Bonnie Levine, at The Blogs

Jan 5, 2021, 2:27 PM

The Black Candidate and the Jewish Candidate

It’s election day already, and I am ashamed for not speaking up sooner for Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. But Hineni, I’m standing up to be counted, even if I’m late. Raphael Warnock is a Black candidate running alongside a Jewish candidate. They campaign together...

Apr 14, 2020, 11:35 PM

The voice of freedom

On Passover we discuss freedom from slavery. Most of us alive in the United States – especially now as Holocaust survivors are so few – have never been slaves. So year after year, the fundamentally free recline around a table reliving ancestry of slavery, paying...

Aug 9, 2019, 4:39 AM

Av’s journey from fury to love

At chorus rehearsal the other day, our music director gave a kavanah about the month of Av — a month whose essence is fire. With the upcoming holiday of Tisha B’Av, we experience fury at the destruction of the Temple; this is shortly followed in...

Apr 15, 2019, 7:03 PM

#shofarwife

Some of you know by now that our family will be on the reality show reboot “Wife Swap” this spring. Among our friends and family, reactions to this information has varied somewhat. Usually the responses fall into one of two buckets: Discomfort / incredulity /...

Apr 9, 2019, 8:43 AM

Dehumanizing Jews with fake “eviction notices”

I recently learned that a group called Students for Justice in Palestine posted flyers labeled “Eviction Notice” in dormitories where Jewish students are known to reside–this action is simple hatred, and cannot be construed this as a legitimate means of criticizing government policy. To the extent...

Jan 22, 2019, 2:32 PM

No excuses for subtle swastikas

A swastika is not something I want to be reminded of for the hours a day I have the slack app up on my screen during work.

I now have to stare at something reminiscent of a swastika all day long. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you may not use slack – who last week replaced their innocent hashtag logo with a bizarre-looking cross that contains, in the empty space, a swastika....

Jan 10, 2019, 10:52 PM

Another Black-Jewish relations incident

The Angela Davis controversy appears to exemplify another incident in which “BDS-ing BDS” has caused more harm than good to the Jewish community. I say this with the caveat that I’m relying on a media I don’t trust to figure out what happened here. Here’s...

Jan 5, 2019, 6:01 AM

So-20 Judaism

Emet Levine, Jewish So-20 resident for his whole life, waiting for the Marta bus to get to his So-20 daycare.

Let’s talk about the Jewish scene So-20. By “So-20” I mean “South of Atlanta Interstate 20,” where I have lived for nearly ten years and would like to continue to live. As I know, there is no Jewish scene south of 20. If one is...

Nov 3, 2018, 8:39 AM

Showing up, not dumbing down

In the wake of the gun massacre during Shabbat services at a Pittsburgh synagogue, we’re all (including me) about to #ShowUpForShabbat. Good … provided we resist the urge to oversimplify what happened at Tree of Life last weekend. I’ve been struggling with what “Show Up...

Mar 31, 2018, 2:02 AM

Passover kashering part 3…

This is just like Elul… I have all these high hopes of blogging my experiences, and then what happens? Time flies and seder’s tonight and I only really blogged two things and haven’t uploaded any of the pictures / videos I took of the process....

About Me

Bonnie Levine is an attorney and musician, as well as a wife and mom of a five-year old son and a seven-year old daughter. She writes about Jewish spirituality and observance, parenting, intersectionality, and the U.S. and Atlanta Jewish communities. Views are her own and not those of her employer, synagogues, or any other organization.

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