The Jewish Week | Features

Rabbi Marci N. Bellows.
Reform, Really | Thursday, February 9, 2012
L'Dor V'Dor: Honoring Our Oldest Generations

As Tu B’Shevat approaches each year, and we prepare to celebrate the New Year of the Trees, many of us rabbis love to return to one of our most favorite stories: Honi the Circle-Maker and the Carob Trees. The story, which is first found in the Mishnah, begins with Honi walking down the road. He happens upon a person planting a carob tree, a tree known for taking a very long time (at least 75 years) to produce fruit.

skolnik_1_0.jpg
A Rabbi's World | Thursday, February 9, 2012
Passing The Torch

It will be my privilege, on this coming Saturday night, to formally install my son, Hillel, as the rabbi of the Southwest Orlando Jewish Congregation in Florida.  Technically, he’s been serving in that capacity since August 2011, but scheduling difficulties (i.e., getting the parents and other assorted family members in the right place at the right time) have delayed the formal ceremony until now.

Elicia Brown
All She Wrote | Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Tween Fashion: A Modest Proposal

My son Joel, age 7, and my daughter Talia, almost 10, lean on my shoulders, staring at the computer screen in disbelief. Here was something that didn’t fit their notion of the world. Grown men spitting? At a child? Because her long skirts weren’t long enough? A sincere and sweet boy, Joel wondered if these men, these ultra-Orthodox lunatics of Beit Shemesh, in Israel, had ever read the Torah.

That was last month.

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi.
A New York Minute | Tuesday, February 7, 2012
A Decade As Israel’s Media Strategist

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, president of The Israel Project, announced last week that she plans to leave the organization she and two other women founded 10 years ago. During that decade, the Washington-based Israel Project has grown from an organization with no staff, based originally at Mizrahi’s former public relations firm, to one that now has 75 employees, including former journalists, and an office in Jerusalem. Its mission is to garner fairer and more positive coverage of Israel through outreach to the press, policymakers and members of the public.

Photo By Getty Images
Lens | Tuesday, February 7, 2012
A Freeze Across Europe

The headline writers are calling the cold spell across Europe in recent weeks a new “Ice Age.”

Esther Avital and Frank Gottesman.
Godsend | Monday, February 6, 2012
How Frank Met Esther Avital

 

“I prayed that God would help me find my bashert, [meant-to-be spouse]” says Esther Avital, “and my prayers came true.”

Esther Avital Gottesman was not born Jewish.  She was born Heather Fuller to Christian parents in Santa Ana, California.  Around the age of 10, she didn’t want to be Christian anymore. She didn't like having to pray through an intermediary and she had a teenage obsession with Adam Duritz, lead singer of Counting Crows, who was Jewish.  

Rabbi Yanklowitz is founder and president of Uri L'Tzedek, director of Jewish life and senior Jewish educator at UCLA Hillel.
Street Torah | Monday, February 6, 2012
A Moral Case For Brit Milah

Brit milah (Jewish ritual circumcision) may be uncomfortable to watch, and naturally makes many of us ambivalent in a time of celebration. But is it cruel? Living in California, where calls for the outlawing of circumcision have recently proliferated, I have not heard anyone make the moral case for circumcision. The Shulkhan Arukh says that “this commandment (milah) is greater than (all the) other positive commandments,” (Yoreh De’ah 260).