Still Stigmatized
When Ofra Haza, the 41-year-old Israeli Yemenite singer, succumbed to complications of AIDS in February, she died under a heavy cloud of silence.
When Ofra Haza, the 41-year-old Israeli Yemenite singer, succumbed to complications of AIDS in February, she died under a heavy cloud of silence.
It figures, inasmuch as nobody really knows what happens to people when they die, that a slew of goofy theories would spring up to fill the void.
According to myth, Jews don\’t drink. This is false.
According to the \”Big Book\” of Alcoholics Anonymous, alcohol is cunning, baffling and powerful. This is true. Otherwise, why would my father choose to move in 1991 to Portland, Oregon, to live alone with his Dalmatian and begin drinking after 18 years of sobriety?
For much of his life, Axel Köster says, he has struggled with his legacy; his shame about being German; his love for relatives who perhaps supported atrocities.
We lit the candles Friday night in honor of the new millennium.
I know it should not have been done that way. Observant Jews insisted right up until the Waterford ball dropped in Times Square that the millennium had nothing to do with them, that on Friday night it was Shabbat, not 2,000 years after Jesus that they were celebrating.
It\’s past midnight, and I can\’t sleep. I call a friend back in San Francisco, a scientist I know who is really good at thinking.
When you write a book-length study of a living author lots of things can happen; most of them are bad.
\”You\’ve missed a nuance here, a shading there,\” some will point out, in the iciest language possible, while others go straight to the jugular and angrily insist that you don\’t know beans about their work.
Joseph Heller, who passed away Dec. 13 at the age of 76, was a wonderful exception.
Dear Mr. Prime Minister;
By now you have certainly received thousands of congratulatory messages celebrating the good news that you and your wife, Cherie, are expecting a baby next summer.
Memories of lost family are conjured when walking in footsteps of the past
At a recent Shabbat, a guest at our services asked the person staffing our welcome table, \”Is the rabbi here Jewish?\” What the person meant was, \”Is the rabbi a convert?\” Many have shared with me over the years, as our congregation has grown, that acquaintances of theirs have told them, on good authority, that Rabbi Finley \”is not really Jewish.\”