Costco has been working hard to appeal to the Kosher consumer. A few Costco locations in Michigan have begun selling refrigerated kosher beef produced by Colorado Kosher. I was at one Costco location today in Michigan and was surprised to see free samples of Kosher chicken being offered. Of course, the chicken was being cooked…
In synagogues, Jewish people put bright gold on the Torah (gold breastplate and crown). As we saw tonight in Vancouver: In the Olympics they put GOLD on Torah Bright (a gold medal). Torah Bright has to be the best name for an Olympian who just won a gold medal. As she ascended the highest part…
Like many rabbis, when I encounter an article about “Jewish life” in the mainstream press, I ask myself the age-old question: Is this good or bad for the Jews? And that is precisely what I did yesterday when I read about the bar mitzvah party that is to take place at Yankee Stadium this June…
Rabbi Gerry Skolnik taught my senior seminar in rabbinical school and I’ve continued to learn from him since graduating from the Jewish Theological Seminary (JTS) through his weekly column for The New York Jewish Week and now his blog called “A Rabbi’s World.”. After hearing that an 86-year-old man crashed his Toyota into the front…
I was surprised by how much I enjoyed James Cameron’s film “Avatar.” It is unusual for me to enjoy a fantasy movie so much that I have to see it a second time in the theater, but this was the case with this 3-D film about a futuristic planet (Pandora), inhabited by an indigenous population…
Last night on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, the host seemed willing to take a chance on a not-so-funny comedy skit for the sake of delivering a strong political message. On an episode when the Jewish host racked up more Yiddishisms than normal (Brian Williams later attempted his own Yiddish too), Jon Stewart showed…
This is a poem I wrote about the incident last week when a Jewish 17-year-old boy caused a U.S. Airways flight to be diverted because the flight attendant thought his tefillin (phylacteries) were a bomb. It’s based on “Oh, the Places You Will Go!” by Dr. Seuss. Oh, the Plane’s Gonna’ Blow!By Rabbi Jason Miller(With…
Most Jewish people have never heard of the word “phylacteries,” and yet according to Google, at current count the word appears in over 800 of today’s news articles on the Web. Apparently, a 17-year-old man wrapped in his phylacteries (tefillin in Hebrew) was treated suspiciously on a U.S. Airways plane from NYC headed to Kentucky….
Since I became a rabbi, I’ve found that there are two different ways that engaged couples respond to the question, “So… how did you meet?” There is the long, detailed narrative married-couples-to-be provide about who set them up, how they began as “just close friends” and it progressed to something “more,” or how fate brought…
Israel often gets slammed by the media, so when there is positive coverage of Israel in the news, it is important to showcase it. Several major media outlets have lauded Israel for its quick and efficient aid in Haiti following the devastating earthquake there. Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb of the Orthodox Union writes for the…