Leon Wiener Dow

Director of Beit Midrash at Kolot, Creator and Host of Pod Drash, Author of National Jewish Book Award Winner "The Going"

Apply for a Blog

Dec 11, 2023, 10:54 PM

Checkmate: Antisemitism

There are moments when a person seems to be faced with a choice – but in fact there’s no choice at all. The person stands at a crossroads, and at a technical level, she has the ability to choose...

Nov 6, 2023, 5:30 AM

Inconveniently nonbinary

View of Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives Cemetery (iStock)

What if at the core understanding of 'our' homeland is a piece of earth that can never be possessed?

Mar 2, 2023, 3:49 PM

The parents of Israel

A message to the many Jews across the world concluding that they must divorce themselves from the State of Israel

Dec 16, 2021, 5:08 PM

Striving for Mediocrity

Yesterday, three events coincided to arouse in me gratitude for a tremendous blessing that Israel affords, one that at other times seems to me a curse: mediocrity. Event 1: One of my daughters finished her army service in an intelligence...

Nov 30, 2021, 7:10 AM

The Eternal Truth of Cyber Monday

Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay.

Even if you made it past Black Friday, here is Cyber Monday. The truth is, you’re lying to yourself if you think you can resist. I use these words with precision: the truth is, you are lying to yourself if...

Jul 29, 2021, 12:19 PM

More moral shades than flavors of Ben & Jerry’s

Protest officially against Israel's Gaza Blockade and attack on humanitarian flotilla, in Melbourne, Australia, on June 5, 2010. (Wikipedia)

Life in Israel presents a constant challenge to navigate between competing values and yet it is crucial to draw ethical distinctions and live them out

Jul 18, 2021, 8:44 PM

Eyewitness to the irony of destruction in Jerusalem

One of the young men who came into "Ezrat Yisrael" on 9 Av, 17.7.21, and shouted his "prayers".

On Tisha B'Av, at the very rocks that remain from the destroyed Temple, Jews raged at each other on the precipice of violence

Jan 17, 2021, 4:41 PM

Trump’s Hollywood ending

No, it's not a happy one, it's a dystopia in which it gradually becomes clear that 50 percent of Americans agree with those who stormed the Capitol

Oct 1, 2020, 2:00 PM

Ask Me Next Yom Kippur

As my family sat eating and drinking upon Yom Kippur’s conclusion, my children asked me why I was sad. I insisted that I wasn’t – but here’s the truth that I didn’t have the heart to tell them. It wasn’t...

Feb 28, 2020, 7:49 PM

Platforms of Bigotry

There is a kind of delicious, if ironic, mirror image between AIPAC’s guiding policy and that of the BDS movement: both conflate “the current government of Israel” with “Israel.” The BDS movement, in its effort to combat specific policies –...

Load more

About Me

Leon Wiener Dow is the creator and host of Pod Drash and the head of the beit midrash at Kolot. His book The Going: A Meditation on Jewish Law won the 2018 National Jewish Book Award in the area of Contemporary Jewish Life and Practice. He lives in Jerusalem with his wife and their five children.

Contact Me