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Sivan Rahav Meir

To all the anti-vaxxers who are angry at me

If corona has taught us anything, it is the need for humanity to be humble. We have learned how limited and fragile we are.

Masks atop a modernized color scheme of the Urim VeTumim (Getty Images/Laura E. Adkins for JTA)

Emily Cohen

What the high priest’s garments teach us about wearing a mask

Putting on a mask might feel reflexive now in a way that it would not have for most of us a year ago, but that does not make it easy

Glenn Leibowitz

Purim in Shanghai

How a synagogue that is only allowed to open a few times a year opened my path to Jewish involvement in the Diaspora

Stocking frame at Ruddington Framework Knitters' Museum. (CC BY-SA, John Beniston/ Wikimedia Commons)

David Sedley

Parshat Tetzaveh – Knit together

When the personal goes public: Haman’s vendetta against Mordecai became a plan to annihilate an entire people, and Esther’s intimate relationship led to the nation’s salvation

A rare gold bell with a small loop at its end, discovered during an archaeological excavation in the drainage channel from the Shiloah Pool to the Jerusalem Archaeological Garden, near the Western Wall. The bell was apparently sewn to the garment worn by a high official in Jerusalem at the end of the Second Temple period, July 24, 2011. (Israel Antiquities Authority, Ministry of Foreign Affairs)

Anne Gordon

Clothes make the man

Parshat Tetzaveh is nearly always read right before Purim, but what is the connection between the garments of the Temple high priest and the Diaspora holiday?

Illuminated Esther Scroll Manuscript; ink and pigment on parchment from Ferrara, Italy, circa 1615. (Ardon Bar-Hama)

Jennifer Raskas

For goodness’ sake: Textual and ethical illuminations in Megillat Esther

How Esther and Mordechai take the very values of the realm and transform them into a more ‘Jewish’ approach

Effi Hertzke, 81 (left) and Rafi Reshef. (Screenshot)

Sharon Avni

Effie the sassy gym bubbe and her very special Hebrish

Despite her thick American accent, the immigrant grandma interviewed on TV had no problem communicating. Linguists call it translanguaging.

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Sivan Rahav Meir

Feb 28, 2021, 11:35 PM

To all the anti-vaxxers who are angry at me

(iStock)

If corona has taught us anything, it is the need for humanity to be humble. We have learned how limited and fragile we are.

Feb 28, 2021, 9:45 PM

Tolerance is sometimes only surface-deep

I do not, generally, think of myself as looking especially Jewish, notwithstanding the nod of recognition I had from a hasid on Hatton Garden as he spoke Hebrew into his mobile phone. Nor am I practising in any meaningful sense,...

Feb 28, 2021, 9:44 PM

Would Palestinian Elections Be A Bad Thing for Israel?

Before the Palestinian Authority (P.A.) held its last election for president --- in 2005, I was talking to a Palestinian from the West Bank who had excellent connections with the P.A. He thought that Hamas would do very well...

Feb 28, 2021, 8:05 PM

Biniyam’s Army

Biniyam with his mother in Ethiopia before his rescue

UPDATE: February 28, 2021: Biniyam and his mother have arrived in Israel. The boy awaits lifesaving surgery and continued care which readers can support. January 7, 2021 — The leader of Children of God circus troupe in Gonder, Ethiopia sends...

Moshe-Mordechai van Zuiden

Feb 28, 2021, 8:04 PM

Knowledge is oxygen to science, speculation gives power to nonsense

An evolution scientist asks: What if there was already the ability to use oxygen (for energy) well before it became widely available? A baseless speculation to see if we can upset our assumptions about development of life on earth....

Sheldon Kirshner

Feb 28, 2021, 8:04 PM

The Labor Party Is Back, Claims Its New Leader

With the March 23 election in Israel looming, Merav Michaeli, the new leader of Israel's once dominant Labor Party, is working to restore it to its former preeminence. "The Labor Party is back on its feet," she said during a...

Feb 28, 2021, 8:03 PM

The Incredible Story of Chana Schneerson

Though I do not consider myself a member of the Chabad movement per se, I have a strong connection to the Chabad branch in Kazakhstan, where the movement has deep roots. When Rabbi Levy Yitzchak, father of the last Lubavitcher...

Feb 28, 2021, 8:03 PM

The man who flew 120,000 Iraqi Jews to Israel

Jews with roots in Iraq are today the third largest community in Israel - after the Soviet and the Moroccan. Did you ever wonder how they got there? The mass aliya of some 120,000 Iraqi Jews between 1950 and 1951 is attributable...

Feb 28, 2021, 8:02 PM

Parashat Ki-Tisa כי תשא: “Love and Fear”

The "Wall Street Bull" by Arturo di Modica 1987-1989. Image courtesy of iStock.

This chapter continues the "how-to" manual with a major interruption: the Israelites's rebellion, the building of the golden calf and the ensuing civil war among the people. This central incident marks the chapter and is easy to summarize: everyone...

Tzemach Yehudah Richter

Feb 28, 2021, 8:02 PM

Cracking The ‘Megillat Esther Code’ From A Former US Army ‘Morse Code’ Interceptor

בסייד In a previous Blog, I mentioned I spent many months at Fort Devens, MA, training as a Morse Code Interceptor as part of my Basic Training with the US Army Reserves. Upon my return to Minnesota, the Commanding Officer...

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