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Yizkor After the Black Sabbaths

This year, we need to come together to mourn our communal losses

byShlomo M. Brody

Next week, on the eighth day of Passover, Jews around the world will gather in synagogues for Yizkor. While this communal memorial service takes place four times a year—also happening during Shavuot, Yom Kippur, and Shemini Atzeret—this Passover will mark the first Yizkor since the attacks of Oct. 7. What can we, collectively, say? To find an answer, it’s helpful to understand the roots of Yizkor. Imagine a community in which two of its members—we’ll call them Reuben and Simon—died in the month before Passover. Both were well-liked, respected family men who died young, at the age of 46. Yet Simon died from a tragic accident, while Reuben was murdered—along with many others—in a pogrom. ...

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Empathy Is Part of Our Jewish DNA

In the midst of a war, the Passover Seder offers a chance to find something we can all agree on, even if we disagree about everything else

byElliot Cosgrove

The Ballarat Synagogue, consecrated in 1861, is the oldest continuously used synagogue on Australia’s mainland

The Gold Rush Shul

Australia’s Ballarat Synagogue tries to preserve its unusual cultural history

byNomi Kaltmann

Empathy Is Part of Our Jewish DNA

In the midst of a war, the Passover Seder offers a chance to find something we can all agree on, even if we disagree about everything else

byElliot Cosgrove

The Gold Rush Shul

Australia’s Ballarat Synagogue tries to preserve its unusual cultural history

byNomi Kaltmann

A Letter to My Anonymous Donor

My toddler says the darndest things, and I thank his bio-dad for making that possible

bySara Ivry

My Son’s Bris Brought Me Back to Judaism

A father’s tale of underground mohels, the Catholic Church, and a never-too-late spiritual revival

byKenneth R. Rosen

The Slow Rise of the Bat Mitzvah

The first ceremony a century ago marked a turning point—in retrospect. But the new ritual didn’t catch on for years.

byJenna Weissman Joselit

The Orthodox Jew and the Atheist

How I learned that righteousness and morality are a question of behavior, not belief

byRebecca Klempner

My friend Jeremy was driving me from St. Mary’s City, Maryland, to Baltimore one Saturday morning, 25 years ago. We’d passed through the picturesque rural scenery and had hit suburban sprawl. It was March, and although we were on spring break, spring hadn’t really hit. Around bland single-family homes, skeletal trees jabbed branches at the overcast sky and patches of grass still looked scruffy. Strip-mall parking lots had begun to fill with shoppers. “Do you honestly believe only people who believe in God can be upstanding citizens?” Jere asked. It was one of the last times I rode in a car on Shabbat. I’d tried to find someone to drive me to my great-aunt’s on Sunday, but this was the latest ride I could find. While not fully observant for another three or four years, I had begun to curtail activities prohibited on the Sabbath because of my increasing conviction that the Torah was given to the Jewish people by God....

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Taking Judaism Personally

If we want people who are Jewish from birth to engage more profoundly with their religion, we should look to converts—and Abraham Joshua Heschel—for answers

byElias Neibart

‘The Holocaust and Genocide Don’t Start With Bombs, They Start With Words’ By Abigail PogrebinTablet Magazine

Taking Judaism Personally

If we want people who are Jewish from birth to engage more profoundly with their religion, we should look to converts—and Abraham Joshua Heschel—for answers

byElias Neibart

‘The Holocaust and Genocide Don’t Start With Bombs, They Start With Words’ By Abigail PogrebinTablet Magazine

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Returning to the Person That I Used to Be

Jewish rituals around sex—ones I’d never thought about before—helped me feel comfortable in my own skin after my mastectomy

bySarah Erdreich

My breasts will be removed in 10 hours. I stand naked in my bathroom, staring at my reflection in the mirror. There are three small, red puncture marks on my right breast, souvenirs of the biopsy that confirmed my cancer. My husband comes into the bathroom and stands next to me. “Do you want me to take pictures?” he asks tenderly. I shake my head, but don’t look away. I know that I’ll never want to look at pictures of what I once had: breast tissue, nipples, a softness and pliability that not even the very good implants I’ve chosen could replicate. My husband and I had sex last week, and I’d assumed we would have it again before my surgery. We still could; I could kiss him and lead him into the bedroom, lower myself onto him and ask him to squeeze my breasts hard and then harder still because after tomorrow I won’t feel anything. But if I do, all I’ll be able to think about is that it really would be the last time I’ll have sex in this body, and that seems unbearably sad. Instead, I hug my husband tightly, feeling my breasts flatten against his torso, and cry. ...

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