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Oct 28, 2024, 10:55 PM

Why Our Silent Hakafah Failed

Prior to Simchat Torah there was some discussion about how our shul would acknowledge October 7, 2023, which had fallen on Simchat Torah. We concocted an elaborate plan. We would commemorate the loss on Shemini Atzeret during Yizkor. We would then dance our first hakafah...

B. Shira Levine

Sep 30, 2024, 4:12 AM

Everybody Wants This (except me)

OK I’m going to be the mitnagged who craps all over this romcom involving a young hot rabbi (Adam Brody) who dates a shiksa (Kristen Bell) that everyone is fawning over at the moment. It’s not that I hate the show that much… I more...

B. Shira Levine

Sep 18, 2024, 9:26 PM

Your psalm: An Elul return

In recovering from COVID, I learned from a dear friend and mentor who asked for my Hebrew name and age: you have a psalm. Well, we all have a psalm, every year. When praying for someone to recover from illness, you recite the Psalm numbered...

Sep 11, 2024, 5:56 PM

The Day When Mothers Cried

Mothers cry a lot. They cry for themselves. They cry for their children. They cry for other people’s children. They cry when tragedy strikes anywhere in the world, because they know. They know that any tragedy takes away someone’s child, someone’s precious son, someone’s beloved...

Aug 19, 2024, 7:32 PM

How do you face hate?

How do you face hate? It is a question that has been on my mind for years (my first ever Times of Israel blog “I read the news. And my heart hurts.” certainly is proof of that). So, when I was invited back to ISGAP-Oxford...

Jun 17, 2024, 11:02 AM

How one American understands the view from Israel

Photographs of channels 11, 12, 13 and 14 news taken by Gil Tohar on June 13, 2024; screenshot of tweet showing June 10 ratings taken by Wendy Kalman

This was adapted from a lesson I delivered at my synagogue for Tikkun Leil Shavuot, 2024. Its title was “The View from Israel.” At the end of April I flew to Israel to spend three weeks with my son, his wife and their new baby,...

May 22, 2024, 8:03 AM

Finding ways to stand with Israel

The author and most of the attendees at her Israel event; photo taken by Marius Braun

A few days after returning home from three weeks in Israel, I hosted a gathering at my home that I dubbed an Israel Unity Event: an Am Yisrael experience. While I had flown to Israel primarily to spend time with my son, daughter-in-law and new...

May 10, 2024, 8:30 AM

We will yet meet

Courtesy of MorgueFile, taken by kristinhardwick

I’ve been in Israel for two weeks now and binge watched some of עוד ניפגש (We Will Yet Meet), a show about people who want to reestablish contact with family members they have not spoken to in years. Season one features secular people who lost...

B. Shira Levine

May 9, 2024, 10:30 AM

“Love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Parshat Kedoshim packs a real punch, but this line is maybe the punchiest, and some phrasing of this concept appears in other places in the five books (Ex. 22:20, Ex. 23:9, Deut. 10:19)....

B. Shira Levine

Apr 18, 2024, 7:55 AM

Last Bigots Standing

This morning as I was getting my eight year old son ready for school, I told him I needed to talk to him about something. “Remember that conversation we had before, about being careful how you talk about Israel to other kids at school?” I...

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