Jewish Holidays and Culture

It takes a village

August 10, 2025

When I contracted my second urinary tract infection in a month (infections are probably the most common side effect of the CAR-T treatment for blood cancers that I received and have been writing about over the past several months), I needed some antibiotics in a hurry. The simple act of peeing had become torturously painful […]

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Is Jewish universalism the source of antisemitism?

November 2, 2024

Sometimes an idea can upend decades of thinking. That’s what Dara Horn’s recent essay in The Atlantic on universalism vs. particularism did for me. 

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The black swans of Rosh Hashana

October 6, 2024

The term “black swan effect” refers to the kinds of big phenomena one never thought would happen and that have a potentially catastrophic outcome. How does that relate to Rosh Hashana?

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Anniversary: A love story

August 11, 2024

Every year in mid-August, my wife, Jody, and I celebrate our wedding anniversary. This year, I wanted to mark the occasion by recounting our story.

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For this we left Egypt?

April 19, 2024

A review of and highlights from the parody Haggadah, For This We Left Egypt? by humorists Dave Barry, Alan Zweibel and Adam Mansbach.

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Foreskin’s lament: Should Jewish males be circumcised?

October 6, 2023

I’m circumcised. So are all the men in my family. We’re Jews. That’s what we do. But have we made a terrible mistake?

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A Yom Kippur confession for a corrupt government

September 24, 2023

2023 has been a year where atonement seems as unachievable as it is necessary. For Yom Kippur, here are our sins – and an alternative.

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Was Maimonides high or just perplexed?

July 16, 2023

Was Moses Ben Maimon, the famous Middle Eastern doctor/rabbi known as the Rambam (RMBM), high when he wrote The Guide to the Perplexed? Judging by how he interpreted some of the most provocative stories in the Torah, that would certainly seem a possibility. How else to explain the RMBM’s branding of Abraham’s binding of Isaac as, essentially, […]

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What does freedom mean to you?

April 14, 2023

The protests that have roiled Israel for months have been all about “dem-o-cra-tia.” Isn’t that another way of saying “freedom?”

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The woke antisemitism of “You People”

February 12, 2023

The new Netflix film “You People” plays like a primer on how to be a self-hating Jew in America today.

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