tisha B’Av morning. We’re sitting on the floor,...
Why the Imperfect God idea matters
With his An Imperfect God essay in the New York Times, Dr. Yoram Hazony set off a new round of discussions surrounding the question of if...
Germany and brit milah
There were two interesting circumcision stories yesterday. A new Johns Hopkins study argued that fewer circumcisions meant reduced male...
A sense of purpose
The hardest thing about Tisha B’av, the day Jews most focus on tragedies, isn’t the hunger, the thirst, or the depressing (and often dull...
