Shimon Peres on the Futility of War
After the recent passing of Israeli President Shimon Peres, z"l, I'm remembering the time I sat down with him in a Manhattan midtown hotel in 1994 at the beginning of the Oslo process to discuss the peace process.
What Is It About Israel?
It was a straightforward question, spoken in a tone that was casual but knowing: “Did it change you?” he asked us.
Communal Aid: How to Ensure No One Falls Through the Cracks
When we made aliyah in 1990, arriving at Shorashim, the community was a moshav sheetufi, a commune of 30 families. The economy was similar to a kibbutz – all salaries, whether from communal businesses or from work “outside,” went to the common bank account; each family received a house to live in and a monthly allowance based on family size. But not anymore.
Red and Blue and White: Being an American and a Jew
I know from conversations I have had with Israelis, they find it difficult, if not impossible, to understand how Jews can feel so at home, so safe, so self-assured in the United States. For so many of our co-religionists—those who were forced to flee from oppressive regimes in the former Soviet Union, or Ethiopia, or those whose parents and grandparents fled from or grew up in the ashes of state-sanctioned hatred—they cannot possibly understand how we can live so calmly and unafraid in this nation. They can’t quite understand what it means to be an American and a Jew.
Stand Up for Racial Justice This Fall by Taking Action on Voting Rights
Starting this summer, the Reform Movement will be taking action around the United States under the banner of Nitzavim: Standing Up for Voter Protection and Participation.
A Visit to Prague Brings Rosh HaShanah Inspiration
On my way to England, I took a trip to Prague's Jewish community, which has existed through periods of tolerance and extreme anti-Semitism for 1,000+ years.
Remembering Emma Lazarus, A Legacy in Reform Liturgy
Most people, if they’ve heard of her at all, connect Emma Lazarus to the most famous phrases of her sonnet, “The New Colossus,” written to help raise money for the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal fund in 1883. But poems she translated and composed before that generated another kind of legacy.
My Alphabet of Failings: A New Ashamnu
Each year on Yom Kippur, I join my congregation is reciting the Ashamnu, an alphabetic acrostic of sins for which we repent. And each year, it occurs to me that most of the sins named in the Ashamnu don’t hit me in the heart I’m beating – and so, I wrote my own version of the prayer.
Escaping Danzig with Help from a Box of Chocolate
In the summer of 1937, my great-uncle George and his wife, Margaret, together with my grandmother, Toni Prinz, and my father, Ray, boarded a ship for Copenhagen. Great-aunt Selma and her husband, Mor, escorted them to the ship to wave goodbye and at the very last minute “gifted” them with a small box of chocolate produced by MIX Konfect, a local company.
Hidden under the chocolates were gold coins Uncle George had packed in the box in anticipation of the trip. George and Margaret carefully accepted the box with its concealed $10,000. My father, just 12 at the time, had about $3000 worth of gold pieces sewn into his suitcase and his coat hem. The mishpucha (family), ostensibly on vacation, traveled overnight to Copenhagen where they visited Tivoli Gardens and after a couple of days, returned to Danzig. While in Copenhagen, Toni and Ray wired their money to Union Bank in Los Angeles, California, where a few family members already lived. George and Margaret similarly wired funds to other places in North America.
How the High Holidays Are Like a Charles Dickens Tale
Whether you prefer the 1843 book or any of the many movie versions made since, there is no question that Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is a classic.
Now, despite the season for which Dickens wrote it, A Christmas Carol is a Yom Kippur story if there ever was one.