Life offers so few opportunities to stop and reflect that we need to seize every chance. What better time to look back at the questions with which we began this season than in Israel’s tenth...
“I had been bested” Megan Phelps on Sam Harris Podcast
Megan Phelps Roper was on the Sam Harris podcast to talk about her recently released book Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church. My favorite part? Where she talks about...
TJS S3 Interlude: Kingdom or client state
Sukkot is a time to sit in the Sukkah and reflect, so here are a few thoughts from my Sukkah. This is an exploration of what it means for the state of Israel to be a kingdom and and it what means to...
Yom Kippur: Some Fave Online Live Webcasts 5780
For those not able to get to a synagogue physically, or for those who fear a scene like that in the 1939 Yiddish film “Overture to Glory,” below are some live webcasts of services that...
JewliciousReads: Four Cookbooks and a Numeral
As Erev Yom Kippur approaches, my thoughts are focused on repentence and cookbooks. Four new ones hit the shelves in the past few weeks. They include: SABABA Fresh, Sunny Flavors From My Israeli...
Unfollow on Good Morning America
The first time Megan Phelps Roper and I interacted was just before Yom Kippur in 2009. In a now famous tweet she spoke about Judaism’s “dead rote rituals” and chided me for...
TJS S3 Interlude: 5780 A New Horizon
The High Holy Days are also know as the Days of Awe which can be awesome, or awful. Here is a look at how to tie the work of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot together into an approach to building...
ShivaWatch: The judge, the poet, the physician, and father of Rocky.
The Honorable Judge Ruth I. Abrams of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed away at 88. Judge Abrams, like the Notorious RBG, was one of the first women given admission into Harvard Law School...
TJS S3E15 Israel among the nations part III: Operation Kadesh
The Sinai campaign was many things – a preemptive strike against Israel’s enemies, the last gasp of colonialism in the Middle East and a complete failure of international law. This...
JewliciousEats: Annual Rosh HaShana Recipe Roundup 5780
L’SHANA TOVA. Hello from Paris, La Defense, where I am busy compiling the annual recipe roundup this week. Of course, we will start with the queen of all holiday recipes… John Nathan. Ms...