A couple weeks ago, my wife and I attended a Purim party. I had no idea what to wear. In past years I was able to figure out what to wear based on the theme. Black tie? Got it covered. Western attire? No problem (jeans, flannel and cowboy hat). 70’s Disco attire? That’s easy (and…
As a follically-challenged guy, I’ve always been impressed by (and a bit envious of) the Jew Fro. It’s certainly an underreported aspect of Jewish cultural life. My uncle sported a Jew Fro in high school back in the early 70s, which I’m convinced was only because he knew he’d be bald later in life (he was)….
It’s hard to believe that Hurricane Katrina occurred five-and-a-half years ago. I traveled to New Orleans in 2007 with other rabbis to help in the cleanup effort and spent two quick days there this past August when I was the keynote speaker at the Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) Fraternity Convention. It was impressive to see…
Here’s my recent post on the “Rabbi J in the D” blog for Community Next: After a decade-long $150 million campaign, the National Museum of American Jewish History officially opened November 14 in Philadelphia. The 100,000 square foot museum is on Philly’s Independence Mall. The new museum’s gala grand opening had hundreds of donors who…
Xtranormal has helped users create close to 10 million projects by turning their words into funny animated movies. User “krumbagel” has created a hilarious Xtranormal animation that successfully (and humorously) critiques the ultra-Orthodox notion that the Avot (patriarchs) in the Torah not only followed the Halachah (Jewish law) as outlined in the Torah, but even…
In Judaism the number 613 is a lucky number associated with the number of positive and negative commandments that can be found in the Written Torah (Bible). So, when LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade line up to display their new Miami Heat jerseys, many Jews in the know can’t help but smile at…
In addition to providing kosher supervision for Camp Mass, a Jewish residential summer camp in Michigan run by Tamarack Camps, I also run several informal educational programs. One of my favorite programs is planting trees with the campers and their counselors. I wrote the following article about the importance of trees for the camp’s online…
I work as the rabbi at a Jewish summer camp. We have eighty campers from Israel join us each summer. Many of these young campers, like most Israelis, are not familiar with liberal, alternative forms of religious expression in Judaism. In Israel, Judaism is black and white. You either do it or you don’t –…
Cross-posted at Jewish Techs As the Apple iPhone has become even more popular and an increasing number of Apple fans have picked up the iPad, there has been a wave of new applications created for these devices. Some are good and useful, while others… well, let’s just say I’m not going to take the time…
Cross-posted at Jewish Techs What do Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg, blogger Emily Gould, and the 10th-11th century scholar Rabbeinu Gershom have in common? They all articulated their views about privacy. Zuckerberg was criticized last month for Facebook’s new privacy settings. Over 500 million worldwide users of Facebook had more of their information made public because…