She learned that her building was expanding its bike room and had cleaned out an area where these trunks, whose owners had moved on, had sat unopened for decades. Amid the chaos, a building porter told her that he had found a young girl\’s diary and gave her the small book with its crackling leather cover and chrome lock.
If you think Iran is scary, just consider what would happen if Islamic extremists took over Pakistan.
In a way, Jewish prayer is like another pillar of observant Jewish life: Shabbat. Just as tefilah involves letting one\’s creativity conquer one\’s boredom, Shabbat is about finding creative enjoyment on a day when cell-phones, iPods and DVD players are treated as hardly more useful than paperweights.
Since Sharon Brous, 34, founded her alternative synagogue four years ago, IKAR\’s young rabbi has frequently been identified as an innovative spiritual leader, someone successful at engaging disaffected younger Jews by marrying Torah learning with progressive social action.
Parshat Shoftim (Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9) One of the biggest misnomers in the Jewish vocabulary is the translation of tzedakah as \”charity.\” This mistranslation has gone on for so long in the American Jewish community that it\’s a hard habit to break.
I don\’t know what will become of the legacy of Iranian Jews outside of Iran, how history will judge us in the context of the opportunities we had and the extent to which we helped make the world a better place with what we were given.
Thus began the least-remembered great speech in American civil rights history, one that had the dubious fortune of being immediately followed by another speech: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.\’s \”I Have a Dream\” speech, which America just celebrated on its 45th anniversary.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.