Jewish Voices, Jewish Lives

It’s what we do every day. Whether it’s the food we favor…a bagel with shmear… or the drive to repair the world…tikkun olam, we Jews are there, especially in Rockland County. We plan to bring Doing Jewish to you every Friday. Sometimes it’ll be fun, sometimes it’ll be serious.

Holding Two Truths

I often see, around the middle of May, an argument of sorts unfolding. It surrounds the celebration of Mother’s Day, and the appropriateness of the designation of a day exclusively to celebrate and appreciate everything about our mothers and our relationships with them from our first days …

Would It Have Been Enough?

Many of my close family members, and many of my cousins live in Israel, including my brother, my aunt and uncle, cousins who I grew up with, their kids and grandkids. An even greater proportion of my wife’s family live there as well. We are blessed when we have opportunities to share famil…

Self Evident Truths

When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence with the help of Franklin and Adams, he used an interesting turn of phrase. “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” he wrote, when describing the natural state of equality the framers believed underpinned the act of revolut…

In Every Generation

It is particularly apt just before Passover to consider that every generation of Jews asks the same question.

Is this moment different? Is it an echo? Or is it something completely unknown?

History teaches something more important than the answer itself: the question must always be asked.

The Last Chapter (part 2)

I’d like to share a personal, not organizational perspective this week.

We woke up last Shabbat, and within a short time, we all knew that the war had started.

That sounds like a statement of fact, but the truth is, it is incorrect.

  • On November 4th, 1979, followers of the emerging Ira…