The Jerusalem Post reported that the former Sephardi chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu explained in his book that “Reform and Conservative synagogues reek of hell and a Jew should not even come near their entrance.” I don’t think this rabbi will be invited to give a keynote address at any pluralism retreats any time soon. Putting…
I just received an e-mail message from Rabbi Mitch Cohen, the director of the National Ramah Commission which oversees all of the Ramah summer camps. In his message, Mitch describes the Facebook project taken on by Ari Magen, an 11th grader who used to be a camper at Ramah Poconos. Ari created a Facebook group…
Everyone knows that Facebook is Jewish and that Facebook has changed Jewish life on campus, but now computer programmer Jacob Richman has brought some Jewish Wisdom to the social networking site. Jacob Richman (left) and I both launched our personal websites around the same time. I started JasonAMiller.com, the precursor to RabbiJason.com, in March 1996…
I’ve written a lot of blog posts recently about Jews and sports. It is not easy to be a serious professional or collegiate (or even high school) athlete and an observant Jew. This topic was recently taken up by B’nai Brith Magazine, which dedicated its Spring 2007 issue to sports and the Jewish religion. Yeshiva…
One more Jew who should have made the Forward 50 list in my opinion is Leah Kauffman. The 21-year-old Jewish woman who wrote “I Got a Crush on Obama” (over 4 million views on YouTube) now stars in her own video to the song she wrote and performs about Ann Coulter (“Perfected: The Ann Coulter…
Mazel Tov to Ryan Braun, the 2007 National League Rookie of the Year. And… Mazel Tov to Kevin Youkilis of the World Champion Boston Red Sox on winning a Gold Glove. It was a good year for Jews in Major League Baseball! (c) Rabbi Jason Miller | http://blog.rabbijason.com | Twitter: @RabbiJason | facebook.com/rabbijasonmiller
Each year the Forward newspaper compiles its Forward 50 list of Jewish people who are “doing and saying things that are making a difference in the way American Jews, for better or worse, view the world and themselves.” And each year the critics come out to denounce the Forward for its choices. The Orthodox think…
I had to laugh today when an article on the Media Matters website was sent to me by way of my Google Alert for the term “Conservative Rabbi.” This has been an effective Google Alert that sends me any articles or websites that mention a rabbinic colleague of mine from the Conservative Movement. However, the…
It’s amazing what you find on the Web. Somehow I stumbled upon a number of YouTube videos of people playing Ga-Ga, the Israeli dodgeball game that is played in a pit and mostly at Jewish summer camps. So I decided to do a Wikipedia search for “Ga-Ga” and discovered the following: The comedian Sacha Baron…
Like every sensible person I was outraged by Ann Coulter‘s anti-Semitic comments on CNBC’s “The Big Idea” with host Donny Deutsch. Coulter began answering Deutsch’s question about what her ideal United States would look like by stating it would be like it was during the Republican National Convention in New York City. She then went…