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Sep 10, 2026, 9:35 PM

The Permission We Give Ourselves

Something deeply disturbing is happening in the way Jews speak to each other. The problem is not disagreement. Jews have always disagreed, often passionately. What should alarm us is the ferocity with which disagreements are increasingly conducted: the contempt, humiliation,...

Sep 10, 2026, 4:45 AM

Mandylicious Honey Challah for Your High Holiday Entertaining

"Mandylicious Honey Challah" for your High Holiday Entertaining. Photo courtesy of Mandy Silverman.

Mandy Silverman’s new book on challah making may be called Twisted, but her support for Hadassah is straight up. Silverman, known to her Instagram fans as Mandyliciouschallah, is celebrated for her inventive takes on challah and other braided breads. Her...

Henny Kupferstein

Sep 9, 2026, 9:05 PM

The Book of Life: Where do the Shunned Belong?

Henny Kupferstein, wearing a sheitel over her shaved head, holds her children during kapparot, as a chicken is waved over their heads in the symbolic atonement ritual practiced by many Chassidim before Yom Kippur.

I am an Ex-Chassid, and as such, a survivor of a forced arranged religious marriage. This is still the custom of my family, who are Holocaust survivors living in New York City. The “ex” part doesn’t mean I voluntarily...

Elchanan Poupko

Sep 9, 2026, 6:26 AM

The Akeda Through the Lens of Jewish History

Walking to synagogue on a Shabbat morning after Purim, I finally began to understand the meaning of Akedat Yitzchak in our tradition. While rabbis, myself included, often engage in apologetics and attempts to reconcile the story of Abraham being...

Sep 8, 2026, 1:56 PM

Asking Forgiveness from non-Jewish Israelis

President Herzog, June 20223 (Haim Zach/GPO)

When we here in Israel soon gather for the Tishrei holidays and examine the past Hebrew calendar year’s deeds, including interpersonal relationships, we’ll most likely focus on our familiar – Jewish – environs. There are good reasons why we...

Sep 8, 2026, 1:40 PM

This past December I became seriously ill, and only later did I understand how close the angel of death had come on that first night in the hospital. Fortunately, those caring for me made sure he was ultimately kept...

Hande Gençünal

Sep 8, 2026, 4:08 AM

A Litany Born From Drought, on Avinu Malkeinu

We repeat this prayer every year, from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, morning and afternoon. This year, rereading the actual Talmudic story, a detail I'd always skipped past caught my eye. On the twenty-fifth page of tractate Ta'anit, the story...

Sep 8, 2026, 1:48 AM

Politicization and Commercialization: Selichot Traditions

The annual cycle prompts memories at certain times of year. As a young adult, it hit me that for several consecutive years I made critical decisions amidst the Tishrei holidays, if not at the end of Elul, then by...

Sharona Margolin Halickman

Sep 7, 2026, 4:35 AM

The Haftara for the first day of Rosh HaShana (Shmuel I:1:1-2:10) tells the story of Chana and how she yearned for a child. In Shmuel I:1:9-11 we read: Chana stood up after eating in Shilo and after drinking; Eli the...

Sep 6, 2026, 2:51 PM

The Angel from Worcester

Worcester Cemetery: The Gravesite of Rav Avraham Kaufman

How prayers at Ancestors’ Graves Opened the Way to an Astonishing Encounter “Do you mean you met Elijah the Prophet?” I was giving a sermon at a shtiebel by my brother Baruch’s home in Brooklyn near Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights. ...

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