Sharon Brous, the rabbi at LA’s Ikar minyan, has a upfront, provocative piece in On Faith about vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The title says it all: Palin’s God is Not My God.
I don’t know who Sarah Palin’s God is. But my God does not advocate for gas pipelines - or any other multi-million dollar […]

The commandment to wipe out the nation of Amalek is, perhaps, one of the most morally complicated parts of the Torah.
In the Torah, Amalek is as close as it comes to evil manifest. Amalek attacked the Israelites when they were at their weakest; and Haman, the paradigmatic biblical villains, is a descendant of Amalek.
Still, the […]

As a new parent, I’ve become suddenly and acutely sensitive to smoking. While I used to personally detest it and socially embrace it — never smoking myself, but hanging out with all the “cool kids” who did (later: the amazingly gifted poets who did; and, still later, the semi-famous rock stars who did) — I […]

This morning on the subway, I was scribbling away in my notebook — scrunched up, as usual, between a 300-pound man and a delicate old woman who looked like she’d crumble if one of my headphone jacks fell on her.
And a man collapsed.
His body started quaking, the whole thing rigid, like someone invisible was […]

Earlier this year, the Israeli website HOD launched. It’s a Hebrew acronym that roughly translates to “religious and gay.” It’s a small site (and the English section is even smaller) that, as far as I can tell, is less a Trembling Before G-d-like scenario — in other words, a statement of self-definition — and more […]

A couple of weeks ago, a California man named Naftoli Smolyansky disappeared during a boating trip after jumping in the water to save his daughter.
We’re hoping to launch a new section on “Jewish Magic” on MJL in the next few months, and one aspect of this tragic story emphasized for me that this is — […]

It’s the month of Elul, the time when we begin the introspection that culminates with the High Holidays. So I thought I’d share an interesting text I recently came across.
The Talmud (Tractate Rosh Hashanah 16a) reports a four-way dispute about when God judges humans (and the rest of creation, actually).
All are judged on Rosh Hashanah, […]

On the way out of work yesterday, I was a little dazed — possibly by the sun, possibly by the fact that I’d been sitting in front of a computer all day and suddenly, the world was in three dimensions.
I put on my archaic CD player, started to listen to some Northern State, and just […]

From our friends at Jbooks. The Daily Show’s resident Brit John Oliver sounds off on apocalyptic literature. Eschatology and comedy: together at last.

Score one (more) for budding innovative technologies in Israel: at Beit Ha’iver, the Center of the Blind, in Herzliya, a photography teacher conducts a class for visually impaired students.

According to Chueh Lee, the designer of the camera:
“The instructor found the visually impaired have no problems estimating distances, since their sense of hearing is especially […]