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Jul 23, 2022, 9:33 PM

On second thought

How many times do we retract our words? The short answer is - countless. "Sorry, I did not mean that" or "Let me rephrase," and the plethora of other common expressions are at our disposal to make amends for...

Jul 17, 2022, 9:11 PM

Listen to women

More often than not, we consider our take on things to be the ultimate truth. It is especially relevant when we have been in the leadership position for a long time, thus getting used to others listening to our...

Jul 10, 2022, 10:17 PM

What do these people want of you?

The relationship between the state power and the culture is a complex and tangled web that sometimes can turn into a minefield for the creator of art. In this week's Torah portion, Balak, the king of Moab, dreading the...

Jul 2, 2022, 10:48 AM

This second blow

The first was unnecessary as well. After the dramatic striking of the rock in front of the whole camp, Moses hears from God he and Aharon will not enter the Promised Land due to their lack of faith. "Because...

Jun 26, 2022, 2:24 PM

The Fate of Dissenters

Were Korach a lone angry individual bearing a grudge against Moses, nobody would have remembered his name or given him an entire chapter in the Torah. However, in our parashah we deal with a rebellion, as stated in Numbers...

Jun 19, 2022, 1:30 PM

In the opening verses of the Parashat Shelach, God, commanding Moses to send the scouts for the exploration of the Promised Land, expressively notes that they should be chieftains of their tribes. "So Moses, by יהוה’s command, sent them...

Jun 12, 2022, 9:31 AM

The Age of Retirement

Sometimes I wonder what a retirement age might be. Of course, writers, unlike many others, never really retire but merely take short breaks, like my recent one. Our Torah portion for this week, Behaalotcha, speaks about retirement, providing a...

May 22, 2022, 12:23 PM

The Song of the Flying Swallow

I rarely think about my age, but I could not disregard the coincidence of the big five-zero approaching and the content of this Torah portion. The jubilee year is, as Torah puts it, "hallowed." Every person should return to...

May 13, 2022, 6:23 PM

The case of a nameless man

He is not so nameless. We know at least the name of his mother, Shelomith. daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan. His father was Egyptian ,and this is all the information we are provided by Leviticus 24:...

May 10, 2022, 4:40 PM

Compassion of the wicked

In this week's Torah portion, Emor, we read about the prohibition of killing an animal with its offspring, "However, no animal from the herd or the flock shall be slaughtered on the same day with its young." (Leviticus, 22:28). Rabbeinu...

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About Me

Nelly Shulman is a journalist and writer currently based in Berlin. She is an author of four popular historical novels in the Russian language. She is working on the fifth novel in this series and on her first English-language novel, a historical thriller set during the Siege of Leningrad. She a Hawthornden Fellow and an alumna of the Nachum Goldmann Fellowship.