Sergiu Simmel
A little while back, in addressing recent discussions of minyanim and reacting to Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, BZ posted: Rabbi Kaunfer writes “New self-proclaimed movements sprung up — Reconstructionism, and the Renewal and Chavurah Movements.” The “Chavurah...
Getting straight to the point, these (NSFW) two articles raised some pretty serious questions for me. As a big proponent of personalizing religion (that is, participating in traditions or rituals that have meaning to oneself), it’s challenging...
Women arrested at the Kotel is not the only battle over basic women’s rights and religious freedoms in Israel this season: By December 27, Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz of Likud must endorse or turn down his committee’s recommendation...
The nice people at the Forward asked me to weigh in on the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism’s recent stated desire to reach the “young adult” demographic . Here’s what I said: Rabbi Steven Wernick, the new head of the...
The Jewish Book Council announced the finalists for their Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, and Jewschool’s very own Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg made the list for her memoir, Surprised by God: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Religion (published...
As a coda to the discussion about the woman arrested for wearing a tallit at the Western Wall, , this little Torah nugget came through my Facebook from my friend Simon. This, he writes, “opinion [was] expressed almost 300 years ago in R. Yom Tov...
Nofrat Frenkel, a medical student from Beersheva, was arrested for wearing a tallit at a gathering of Women of the Wall at the Kotel (Western Wall) today. (That’s not a picture of her–that’s some other folks from Women of the Wall.)...
Nofrat Frenkel, a medical student from Beersheva, was arrested for wearing a tallit at a gathering of Women of the Wall at the Kotel (Western Wall) today. (That’s not a picture of her–that’s some other folks from Women of the Wall.)...
“We are all mediators, translators.” -Jacques Derrida There have been three distinct moments since I began learning in the Jewish legal tradition that have significantly altered my perspective on the goals and intent of what we apply the...
