For months now, we’ve been making real sacrifices. And since the downsides are clear, apparent and immediate, while the victories are invisible, uncertain and down the road, it’s been really difficult, both emotionally and financially.
Professors Emily Oster and Stuart Firestein offer advice for rabbis for deciding what to do about the High Holy Days during COVID-19 – and how to live with the unavoidable uncertainty.
The difficulty of judging our need for physical distance can turn into something much worse: moral distance.
What was that darkness? A black hole? What was that light? Electromagnetic energy? Radiation?
Memory, whether personal or collective, seems to be a central feature of Jewish practice.
Some truths are true because they are the stories that shape our perspective on the world. Torah is the inspiration for, and the vessel that holds, this Truth.
“Gam zeh yaavor”—this too shall pass, whether “this” is a sorrowful or a joyful feeling or situation. This phrase can apply in a myriad of ways if we let it.
Just as we have learned that solid and liquid can be two states of the same matter, the sureties of our world are not what they seem.
We may associate the Jewish New Year with inward reflection, but the Mishnah and the commentaries are clear that Judaism treats teshuvah as a fundamentally social process.
As Jews begin to prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and a new season of “The Good Place” starts soon, what lessons can the show teach us for 5780?
