Watch our live interview on the halachic and hashkafic implications of BRCA testing with Rabbi Jason Weiner, the senior rabbi and director of the Spiritual Care Department at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, where he is responsible for the chaplaincy team and all aspects of spiritual care. This video is in partnership with JScreen. Visit […]
Last week, a Sephardic member of our shul (synagogue) asked me which Middle Eastern country my family comes from. “None,” I explained, “We’re Ashkanazi.” “Really?” he exclaimed, “I was certain you were Sephardic.” After this encounter, I got to thinking: despite being completely Ashkanazi, with both sides of my family hailing from Ukraine, Russia and […]
Hi JITC- Can I cover my sukkah if it rains? I heard there is something called schlach? Thanks, Aidel Dear Aidel- Thanks for your question. You’ve created a portmanteau of two words. Schach is a mass noun (i.e., a thing whose discrete components are not counted); the roof of your succah is made from schach. […]
A new kind of phone call has been coming in to General Electric’s technical support: those of people who have inadvertently and unknowingly activated their oven’s Sabbath Mode. This handy feature, designed to help observant Jews keep religious laws, might be confusing to users of other faiths when they encounter it, but it is a […]
“I live in New York,” I said to myself. “It’s the easiest place in the world to keep kosher besides some cities in Israel.” Though I was just a high school student, and most of my family was not religious, I took it upon myself to keep kosher. Being Jewish – especially being Orthodox – […]
Rabbi Dr. Shlomo Pill is a senior lecturer at Emory Law School, and senior fellow and associate director of law and Judaism at Emory’s Center for the Study of Law and Religion, where his work focuses on Jewish and Islamic law, religious liberty, and U.S. law for clergy and religious organizations. He also bakes his […]
