Currently Browsing: Judaism 40 articles
Good To Be A Jew
Robert “Smokey” Miles pens an original poem. How’d you like to be a Jew? Yeah, you could be a Hebrew too when someone says to you, “so nu?” you can say “vos machts du?” too. Think Yiddish, speak British they used to say read the Torah, dance the hora let the klezmer play In […]
Re-Opening A Historical Polish Ark
Shmuel Polin describes how he fashioned from wood a recreated historical ark from Poland. Earlier this week, the Skirball Museum in Cincinnati reopened with a central exhibition on the reconstructed Torah Ark of Sidra, Poland. The reconstructed holy ark was the culmination of my Opening the Ark Project and years of study into the rabbinate. […]
A Forgetting of Benjamin Franklin
Shai Afsai marks the passing of Ben Franklin on 17 April 1790. Rabbis and Jewish scholars have often been unaware of, confused about, or uncomfortable acknowledging American founding father Benjamin Franklin’s influence on Judaism. Franklin specialists have been largely oblivious to it. Though the mussar (practical Jewish ethical instruction) classic Sefer Heshbon Hanefesh (Book of […]
Adam and Eve
A new poem by Robert ‘Smokey’ Miles. The first man looked at the rib girlWho was ripped right from his chestHe said ‘You look cute in your birthday suitAnd I really do dig your breasts.’Then he palindromed ‘Madam I’m Adam!’She said, ‘I’m Eve, please don’t leave!’And soon they got up and at ’emAnd reproduced like […]
My Metal, My Judaism
Adam Kammerling reflects on metal, theatre and Judaism. The first song to move me to tears was the Avinu Malkeinu, as sung by the congregation of the Bristol and West Progressive synagogue. I was fifteen years old and it took me by surprise. It was the hyper-normative, mega-hetero, small-town, the early noughties. Boys couldn’t just […]
A Scholarly Unorthodox
Karen H. Skinazi reviews Zalman Newfield’s Degrees of Separation. When my teenage son was little, he used to sway back and forth if he was concentrating hard on something—a book, a puzzle, a Lego creation. ‘Who knew shokeling was hereditary?’ we joked. My husband comes from Hasidische stock. If my son still shokels while he […]
At the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel and Casino
A new poem by Shai Afsai. There are flamingos in the Flamingo Habitat at the Flamingo Las Vegas Hotel and Casino – eight pink birds, each balancing itself on one twig-like leg. And there are a few full-length mirrors fastened to trees in the Flamingo Habitat, which the flamingos gaze into attentively. I ask the caretaker, who is aggressively […]
The Mysterious (Jewish) Monoliths
Nathan Abrams considers the religious symbolism of the mysterious monoliths that have been recently appearing. Strange monoliths have suddenly started appearing and disappearing at various locations around the world. No one knows who put them there or why. Immediately, the lyrics of the immortal Spinal Tap came to mind: In ancient times,Hundreds of years before the […]
Jews & Chess
Tim Cowen asks if chess is a Jewish game. Beth Harmon, a 9-year-old orphan chess prodigy, walks into a high school. She beats all 12 of the school’s best players simultaneously. The Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit is entirely fictional, but it reveals the reality of the ancient game. An orphan girl can succeed against the […]
Reflecting on Rosh Hashana: A Call for Contributions
JewThink would like to mark this extraordinary Rosh Hashanah by collating and publishing some reflections on other Jewish new years past and present. These can be brief, funny and irreverent or longer and more reflective. What was your most disastrous Rosh Hashanah? What was your most uplifting? What new possibilities does Rosh Hashanah in semi-lockdown […]