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Of all the issues I engage with my congregants around, I find shiva–Jewish mourning practices–to be among the strangest and most challenging. The vast majority of my congregants –like the overwhelming majority of Jews in this country today–don’t understand themselves as bound within a halachic (Jewish legal) framework that obligates them to act in particular…

One of the many rituals surrounding death in the Jewish tradition is the practice of going to a mourner’s house during a seven-day mourning period called “shiva.” The mourner sits on a low stool and he/she is comforted by friends, relatives, and loved ones. Not only, however, are there rules and rituals involving the mourner…

On today’s New York Times op-ed page, David Dow writes a very interesting but ultimately morally flawed article on the death penalty. In short, he suggests: Instead of focusing on the issue of whether or not someone convicted of the death penalty is innocent or not, “Abolotionalists… ought to focus on the far more pervasive…

The January election of a Hamas-led government in the Palestinian territories immediately led to stern resolve on the part of the international community not to have dealings with or assist this regime–and rightly so. Hamas has been and continues to be opposed to Israel’s fundamental right to exist; when it talks about “ending the occupation,”…
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