Category
suffering
In Quest for Meaning
Judea Pearl
September 21, 2007
Man is a meaning-seeking animal. Hardly a second goes by in which our mind does not stop its routine activities to ponder the meaning of the input it receives from our senses or from its own activities.
Can happiness be taught?
Amy Klein
September 14, 2007
Anyway, what does it mean to be happy? Does it mean to experience constant pleasure? Bouts of joy? Moments of ecstasy? Does it mean to suffer no pain? Never be sad? Never struggle with challenges? Whatever it is, how does one get happy? It\’s a High Holy Days challenge if ever there were one, since if we all lived happier lives, wouldn\’t the world be a better place?
Books: Witness to horrors
Rob Eshman
April 27, 2007
At first glance, \”Testimony\” (Aperture, $40) looks like an innocent-enough coffee table book of Israel-themed photographs. Thumb through the first few pages and you\’ll see examples of photographer Gillian Laub\’s excellent portraiture. Each color image is accompanied by a simple enough quote from the subject, an Arab or Jew sharing the same bit of the Holy Land.
Holy Doubt
Rabbi Debra Orenstein
December 7, 2006
This week\’s Torah portion contains a story that most of us skipped in Hebrew school — the story of Dina.
Tale of heroics, terror from the top of the world
Sarah Price Brown
November 30, 2006
Experiencing the classic symptoms of altitude sickness — fatigue and hallucinations — Hall had refused to continue down the mountain and ended up passing out. The two sherpas with him concluded, after poking Hall in the eye and getting no response, that Hall was dead. Suffering from lack of oxygen themselves, they hurried down the mountain.
PASSOVER: 10 Contemporary Plagues
The Editors
April 6, 2006
In the Passover haggadah, we read of the 10 Plagues that God sent to convince Pharoah to let the Hebrew slaves go free. The plagues — bloody, violent, magical — are a dramatic highpoint of the narrative. Mindful of the pain these plagues brought even to innocent Egyptians, Jews have traditionally spilled out a drop of their festive seder wine at the recitation of each plague.
Where Streets Were Paved With Sorrow
Holly Lebowitz Rossi
January 19, 2006
Vincent introduces us to three women who illuminate three very different aspects of the shameful reality of white slavery that existed in Latin America between 1860 and 1939.
Many With Gaucher Unaware of Disease
Andrea Waxman
December 1, 2005
Gaucher is sufficiently rare that many doctors weren\’t and still aren\’t aware of it. And when LaBelle was diagnosed, \”they were just doing research, and there was not a glimmer of hope\” for a treatment, she said
Divine Listening
Rabbi Jonathan Jaffe Bernhard
December 1, 2005
This week\’s Torah portion begins with an issue that is a recurrent one for our foremothers — difficulty conceiving. As Sarah before her and Rachel after her, Rebecca has trouble getting pregnant. After her husband Isaac pleads with God, she does conceive. But the pregnancy is a painful one — so much so that Rebecca cries out with words to the effect of, \”Would that I did not exist!\” Out of this depth of despair she approaches God.
New Articles
The Fall of Pride. And the March Into Mayhem
Gabriel Goldberg and Jacob Fenton
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Why Jews Must Start Standing Up for America
David Suissa
July 2, 2025
The Fourth of July and ‘Four Score’
Rabbi Dr. Stuart Halpern
July 2, 2025
Zohran Mamdani and the Paradox That Isn’t
Kathleen Hayes
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Magical Economic Thinking
Morton Schapiro
July 2, 2025
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