Marriage Matters
Along with the new Jewish year we welcomed a new cycle of Torah-readings. For Californians, the first post-Sukkot Sabbath reading was particularly timely, coming as it did a mere ten days before the 2008...
Author: Avi Shafran
Sukkah-Vision
The defining element of the sukkah – the temporary dwelling in which Jews are commanded to spend a week each autumn, beginning five days after Yom Kippur – is the once-growing but now detached...
Momentous Moments
The weeks before a presidential election provide spiritual fodder for the week between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Throughout political campaigns, candidates and their handlers are keenly aware of the great toll a simple...
No Laughing Matter
It’s never a good idea to analyze a joke. All the same, I recently found myself deconstructing a stand-up comedian’s one-liner quoted in a newspaper article. It may have been because Rosh Hashana was...
Coming to Judaism
Dear Cross-Currents Readers, I apologize for inflicting this essay (albeit in a different form) on you once again. But C-C has asked me to share this version of an article that, as originally written,...
No Hekhsher, Not Tzedek
(The Jewish Observer, September, 2008/Elul 5768) According to Chazal (Nedarim, 40a), ideas that on the surface seem entirely constructive can in truth be quite the opposite. A contemporary case in point is the effort...
Be Forewarned: Non-Posted Posting!
I received a good amount of mostly encouraging feedback on my lengthy “Oversize Posting” of last week, and several suggestions that I reformulate the essay for a non-believing reader. I have indeed done that,...
Untruth in Advertising
Thanks all the same but no, I’d prefer my next party not be “the talk of the town.” The advertisement promising town-wide tittering over my gala affair was for a Jerusalem hotel, and appeared...
Be Forewarned — Oversize Posting!
This is an unusual posting for this venue, no obvious relative of the short essays I post weekly. Clicking on “more” below will take you to a long article I worked on over the...
Tangled Up In Jews
Anti-Israel diatribes spring from Iran’s leaders like fleas from a dog, but a recent Iranian Parliament statement stood apart, containing as it did a remarkable admission. The statement was in reaction to a comment...
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