Originally published by Combined Jewish Philanthropies as a part of the Face Jewish Hate Campaign My dad’s mother was born in Berlin in 1923 and was one of the lucky ones who escaped before World War II began and the borders were closed. But she still lived through the introduction of a variety of anti-Jewish Continue Reading »
Originally published in the MetroWest Daily News April 30, 2023 Like many others in my line of work, I have been following the reports about rising levels of antisemitism. I am saddened by the way in which these incidents have become commonplace in communities throughout the country. It was only last month that the Anti-Defamation Continue Reading »
On Tuesday afternoon we received an email from the principal at our children’s elementary school. She was writing to the parents to let them know that there would be a fire drill tomorrow. Nothing unusual with that, and as a parent with a child who doesn’t like loud noises or changes to his routine it’s Continue Reading »
Fighting for Israel (adapted for circulation) On a weekly basis, alongside waiting for new episodes of my favorite TV shows to drop, I also wait for a specific message from my family. We have a WhatsApp group simply labelled Mishpacha (the Hebrew word for family), and it includes members of my English and Israeli family. Continue Reading »
I don’t want to stand up here and talk about antisemitism. I wish that our society had reached a place where it was simply not a thing and therefore not requiring of a response. I wish that the condemnations to incidents of antisemitism would be so loud and widespread that you would not need to Continue Reading »
A story is told of a water carrier, who had two pots on a very long pole that she balanced on her shoulders. Each day the woman left her home and walked down a path to the stream where she would fill the pots with water, put them back on her pole, balance the pole Continue Reading »
A story is told of a town where all of the clocks stopped working (1). The people did what they could to try and repair their time pieces, but despite their best efforts they could not get them going again. No one in town understood the inner workings of the springs, dials, pendulums, and gears – Continue Reading »
Introduction by Rabbi Danny Burkeman I remember trying out for my synagogue youth choir when I was a child. I really enjoyed singing and it also meant that I would get to miss a bit of the regular class. They had a policy that everyone was accepted into the choir and so they let me Continue Reading »
12,233 days, over 400 months, almost 33 ½ years. That was the amount of time between Ayatollah Khomeini issuing a Fatwa, a legal ruling calling on Muslims to kill Salman Rushdie, and the attack which took place a week ago at the Chautauqua Institution where someone tried to murder Rushdie. In 1988, Salman Rushdie published Continue Reading »
