Martini Judaism

"Embarrassed." "Ashamed." "Confused." "Ambivalent." "Frightened." Last week, I sat with a group of Jews in a synagogue. It was an adult education session, and I had asked them to complete the following sentence: “When I think of Israel, I am…” Those were the reactions – what goes through their minds as they think about Israel, and what goes through their souls as they think about Israel. I was sho...

The word is "postmortem," and it fits. For that is what the media has been conducting in the wake of the catastrophe that befell the Titan in the North Atlantic with the tragic loss of five lives. And yet, almost immediately, there was an outcry. In the words of The New York Times: On one vessel, five people died on a very expensive excursion that was supposed to return them to the lives they knew...

This conversation with author Bruce Feiler could not have happened at a more opportune time. I am in the process of retiring from the full time congregational rabbinate. I am in the process of finishing up a pulpit career that lasted more than forty years. Over the last few weeks I have found myself repeating the words of my rabbi. Peggy Lee, who sang plaintively: “Is that all there is?”  Is that...

“So, Rabbi, in your more than forty years in the rabbinate, what are those things that surprised you – those things that you never expected, or that you once expected that didn’t actually come to pass?” There would be a long list, but here is the one that moves me in particular. Forty years ago, we never would have expected that so many Jews would turn to God as the location of their Jewish energi...

If we held a moment of silence for every American who died of COVID it would take nearly two years at a rate of 24 hours a day to cover every name. More than 6.6 million people worldwide and counting have died of COVID -- including more than a million Americans. These are all people who loved and were loved. This is an extraordinary and grim statistic, as on May 11, the CDC declared that the Feder...

"That's it!" my friend told me over coffee. "I am so done with Israel! The corruption, the situation with the Palestinians, the racists in the government...How can you still support them? How can you even want to go there this summer?" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I started my rabbinical career 42 years ago, when I served as an assistant rabbi at a large, urban synagogue in Miami, Florida. Those were interesting and challenging times. I arrived in the wake of the Mariel boat lift. I experienced the plight of the Haitian refugees.  Those were the days of "Miami Vice," and I was living that television show. In 1983, I left Miami for points north, and I rarely...

It was the fifteen worst minutes in American Jewish history. It happened on October 27, 2018. It was a Shabbat morning. A gunman, Robert Bowers, entered the Tree of Life -Or L’Simcha Congregation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – in the heart of the historically Jewish Squirrel Hill neighborhood. Bowers opened fire on the worshipers, and by the time his attack was over, eleven worshipers were killed,...

Bernard Malamud. Saul Bellow. Philip Roth. Joseph Heller. Herman Wouk. J.D. Salinger. Norman Mailer. E.L. Doctorow. Chaim Potok. Leon Uris. That is a partial list of American Jewish writers of the recent past -- all of them lions of literature, and all of them now dead. There is one woman who belongs on that list, and she is the only one left of that generation. I refer to Cynthia Ozick, who last...

So, this really happened. Some years ago, my young cousin was on a United Synagogue Youth trip to Israel. While she was there, the group went north to tour the grottoes at Rosh HaNikra. Alas, while taking photographs, she dropped her camera into the water. She called her mother, heartbroken, and they both concluded the camera was irretrievably lost. A month after her return to the States, my young...

It is time to play movie trivia. According to the American Film Institute, who is the greatest hero to ever appear in a movie? Indiana Jones? Rocky Balboa? Um, Gandhi? The answer: Atticus Finch, in "To Kill a Mockingbird" — played by Gregory Peck in the 1962 classic film adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mad magazine was the haggadah of my childhood. It was my sacred text, my script and my constant companion — so much so that I cannot imagine my childhood and early adolescence without it. That is why these past few days have been sad for me, and for so many others. Al Jaffee, perhaps the last of the creators of Mad, has died at the biblical age of 102. In 2016, Guinness World Records recognized hi...

I have been watching what has been unfolding in the state of Israel – the 5 percent (and growing) of the Israeli population that has taken to the streets of the Jewish state. They are protesting the proposed changes that would radically diminish the power of the judiciary, thus threatening the only thing that Israel has that represents a true balance of powers. When I see those scenes, it brings m...

The word is "shushky." It means to shush something -- to not speak about something, to silence a conversation. It is a uniquely Southern Jewish Yiddishism. Let me tell you about the first time that I heard that word. I was with a group of Jews in Atlanta, Georgia. The conversation turned to the topic of Leo Frank. I suggested that it might be a “nice idea” to have a monument for him, somewhere in...

This might be one of the most important columns that I have ever written. I wrote this, and created the accompanying podcast, because I want to help people deal with the most momentous decision that anyone can make. In the early 1980s, I was at the very beginning of my rabbinical career. I was serving a congregation in Miami, and I visited one of our congregants in the local hospital. His name was...

Here is a new Jewish party game. Gather a bunch of friends around a table, and everyone must complete the following sentence: “The Jewish people should continue to exist and thrive because … ” You think it’s easy? It’s not. In fact, one of the things that makes this a Jewish party game is that the only people that ever ask themselves whether and why they should exist — just happen to be the Jews....

I love malapropisms. My favorite: A number of years ago, a bar mitzvah kid was leading services from an earlier Reform prayer book, “Gates of Prayer.” He was supposed to have read: “In a world torn by violence and pain …” Instead, it came out of his mouth as: “In a world torn by violence and prayer …” He got that right. My guest is Professor Marcia Pally. Professor Pally teaches at New York Univer...

In honor of my niece’s return from her Birthright trip — which has become an American Jewish rite of passage — I talked with sociologist, Len Saxe, about what Birthright gets right. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s not the usual venue for it — that would be a coffee place on Emek Refaim Street in Jerusalem, but I spent about an hour talking with my friend and teacher, Gil Troy. Gil is the author and editor of nine books, including several books on Israel and Zionism — and most recently and most impressively, “Theodor Herzl,” a collection of Theodor Herzl’s writings in a beautiful three volume set publis...

This podcast will begin with a sad story — about a family in turmoil. Their story mirrors what is happening in the larger society — the struggle over politics, culture and how to engage each other on those topics. Join me in a conversation with David Bernstein and Rabbi Amy Wallk as we discuss the ramifications of far-leftist politics, cancel culture and antisemitism. I tell this story with the pe...

Jews are now in the process of finishing the festival of Sukkot. We have been shaking the lulav, the palm frond. What is the greatest quality of the lulav? It bends. It is flexible. The Talmud asks the question: Why does a sofer, a scribe, use a quill made out of a reed to write a scroll of the Torah? Because, it says, a person should always be as flexible as a reed — and as unyielding as a cedar....

I love that old song by Player: “Baby Come Back” — especially when the singer says: “I was wrong…” It is not that easy to say. But, we do. Because we must. In late July, the Sunday New York Times devoted an entire section to that topic – “I Was Wrong.” The editors of the New York Times invited a cadre of their op-ed writers – among them, as pictured above, Farhad Manjoo, Paul Krugman, Bret Stephen...