Blog
G’mar Hatimah Tovah, Y’all
Rabbi Meir used to say, Great is repentance, for on account of an individual who repents, the sins of all the world are forgiven. (Yoma 86b) That same page tells us (in the name of Reish Lakish) that for those who repent out of love, intentional sins are counted as...
Cutting-Room Excerpts and More
Historian Hanne Blank has a very important history of virginity coming out in early 2007--the result of four years' work digging everywhere from medical libraries and age of consent laws to medieval theology and Seventeen magazine. Lucky for you, she's decided to put...
Today’s Yummy Word of Torah
...brought to you by my friend Jen Taylor Friedman:I've been doing a lot of Torah repair this month. I find repair work to be a lot more taxing, physically and mentally, than writing from scratch, and it occurs to me that this is a metaphor for Life. Merrily going...
Learning for the Ten Days
Balashon: Hebrew Detective on the origins of the word "shofar" An archive of piyutim, and not just for this season, either Rambam's hilchot tshuvah in Hebrew and English Some Torah from one of my old teachers, Rabbi Alan Lew The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal is an...
The Unetane Tokef and Collective Responsibility
On Rosh Hashana it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed: How many shall pass on, how many shall come to be Who shall live and who shall die Who shall attain the measure of his and who shall not Who shall perish by fire and who by water Who by sword and who by...
Shanah Tovah!
Happy, healthy, fruitful, love-filled and joyus new years to you all. May there be, finally, this year, peace and justice and safety and happiness for everyone. And a Democratic Congress would be good too--but hey, let's start with world peace.
For Your Entertainment, of One Type or Another
Some of you are going to love this and think it's the coolest thing ever. Others of you will snark and call it hillul hakodesh. Me? I'm just a little confused. Aviv Geffen translated Dylan's "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" into Hebrew, and this woman (Maya Rothman?) sang a...
What the World Don’t Need Now
Oh, good: vanity and fakery all in one nice package! Hewlett-Packard now has a digital camera with the unintentionally hillarious "slimming function". Gag me with a spoon. As an antidote, I offer you some recent quotables from historian and activist Hanne Blank from...
Yay
Talmud study is fun! Really, I keep coming back from the beit midrash all bouncy and high. It's nice.