Religious Life

Parshot Devarim, Deuteronomy 1:1–3:22

Ten ancient jugs unearthed at the Samaria site of the ancient city of Shiloh could lead researchers to new discoveries about the Jewish tabernacle that existed there before the First Temple was built in Jerusalem.

Parshat Pinchas, Numbers 25:10-30:1

I have attended countless Jewish leadership conferences. In many instances, I have even been on the steering committees responsible for the selection of a theme, the development of programming, wrangling speakers and overall logistical planning. Those responsible for scheduling always grapple with the same question: What do we do about Shabbat?

Construction for the Phoenix Mikvah is in progress this summer with plans to open by Rosh Hashanah.

Valley Beit Midrash (VBM) has announced the third cohort for its Start Me Up! fellowship program, which encourages Jewish social entrepreneurs up to age 45 to bring innovative ideas to the Valley’s Jewish community.

I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. There I was, an Orthodox Israeli Jew, at a 500-year-old synagogue in Marrakesh, distributing food parcels to Muslims for Ramadan, representing the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (The Fellowship) on behalf of millions of Christians in the U.S. and worldwide.

Numbers 16:1–17:15

What is the primary approach judges should take? In this week’s Torah portion, we learn about the nature of the Sanhedrin and its role in ensuring keen justice for the Jewish people. Indeed, compared to systems of justice that only seek retribution over rehabilitation, Judaism takes a more utilitarian approach. Further, Judaism offers a novel approach; that arguing that compromise is the approach of the wise.

SUNDAY, MAY 28

When we were children, our teachers would provide us with mnemonic devices to recall how to spell different words correctly. Remember the classic: “i before e except after c”? There was another such pedagogic device that I recall regarding the spelling of the words dessert and desert respectively. My teacher taught that “dessert,” that delicious final course of the meal, was spelled with two S’s because we always wanted seconds, whereas when it came to the desert or wilderness, we generally do not want more than one.

Financial life should be very simple, according to the Torah. That’s because people who don’t own anything have simple financial lives. And according to the Torah, no one actually owns anything! This is not a communist approach, but rather a biblical approach.

Self-driving cars. Drip irrigation. Missile defense. Milk?

By day, Liora Brosbe is the family engagement officer for the Jewish Federation of the East Bay in Berkeley, California, where she reaches out to the community with a menu of opportunities for “connecting to Jewish life and each other.”

Parshat Emor outlines the “fixed times” of the year – the sacred festivals of the Jewish people. It instructs us to count the seven weeks of seven days between Pesach and Shavuot. This is the Counting of the Omer, the season in which we currently find ourselves.

When you’re the only full-time rabbi in a relatively small and isolated Jewish community – like that found on the Asian island of Taiwan – you’re expected to do much more than lead religious services.

Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate in the French presidential elections, said she would ban halal slaughter of animals if she is elected, along with any other method of ritual slaughter without stunning.

In today’s climate, now is the time to reach out to other communities to share our cultures and learn about different beliefs. A little over a month ago, my mom and I were invited to an interfaith dinner at a local mosque, where we were introduced to the Islamic faith, food and what a service looked like. They had a speaker there who instead of talking about differences, talked about the similarities between the Abrahamic religions. It was a very eye-opening experience and I wanted to share it with my youth group, BITY.

As I study Torah, I sometimes imagine myself a time traveler, trying to glean some awareness of the lives of my Israelite ancestors without the perspective of my own contemporary view of the world. This week’s Torah portion, Tazria-Metzora, provides me with a challenging journey through time.

In this week’s Torah portion of Shemini, the Torah relates that on the inaugural day of the Mishkan (tabernacle), the traveling temporary home the Jewish people built for G-d in the desert, the two older sons of Aharon the high priest, Nadav and Avihu, brought an offering for G-d. The only problem is that it was not requested of them and therefore, the Torah calls it foreign fire. Their punishment: being consumed by a heavenly fire. What could be wrong with wanting to become closer to G-d through bringing a sacrifice?

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NEW YORK — The restaurants are packed on the wide boulevard in the Queens borough of this city known as the Bukharian Broadway.

Gluten-free matzah might sound like a bad joke – after all, regular unleavened bread tastes pretty cardboard-like already.

When Rabbi Robert Kravitz pulled off his tie at the Latino-Jewish Seder on March 21, he said it was symbolic of seeking freedom. Wearing a tie, he said, is a custom that feels confining and men do it to themselves out of social convention. So he liberated himself of the tie and continued leading the seder, reading from the “Freedom Celebration Haggadah” created for this annual event.

Two weeks before Passover, Rabbis Elana Kanter and Michael Wasserman of The New Shul were leading a model seder – a very special one, using a brightly colored, easy-to-hold Haggadah with visual images.