By Robin Jacobson. Around the world, Torah scrolls will unfurl this May to the concluding portions of Leviticus (Vayikra) and then reach Numbers (Bamidbar). And, just in time, Torah scholars Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and Dr. Avivah Zornberg have published new commentaries on Leviticus and Numbers, to the delight of their legions of fans. Look for …
Boker Tov. I continue to focus on my more favorite or IMHO more important It’s Wednesday columns as the retirement looms. The year 2010 – 2011 was our Israel theme year and there was plenty about that, but the most provocative column – based on your responses – was about the Intel Science Talent Search. You …
Boker Tov. I was kidding about retiring. April Fools! I now continue with some of my more favorite or important columns, this one from September 2008. I was very clever in 2008-2009, been downhill since. I have at least six of those columns that I would love to share but maybe you will get two. Speak …
By Robin Jaconbson. Every family has its story. We are shaped by our family’s story – or what we think is our family’s story. This theme runs through two compelling new books about a woman’s journey (one imagined and one real) to understand her family’s past. Don’t miss congregant Michelle Brafman’s Washing the Dead or …
Boker Tov. The Israeli elections have not (yet) produced a clear winner. I can understand that a more right leaning government may be formed, given what Israel sees on almost every border, but I have also pretty much lost confidence in Netanyahu’s leadership. We shall see. Last Wednesday I announced the morphing of this column as …
By Robin Jacobson. In the literary world, Soviet Jews are everywhere. The last year alone saw such a bumper crop of novels and memoirs by Soviet Jewish émigrés that the Forward named 2014 “the Year of the Soviet Jew.” Two of my favorites from this émigré genre are The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis and A …
By Robin Jacobson. It is an unfortunate fact of Jewish library life that some holidays are richer in children’s books than others. Our library’s shelves overflow with Hanukkah books. Alas, Tu B’Shevat, the New Year for Trees, does not equally excite the imaginations of book publishers, despite the holiday’s links to trendy environmental topics. Even …
By Robin Jacobson I had heard about the famous Rabbi Mindy Portnoy for many years before I met her. She is a trailblazer, one of the first women rabbis. She is an author of children’s books, including the breakthrough Ima on the Bima and the sensitive Where Do People Go When They Die, which has …
By Robin Jacobson Today we worry about Ebola. During World War II, the disease to dread was typhus, which ran rampant through vulnerable populations. Anne Frank and her sister Margot were among 17,000 inmates at Bergen-Belsen who succumbed to typhus in the final weeks of the war. Two Polish typhus researchers, one Aryan and one …
By Robin Jacobson. In the midst of the Cold War, the celebrated Soviet Jewish poet Boris Pasternak proudly completed his first and only novel – an epic tale of the life and loves of a doctor-poet who becomes disillusioned with the Soviet state. Disturbed by the book’s unpatriotic tone, the Soviet literary establishment refused to …
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