Jewish Holidays and Culture

The slippery slope

October 19, 2015

There’s an old Jewish joke poking fun at religious prohibitions and the inevitable “slippery slope” that comes when one errs too far on the side of permissiveness. A soon to be married man goes to his rabbi to ask about what is allowed in the bedroom. “Can I kiss her here?” the man asks pointing […]

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Magic, demons and Judaism: what to do with troubling texts?

September 19, 2015

Dr. Robin Stamler is a magic buff. It’s not magic tricks that interest him so much as the intersection between Jewish tradition and the mysterious and inexplicable. In a brisk one-hour session at the recent Limmud Jerusalem conference, Stamler laid out some of the more esoteric examples of Judaism’s quirkier, some would say, darker side. […]

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Pick and Choose-daism

June 21, 2015

Jacob’s Ladder is my favorite weekend of the year. The spring version of the semi-annual music festival, which was held last month, presents an eclectic mix of country, folk, bluegrass and, lately, local indie rock bands over three days at Kibbutz Nof Ginosar north of Tiberius. Over the past several years, I’ve noticed an increasing […]

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In praise of datlashim

June 7, 2015

Datlashim are some of my favorite people. I admit I’m partial. All three of my kids are datlashim. That said, datlashim may represent the very future of Judaism or, stated with less hyperbole, may help an increasingly fractured Jewish community find common ground between religious and secular. Datlash is an acronym that stands for dati […]

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Silence, Mindfulness and Recovering from Election Obsession

April 20, 2015

After months of election obsession, rapaciously reading everything I could, poring over polls and talking with anyone and everyone I could for the better part of the winter, I did the only thing left to do. I shut up. Literally. Just a few days after the votes were tallied, my wife and drove up to […]

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How to Make This Year’s Seder Not Like Any Other Night

April 7, 2015

The run up to tonight’s Seder included a remarkable – and decidedly disturbing – discovery in the Blum house: no one in our family really likes Pesach. Actually, it was worse. Some of us really hate Pesach. The preparation, the cleaning, even the Seder itself doesn’t rank highly on our list of peak Jewish experiences. How […]

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Roman vs. Jewish Law: What Happened to Patrilineal Descent?

January 28, 2015

My January 9, 2015 column in The Jerusalem Post generated a higher than usual number of comments, many of which were not particularly complimentary. In the piece, which addressed the United Synagogue Youth (USY) teen leadership’s decision on relaxing the group’s policy on “interdating,” I posited that since assimilation is natural – indeed inevitable – in […]

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USY language change on interdating not a yiddishkeitastrophe

January 9, 2015

The headlines screaming across Jewish newspapers worldwide were an Orthodox kiruv professional’s wet dream. For a Jew whose job it is to bring other Jews closer to Orthodox observance, the dopamine rush of delight must have been overwhelming. Because if it’s your business to convince wandering Jews to become frum (religious) and one of the […]

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Members of the Tribe

October 17, 2014

Birds do the nuttiest things. In a flock, some of the birds will voluntarily serve as sentries, scanning the horizon for predators and calling out warnings. Having a sentry is good for the group but bad for the sentry, which has less time to search for food and, by issuing a warning call, is more […]

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Wartime Unity at Hutzot HaYotzer

September 17, 2014

In a summer where nearly every large-scale outdoor event was canceled on instruction by Israel’s Home Front Command, the annual Hutzot HaYotzer International Arts and Crafts Festival in Jerusalem represented a desperately needed welcome breather. Now in its 39th year, Hutzot HaYotzer is the country’s preeminent place to meet talented local artists – nearly 200 in […]

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