Category
religion
Purim: Are you doing it right?
Purim is a festival renown for celebration, excessive drinking and wild, outlandish costumes; or, as Chasids in Brooklyn call it, Tuesday. It’s the story of the Jews escaping genocide in Persia, marking it as the last time the region has ever made Jews uneasy. For the uninformed, I have some facts and tips below.
Can a believer in God believe in luck?
Perhaps the most sobering realization I have come to in the second half of my life is the role of luck in life. I have always wanted to believe otherwise. And I suspect that most people want to believe otherwise.
Tel Aviv seeks approval to run buses on Shabbat
The Tel Aviv City Council approved a resolution to allow public transportation to run on Shabbat. The measure was approved Monday evening by a vote of 13-7.
Protecting the innocent
“You shall not take up a false report” (Exodus 23:2). Steve Leaderman, 38, was on trial this month for failing to disperse, having been arrested on Nov. 30 during the final stand of the Occupy L.A. protest at City Hall Plaza. Tried before a jury, these criminal cases carry up to 100 days in prison and hefty fines.
The mirth of the Bar Mitzvah
Think of what might happen to the Jewish calendar if literary scholars got their hands on it. Tisha B’Av would be classified as a tragedy, Tu B’Shevat would come under the heading of the pastoral, and Yom Kippur could serve as a soliloquy. But what would the bar mitzvah ceremony be? The answer is obvious: a comedy.
The double Bar Mitzvah — partners in time
Forty-five years after his bar mitzvah, Edward L. Moskowitz could not find the photos. They were lost in his garage, in a box, among shelves of such boxes, and were his only remaining evidence of a Shabbat he had shared in the mid-1960s with Marty November, his bar mitzvah partner.
Mormon church apologizes for proxy baptism of Wiesenthal’s parents
The Mormon church has apologized for the posthumous baptism of the parents of Simon Wiesenthal. A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints last month submitted the names of Wiesenthal\’s parents for posthumous baptism, the Salt Lake Tribune reported. Wiesenthal was a Holocaust survivor who died in 2005; his mother was killed in the Nazi death camp Belzec in 1942.
Couple married 71 years makes aliyah
A Baltimore couple married 71 years is believed to be the oldest couple to make aliyah. Phillip and Dorothy Grossman, 95 and 93 respectively, made aliyah Tuesday on a Nefesh B’Nefesh group flight in cooperation with the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption and the Jewish Agency, together with 43 new emigres from North America.
A Jesus even Jews can love?
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has been accused of nothing less than apostasy by at least one of his fellow rabbis, all thanks to his newly published book, “Kosher Jesus” (Gefen Publishing House: $26). And I am confident some Evangelical Christians will reach the same conclusion if only because Boteach insists that Jesus was not “holier than any other human being and certainly not divine.”
New Articles
UCLA Hillel on Pro-Palestinian Encampment: Jewish Students “Feeling the Intensity of the Situation”
USC Cancels Main Commencement Ceremony
Chosen Links – Colleges and Passover Edition – April 25, 2024
Nova Festival Exhibit in Manhattan Harrowing and Inspiring
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