The Blogs   >   David Seidenberg

September 8, 2017
12:08 am

כעבור סופה After the storm: How should we pray?

When Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey and New York, I wrote a brief prayer that acknowledged that if we want to help future victims of hurricanes, we need to......

 

May 20, 2017
5:16 am

“A nation without borders” — How the occupation unwinds Israel

Donald Trump occasionally says a true thing, even though he may not understand its implications. At most rallies, Trump would thunder, “A nation without borders is not a nation”......

 

April 10, 2017
1:27 am

Zionism’s original sin? Deir Yassin, Passover, and the long road to Jerusalem

In this year, 2017, April 9 is the day before our liberation. It is much more than that, though. It is a day that should be living in infamy......

 

March 16, 2017
11:05 pm

Sarsour and the left-right conspiracy: Did The Nation lie? If so, why?

Did Linda Sarsour say that you can’t be a feminist and a Zionist? No, she didn’t. In The Nation article that so many Jews have been citing on......

 

December 29, 2016
3:26 pm

An iron wall – revisioning Jabotinsky in light of Trump

In the communities I sing and pray with, Chanukah was always about light, freedom, and hope, and not so much about self-defense and war. That was the choice of the ancient......

 

November 8, 2016
6:14 pm

Mom’s vote: healing an election

Last December, after my mom had had the second of several strokes, we were in the hospital room, TV on, her in bed and me sitting by her side.......

 

September 30, 2016
12:33 am

The King is the field – Chabad insights on the divinity of Creation

During the High Holidays, we strive to fashion our heart to become a dwelling place for God in the physical, earthly realm, a dirah batachtonim. However, the earliest aggadic......

 

August 26, 2016
3:00 pm

To pluck out the eyes of the Lord

The second Torah portion after Tisha B’Av, called Eikev, concentrates all the contradictions between ethnocentric nationalism and humanism into just a few chapters. Eikev, more than any other section......

 

August 11, 2016
11:17 am

Why I’m fasting on Tisha B’Av: A reflection on our endangered times

There has never been a moment in my generation's lifetime when Tisha B'Av was more relevant. The crisis of refugees from Syria and other war-torn countries has overwhelmed European......

 

December 4, 2015
10:39 am

Ba’nu choshekh l’kadesh: Savoring darkness, seeding the light

Every year at my boy’s school, there’s a Chanukah concert that includes rap songs and other talent. A few years ago, it included the popular song, "Ba'nu choshekh l’garesh." I’m......

 

November 12, 2015
9:48 pm

Digging wells: The Open Orthodoxy “controversy” and being a (sometimes) Conservative Jew

In this week's Torah portion, Isaac re-digs wells that his father Abraham had dug. When I was in college, I started keeping Shabbat. I became observant, a baal t'shuvah.......

 

June 19, 2015
9:35 am

Sacred Earth: Pope Francis and Bonna Devora Haberman

Two momentous things have been on my mind this week. The Jewish world lost one of our greatest voices for feminism and for a just Zionism, Rabbi Bonna Devora......

 

May 22, 2015
7:15 pm

“And I will break war from the land” – Shavuot, Shmitah, the covenant, and the promise

There are just a few places in the Torah where the other animals and human beings eat alongside each other, instead of being each other’s food. In the garden......

 

April 22, 2015
6:52 pm

Earth Day & Yom Ha’atzmaut: 4 things you can do to honor both

This year Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's independence day, begins on Earth Day. One commemoration is Israeli, and one, though worldwide in scope, started in the US. But there are lots of ways......

 

March 12, 2015
10:12 pm

To join the tent together to become one

In verse 36, chapter 18 of Exodus, we read that Bezalel made fifty brass clasps "to join the tent together to become one / l'chaber et ha’ohel lih'yot echad”.......