OR: Tales of a Postdenominational Jew at a Postdenominational Conference.
This is my first year at LimmudNY, and I didn’t quite know what to expect. One thing I knew, though–with the multiplicity of Shabbat prayer choices–traditional egalitarian, Sephardic, Shira Chadasha style, mechitzah non-egalitarian, meditative, instrumental, yoga-infused–this was my chance to explore the unknown.
To try things that […]

The ever-insightful Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein has an interesting and sobering post over at Cross-Currents about the Spinka Hasid tax fraud case.
Why does it take so long for some people to take note of the differences between corrupt, anti-Semitic governments of older vintage, and the arguably better record of the medinah she chesed we inhabit? Is […]

Much has been written in the New York blogosphere about the real-ness quotient on CW’s addicting new hit Gossip Girl.
Former Gawker and now Jewcy writer Emily Gould has been shocked that there are no Jews in the preppy world of Upper East Side boarding schools. Perhaps true on the TV show. But were anyone to […]

There’s an old saying “Man plans and God laughs,” but recently I realized that, in the Bible, it’s God who does all the planning.
This is theologically surprising, but it also makes the Bible a less suspenseful read than it could otherwise be.
For example, the final plague in Egypt, the killing of the first born, is […]

With primary season in full swing, I thought I’d poll you, dear readers, on who you think you’ll be voting for (or — for those of you in Iowa, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Michigan — who you have voted for).
We’ll start with the Democratic race, and I’ll post a Republican poll next week.
online survey - […]

No joke. Heeb magazine’s humor editor David Deutsch takes on Brandeis professor Jonathan Sarna in an op-ed in this week’s Forward.
And Deutsch seriously hold his own, taking on Sarna’s recent assertion that Heeb is part of a secularist movement.
Heeb’s editors represent a broad spectrum of Jewish thought. Some of us are shomer Shabbat, some are […]

Since 2006, Slate editor Daivd Plotz has been “blogging the Bible.” Unsettled by reading the story of the rape of Dinah, he feels cheated that what he knows of the bible is simply:
Adam and Eve, Cain vs. Abel, Jacob vs. Esau, Jonah vs. whale, 40 days and nights, 10 plagues and Commandments, 12 tribes and […]

-An overview of the unauthorized settlement outposts in the West Bank finds there to be over 100 at present. Ariel Sharon’s dismantlement promise to Bush covers only outposts established after March 2001 (25 or 50, depending on who you ask). These house about 3000 people, and some are indisputably built at least partly on private […]

-In a number of cities “intransigent registrars and rabbis” are refusing to recognize state-sanctioned conversions to Judaism, and it is proposed that these people, “who receive their salaries and draw authority from the state,” be fired. (Haaretz)
-Yossi Sarid observes, “it is difficult to point out even one law in Israel that is properly enforced - […]

From the Dallas Morning News Religion Blog:
ST. LOUIS (AP) — A Missouri inmate once labeled a white supremacist is fighting for his right to be served kosher meals in prison.
Norman Lee Toler, serving a 10-year sentence for statutory rape, insists he is Jewish despite guards at an Illinois penitentiary catching him with photos of Adolf […]