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Shabbat, The Sabbath

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Raheli Baratz Rix

Jul 21, 2026, 5:56 PM

Set One More Place at the Table

Every year, on the Shabbat right after Tisha B'Av, we read a haftarah that opens with words that have shaped Jewish identity for centuries: "Comfort, comfort My people, says your God" (Isaiah 40:1). Not comfort once. Comfort twice. It's...

Jul 21, 2026, 6:50 AM

Rest on Shabbat: Acknowledging that We Need to Pause

Continuing to learn from Mussar (Jewish ethics) leaders, I now turn to Rabbi Nosson Tzvi Finkel, known as the Alter (Elder) of Slabodka (1849-1927). The following excerpt is from his work Ohr HaTzafun (The Hidden Light) and was translated...

Jul 14, 2026, 11:05 AM

Halakha’s Kármán Line: Imagined and Real Jews in Space

Ilan Ramon, November 2001, NASA, https://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/sts-107/images/high/KSC-02PP-0490.jpg, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ilan_Ramon,_NASA_photo_portrait_in_orange_suit.jpg, cropped

In the late 1960s or early 1970s, when Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof – the most prolific author of responsa in the American Reform movement – was asked for sources in Jewish law in preparation for “a discussion of the...

Jul 7, 2026, 1:13 PM

Cosmic Moods: Reform Judaism Meets the Space Age

Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof in his younger years. American Jewish Archives. https://www.americanjewisharchives.org; https://press.huc.edu/pittsburgh-book-launch.
Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof, New Reform Responsa (Philadelphia: The Hebrew Union College Press, 1980), which included a responsum titled “Halacha and Space Travel.”

In 1970 – soon after the lunar landing – the most prolific respondent in American Reform Judaism and an expert on responsa literature, Rabbi Solomon Bennett Freehof (1892-1990), published an article in the Jewish Book Annual, titled “Recent Responsa...

Jul 3, 2026, 12:23 PM

Shabbat Returns to the US Supreme Court

Three days before the Republic marks its 250th birthday, the United States Supreme Court agreed to answer a question that would have troubled the sleep of American Jews as far back as colonial Newport and Charleston: whether a government...

Jul 2, 2026, 9:05 AM

An Open Letter regarding Schmooze.AI

We all know that with two Jews, you get three opinions, but I created Schmooze.AI, the world’s Jewish-centric AI platform, to discover how many opinions we would get with two human Jews and a digital one. I am happy...

Richard Diamond

Jul 1, 2026, 8:14 PM

What the Torah’s Animal Laws Were Always Pointing Toward

image by Google Notebook

Here is a paradox that Jewish tradition has lived with for centuries without fully confronting it. The Torah mandated animal sacrifice as the center of Israelite religious life for a thousand years. An entire tribe — the Levites — existed...

Rebecca Liebermann Nissel

Jun 19, 2026, 7:21 PM

The Most Meaningful Shabbat Dinner

They arrived one after the other. We spent Shabbat in Ra'anana at the home of our children. Our grandson Eli had come home from his base in the middle of the week, only to be called back on Thursday and...

Jun 18, 2026, 10:41 PM

Shabbat Meets Urban Planning

I'm sitting at a Shabbat table, surrounded by new acquaintances. When they learn that I'm a student at Yeshivat Maharat, a rabbinical school for Orthodox women, I usually get the following question, "Why did you want to become a...

Jun 7, 2026, 6:01 AM

Why I Spill Wine on Purpose

In our family, when someone spills wine at the Shabbat table, I spill some too. I started doing it years ago, almost without thinking. A guest knocks over a glass. One of the kids has an accident. And before anyone...

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