Dear Jew in the City, As I get older, it gets hard to stay up all night long on Shavuos to learn. So am I obligated to? And where does this idea come from? Sincerely, So Tired   Dear So Tired, Shavuos is in many ways an atypical holiday. There are three Festivals in the […]

  Dear Jew in the City, I heard that the Torah says that a woman must marry her rapist and that a father can sell his daughter into slavery? How can we possibly accept such horrible ideas in the modern world? Sincerely, Biblical Inequality   Dear Inequality, That’s a great question. It is true that […]

On the occasion of my eldest’s bat mitzvah which took place this past Sunday, I got to thinking about what it means to be the parent of a child who becomes a bat mitzvah – and an Orthodox one at that. In my pre-observant days, my bat mitzvah was mostly about memorizing the Torah portion, […]