On Being Jewish

Three Jews bumping into each other in an international European airport; there had to be some inner meaning behind it all. "Do you want to put on tefillin?" I asked. "No," he answered. He had a story, though...

Baila, who fled Nazi Europe as a young girl, wept as her 5-year-old granddaughter kissed a mezuzah for the first time. Paula, who grew up in New Jersey and married a non-Jew, has mixed feelings about her own daughter's discovery of Judaism...

It's got to be one of the toughest marketing problems of all time: selling Orthodox Judaism. You've got all this long black stuff... And then there are the hats

The cruel irony of the two photos: in one, the German chancellor with his arm around a 75-year-old Buchenwald survivor; in the second, an Israeli soldier arresting a demonstrator burning tires on the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway

Why does she take the word of an archeologist at face value while rejecting the historic testimony of an entire nation? Why do I accept an ancient document filled with puzzling statements as my guide for 21st century living?

In Israel, during the Temple Era, there were signposts at all the crossroads pointing toward the “cities of refuge” where a person who had accidentally killed someone could go and live in safety from retribution. One day I met two such signposts...

I see you all sitting around a large dining room table, laden with Shabbat delicacies, explaining the Parshah and sharing stories with the participants -- women who are two, three, or even four times your age!

She looked me up and down as though I were a bug on a pin. Then she said the words that still reverberate through my mind...

Real adults have the world on their shoulders -- and all those placebos to escape that world. And then there's me, with an awareness of what is and no way to get out of it. It seems somehow unfair

The thought first occurred to me in the throes of pre-Passover cleaning: What an incredibly easy religion. I don't say it aloud; to do so would elicit hostile stares from all the exhausted people in the room

She went back to the darkest corner of her basement which, to her surprise, was now filled with light. While she was away on her journey, someone must have replaced all the bulbs!

I was first called to the Torah at the age of 36. It was a short walk to the reading table, but in that brief period of time I became very anxious about what would be expected of me...

Shabbat is the pause between, the no-man's land, the dark of light, the in of out, the light of dark, the in-between

In the endless conflict between earth and spirit, sheer weight often wins out. Shabbat is a reunion with our inner selves, a return to the primal oneness of our souls

With a theater enterprise, tottering is its normal gait. Sometimes it does totter to ruin, and sometimes it totters to great prosperity. But I cannot honestly ascribe either result to my observing the Shabbat.

They entered me like tiny pieces of a puzzle that found the space, or impression, that was carved exactly to fit their dimensions. Then they would snap together, forming sentences and paragraphs and concepts...

"Shalom Gefiltefish!" was the salutation that greeted us upon encountering the smiling face of Mr. B. To our credit, we didn't bat an eye. Hardened by two weeks of searching out Jews in the hamlets and backroads of Montana, in which we'd heard just about anything said to and about us, we simply smiled and took our seats

I find this battle terrifying, because I have no idea where it will lead. It forces me to confront the plaguing question: if I truly let G-d in, what will He do to me once He is there? Who will I be?

I had hopes and expectations for everything. Then came the curse, the curse that was a blessing