Martini Judaism

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...