All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost. – J.R.R. Tolkien The journey to and from Orthodox Judaism can leave people bruised. If you’re coming in, your family may reject your choices and your new adopted community may waste no […]
Exactly six months to the day after congregants at Tree of Life, a Conservative Synagogue, were gunned down by a White Supremacist, another of his ilk, on the other end of the country, showed up at a Chabad House, an Orthodox Shul, with the same intent: to kill as many Jews as possible. As the […]
No longer confined to yoga and meditation enthusiasts, modern society is attuned to the benefits of mindfulness. Yet what does it have to offer the Jewish spiritual seeker? Jon Kabat-Zinn, a mindfulness-practice teacher, and developer of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) technique, defines mindfulness as an “awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in […]
Anti-Semitic acts are happening all over the world and they are being perpetrated by people of every type and stripe. The most powerful response is for us to unite as a people.
During the first 4 years after starting Jew in the City, I worked for free. I didn’t know how to fundraise, and so I basically volunteered for a cause I deeply believed in. After these early years of actually losing money by working (to pay for a babysitter while I was never compensated for my […]
My eight-year-old glances out the front window during Shabbos lunch and does a double-take. “Ima! What’s Mr. Smith doing?” For the last seven years, our home has looked out on our neighbors’ four lollipop-shaped ficus trees. They add a certain flair, a bit of joie de vivre to the neighborhood. Hearing our neighbor start up […]
