The Sacred Calling: Four Decades of Women in the Rabbinate
At almost 750 pages long, it’s is a very big book, one that contains 66 essays and personal reflections. The length isn’t a surprise, actually, when you realize that the scope of the book spans four decades of women in the rabbinate: 40 years, the amount of time it took our Israelite ancestors to reach the Promised Land.
Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg
In Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a lively look at the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, co-authors Shana Knizhnik, a law student, and Irin Carmon, a reporter for MSNBC, mix chatty stories, photographs, charts, letters, and cartoons with legal decisions to illustrate the illustrious career of the first Jewish woman Supreme Court justice.
The Angel: The Egyptian Spy Who Saved Israel
In the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which Israel came close to losing, a traumatized Israeli public demanded to know how Israel’s Mossad failed to detect that war was imminent, given a massive buildup of Egyptian forces along the Suez Canal and Syrian troops on the Golan Heights.
The Parting Gift
I am approaching my fiftieth wedding anniversary, but I have vague memories from my long-ago youth of what it’s like to fall in love at first sight. Such experiences did not end well for me; neither does the affair portrayed in the story The Parting Gift (Other Press), written by Evan Fallenberg, an Ohio-born writer who now lives in Israel.
Annelies: A Novel
David R. Gillham’s Annelies: A Novel (Viking and Penguin Books) is a fictionalized portrayal of Anne Frank based on the premise that she recovers from her illness in Bergen-Belsen, returns to post-war Amsterdam, and is reunited with her father, Otto, whom she calls Pim.
Houdini: The Elusive American
In Houdini: The Elusive American, Adam Begley, tells the remarkable story of how a Hungarian-born rabbi’s son achieved global fame as the world’s greatest magician and the master of “self-liberation.”
On the Other Hand: Ten Minutes of Torah - Mishpatim: Mindfulness, Being Present and Having Heart
What does it mean to be "mindful," to truly slow down and pay attention to what's happening in our daily lives? This week, Rabbi Rick Jacobs explores this question through Parashat Misphatim when God beckons Moses to not only come up to a mountain, but to also "be" there.
On the Other Hand: Ten Minutes of Torah: Building Our Own Tabernacle Together - Parashah Trumah
In this week’s Parashah, the Israelites contribute whatever they can to Moses in order to help build the Mishkan (Tabernacle).
On the Other Hand: Ten Minutes of Torah: Let Your Eternal Light Shine - Parashat T'tzaveh
This week, Rabbi Rick Jacobs takes a look at parashat T’tzaveh, in which the Israelites are commanded to create the ner tamid (eternal light) in the Tabernacle.