I saw this Bar Mitzvah speech video a few weeks ago.
It’s one of the most profound things I’ve heard in a while:

HT: EV

-The High Rabbinical Court of Israel has ruled that all of the thousands of conversions conducted since 1999 by Rabbi Drukman - who heads the Conversion Authority — must be declared invalid. They also ruled that it was permitted to retroactively cancel the conversion of someone who does not observe the Sabbath, doing so […]

-As a result of support from Shas, Israel now has a new law on organ donation. Although it requires complete cessation of breathing and brain activity, other religious parties objected, saying that brain-death is of no significance. (Haaretz)
-Rabbi Yosef Sholom Elyashiv and other top haredi Ashkenazi rabbis have, in view of the new law, reiterated […]

-Rabbi Marc Angel calls the recent RCA deal with Israel’s Chief Rabbinate “a complete capitulation” to haredi standards. But others defend it. (The Jewish Week)
-Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, one of Modern Orthodoxy’s elder statesmen says, “I am very much afraid of this system. The RCA is making it more difficult for people to convert just […]

Rabbi Andy Bachman, an engaging and innovative Reform rabbi, recently blogged about those people who come to say kaddish at his synagogue.
Rarely, he writes, do they have a minyan. But for those two or three people who come to his study to mourn their loses, the sense of obligation is unique:
It’s difficult to talk about […]

Erica Jong has never held her tongue, so why would she when talking about her grandson’s circumcision? Answer: She wouldn’t.
On The Huffington Post today Jong rants about her suspicion that the covenantal cut damages a Jewish man’s attitude toward sex.
Yesterday, Darwin turned eight days old. Darwin is my second grandson. You know what that means […]

The most recent issue of Moment magazine has a powerful and moving article by Rabbi David Wolpe about his conversations with a friend dying of cancer — as well as his own grappling with mortality, his own cancer.
A beautiful, sad, and profound piece of writing from one of our most gifted rabbis:
We talked about the […]

in jail?
David Brooks, notorious for spending more than $10 million on his daughter’s bat mitzvah two years ago, was arrested Thursday on a 21-count indictment from federal prosecutors including charges of securities fraud, insider trading, tax evasion, and obstruction of justice. Apparently the funds for the party came from DHB Industries, the body amour company […]

MJL contributing writer Jessica Kraft has just launched a website featuring the contemporary ketubot that she designs for soon-to-be married couples.
Jessica has “worked with texts from the Conservative, Reconstructionist, Orthodox, and Reform traditions, as well as same-sex and interfaith texts, in many different languages: Hebrew, English, Aramaic and Spanish.”
After you check out Jessica’s ketubot, read […]

Last week, the good folks at Jewschool blogged about the need for Jewish ritual in contemporary life events. Their list of examples included:

Moving in with a partner to whom you are not married. [to some extent the marriage process acts as a ritual in the case where you move in together post-huppah.]
Separating from a partner […]