Feminism and Judaism are Friends

A year and a half ago, I had the great honor of being part of a conference at Barnard called “Jewish Women Changing America: Cross-Generational Conversations.” It was great fun. Now they’ve put the whole thing online, so you can check it all...

Tu B’Shvat Hegia

In honor of the approach of Tu B’Shvat, I’m going to make a point of recycling–Torah, that is. Here’s something I wrote a year ago for Radical Torah; I know some of you have seen it, but perhaps not everyone has? I’m cranking hard to get...

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...

Death and Yom Kippur Atone

I don’t put much in the way of actual Torah up here, so I thought I’d share a bit of seasonally-appropriate cheer. Okay, it’s not cheery. But it’s seasonal, at least. This is a d’var that I gave a couple of years back at the Shtibl...

more on halakha

See, then I start thinking about all this halakha stuff, and I find that there’s more to say. My friend Ahud says that he considers halakic living to be in part, a form of a social contract. Kind of like like believing that a state should have laws, even if we...

halakha is your friend

So there’s an interesting debate happening in the comments section of the post from last week about niddah/menstruation stuff and halakha in general, and Jordan made a comment that I wanted to respond to, but since it’s kind of a global thing, I thought...