Rabbi David Teutsch responded to my comments comparing his Guide to Jewish Practice with the Conservative work The Observant Life with some criticisms of his own. I thank David for writing back, and invite him – and others – to continue the conversation. I’d like to respond to David’s observation with 3 points. First, David affirmed that […]

How does a liberal Jew behave? This is heterodox Judaism’s greatest challenge: Does our religion demand any particular way of living? If we do not eat differently than our non-Jewish neighbors, do not marry differently, do not work and rest, nor buy and sell differently, then maybe our Judaism amounts to nothing more than vestigial, […]

This past Shabbat at Ansche Chesed we heard a presentation from Dov Elboim, a well-known Israeli writer, editor and television host, a face of the phenomenon called hazara bi’she’ela, “returning with questions,” a pun meaning “those who left ultra-Orthodoxy.” Dov was recently profiled here in Haaretz. Hebrew readers will also enjoy his excellent book Journey in […]

A variety of important/inspiring/challenging things have made it through across my screen for Yom Ha’Atzmaut. I’d like to share some with you. A truly inspiring figure and one of the great rabbis in Orthodox America, R. Yosef Blau – the “Spiritual Guide” or Mashgiach Ruchani at Yeshiva University’s rabbinical seminary – spoke a year ago of […]

Another Yom HaShoah has come and gone, now 67 years since the end of World War II. Not that in all those years we’ve gotten it just right when it comes to marking these most overwhelming events in all the 4,000 years of the Jewish people. I think about this a lot, as a synagogue […]

I know prayer is difficult for many modern people. We often feel like we’re at the far end of a disconnected pay phone. Yet I still feel the enormous power of prayer to re-orient the self, to help us connect to our deepest, wisest and noblest wishes for the world. At least it helps me. […]

Today was a holiday in my neighborhood. Not a Jewish holiday, of course, but one I admire nonetheless: Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, a 40-day period of fasting and repentance before Holy Week and Easter. What I admire about Ash Wednesday is its AWESOME ritual: the smearing of a cross of ashes upon the […]

This past Shabbat at Ansche Chesed, the feminist theologian Judith Plaskow was in our community, to celebrate a bat mitzvah with us. As we read Parashat Yitro – with relates the revelation of the 10 Commandments at Sinai – one sort of feels like it is Plaskow’s signature parasha, given the title of her most well-known […]

I’ve been away from Honest to God for a few weeks, mostly working on a research project for another audience, but I’ll get back into the swing now, beginning with this. Last month I posted the earlier comment called “Not So Honest Kars-4-Kids” about the charity which would seem to be intentionally obscuring its Orthodox […]

I’ve just completed the easiest fast day of the year – the 10th of Tevet, a minor, sun-up to sun-down fast. (It’s so easy because it always falls around the winter solstice, so the fast usually concludes around 5pm at the latest.) Off the top of my head I couldn’t tell you what the 10th […]