Mejgan Afshan\’s father warned her about the danger of discussing religion and politics, but as a girl, she couldn\’t resist the two things she thought mattered more than anything else. Now 28 and watching the 2008 presidential campaign closely, Afshan sees how uncomfortable those topics can be when they intersect.
Three members of an Islamic terrorist cell who were on the verge of attacking the Israeli consulate, an El Al ticket counter and two synagogues, face up to 20 to 25 years in prison after pleading guilty in federal court to conspiring to levy war against the United States.
Following the revelation in October that $10,000 per person was being offered by a Chicago-based Christian-Jewish nonprofit to encourage Jews to leave Iran and immigrate to Israel, organizers of the project in Israel and the United States admitted to being disappointed with the lack of response to their efforts.
On Thanksgiving, New Yorker Linda Lantos didn\’t have to compromise her Jewish or ecological values: She served free-range, organic, nongenetically engineered turkey that was also kosher.
\”In the last few years, it\’s become important to me to find meat that\’s organic and kosher, and that\’s hard,\” said the 27-year-old chef and nutrition teacher, who has kept kosher since childhood.
I was torn between my professional responsibility to attend the most experiential learning moment of the this year\’s Hazon conference and my personal squeamishness.
Certainly, it was noble that Hazon, a nonprofit dedicated to Jewish environmentalism and food sustainability, wanted to connect participants at their recent conference in Falls Village, Conn., to the food they eat and in doing so, to halachically slaughter organically, pasture-raised goats to feed the participants. But would I be able to watch the killing of not one but three goats?
In this week\’s Torah portion, Vayechi, we have the most intimate description of a deathbed scene and the most elaborate description of a le\’vayah (funeral) contained in the Torah.
But how does one find a new mission at age 50 or 60 or 80? A growing array of books, courses, programs and now Web sites exist to provide suggestions, and many of them offer valuable detailed guidance, worksheets and resources. Working your way through them all can be a chore. Here are five tools.
Elaine Sandberg fits the mold of what you would expect to encounter when you consider someone who plays American mah-jongg. She\’s Jewish and just past retirement age.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.