Posted on Monday, March 18, 2019 by Or Mars
Author Anne Lamont writes that “laughter is carbonated holiness.” And our sages agree. The Talmud says that before Rava began teaching, he would tell a joke and the Sages (studying with him) would laugh…” (Babylonian Talmud: Shabbat 30b). Rav Tzadok haCohen of Lublin (Poland 1823-1900) adds to this saying that “because through this (laughter) the heart is widened when one is sad. And one must sit in awe in learning and [if] they cannot find true joy in their heart,…
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Posted on Thursday, March 14, 2019 by Stephanie Tankel
“The greatest Jewish tradition is to laugh. The cornerstone of Jewish survival has always been to find humor in life and in ourselves.” – Jerry Seinfeld “Feeling different, feeling alienated, feeling persecuted, feeling that the only way to deal with the world is to laugh – because if you don’t laugh you’re going to cry and never stop crying – that’s probably what’s responsible for the Jews having developed such a great sense of humor…
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Posted on Thursday, March 14, 2019 by Tal Korman
She sat across from me. Collected, elegant, articulate. Her clothes and wig spoke of the Ultra-Orthodox segment to which she belongs. Gradually, she opened a window to her world, to the materials that make up her identity and professional persona. She talked of a complicated childhood, shadowed by her mother’s mental illness and psychotic episodes. Then, out of nowhere it flashes – a witty, poignant remark, a razor-sharp, perceptive and intelligent observation of the situation, of th…
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Posted on Wednesday, March 06, 2019 by Leah Jones
At the 2018 Madregot Institute, I gave a speech about my vision for the future of Judaism based on my personal narrative. The room was full with 200 Wexner Heritage Members, spouses, staff and guests. I got ready for the speech with a coach, by rewriting and editing, and I practiced in my hotel room. Despite all of that, I was still very nervous. Everything I said on stage was on my paper, except the line that got the biggest laugh. You can’t take your cats to the mikvah. …
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Posted on Thursday, February 14, 2019 by Rabbi Jay Henry Moses
As a young rabbi starting my career in Chicago I had the privilege of learning from my late teacher and friend Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf, z”l. Rabbi Wolf was a principled, philosophical, religious liberal, but even his liberalism took an occasional backseat to his other strong inclinations: he was a poetic soul and a contrarian. And so it was that he developed a lilting visual metaphor for a liberal approach to Judaism, but it was a metaphor which explicitly drew on the imagery of halacha, l…
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Posted on Tuesday, February 12, 2019 by Sally Mundell
How did I get here? We all have our stories, and mine began with the loss of my husband six years ago. I’ll never forget walking my 2- and 5-year old daughters down a long corridor to say good-bye to their father. In tragedy, we’re faced with two choices: 1) lose hope in something bigger and better because you can’t imagine a God who would do this to you 2) dig deep and look for the meaning in your tragedy. I knew that my two little girls wouldn’t …
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Posted on Monday, February 11, 2019 by Samara Minkin
Back when the Temple was destroyed in 70 BCE, tribalism and sectarian infighting defined our people. Our response to that loss - so monumental that it permanently altered the physical and psychological landscape of Judaism - was the emergence of pluralism as a value. It could not have been easy. Judaism in the late-Second Temple period was splintering. Jewish community comprised battling sects like Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes, who often excommunicated one another. Remember too…
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Posted on Wednesday, February 06, 2019 by Natalie Barth
A Monumental Israel Trip Park Avenue Synagogue began planning a multi-generational, multi-track congregational trip to Israel two years in advance of the actual trip. We actually started talking about it a couple years before that, but it takes a while to socialize and build consensus for such a large endeavor. This allowed 450 congregants and staff who like to plan ahead to hold the date for winter break 2018 to celebrate Israel at 70 and our synagogue at 136. It also gave our lay leadership an…
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Posted on Tuesday, February 05, 2019 by Rabbi Elka Abrahamson
We need a word for that feeling one experiences when you either a) reply all in error or b) send a sensitive (or worse) email to the wrong person…an easy mistake given the number of say, rabbis or David’s or Rachel’s you have on your contact list. If you don’t know that feeling, you are not only lucky, you are unusual. And also, the odds that you will experience it at some point is highly likely. I suggest we call it a kishkor – a mash-up of kishke and error becaus…
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Posted on Monday, February 04, 2019 by Shuli Passow
In the spring of 2018, B’nai Jeshurun (BJ,) a congregation in New York with a long history of political involvement and social activism, undertook a unique experiment. At a time of growing political polarization, we wanted to explore what role we could play as a religious community in building bridges across divides, and what wisdom Judaism had to offer us in this process. What would happen, we wondered, if the ‘bluest of the blue,’ urban, upper-middle class, liberal Jew…
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