About Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
Zeek Bids Farewell
The start of one new year necessarily means the end of the old. To say so, however, is to create a dyad of old/new, casting the previous year in the unflattering light of irrelevance and decay. More accurate to say … Read More
Jewish in the Wilderness
The voice on the other end of the phone was completely incredulous, "How could a decent Jewish girl, a rabbi no less! be living out in the middle of nowhere?!"Â I had sent a box of the CDs I produce … Read More
Where are the Jewish Men? An Interview with Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein
Just in time for the holidays, Zeek editor Jo Ellen Green Kaiser talks to B’nai Jeshurun leader Rabbi Marcelo Bronstein about the declining role of men in congregational Judaism. Born in Buenos Aires in 1954, Marcelo Bronstein was educated in … Read More
Fiction: The Rov’s Legacy
"Your life takes precedence." Jacob Lamdan looked up from the heavily used volume of Gemara, the Babylonian Talmud, lying on his desk. "That’s it. Your life."Â Jay stared across the desk. "I know. It’s a famous Gemara, but…." Jay boyishly … Read More
Lonely Man of Faith: Soloveitchik
Modern Orthodoxy: to many non-Orthodox Jews, this phrase is simply a contradiction in terms. How, after all, could the belief in divine authorship of the Tanakh be compatible with "modern" ways of looking at the world, "modern theoretical" frameworks through … Read More
The Ram’s Horn: A Midrash for Elul
On the second day of Rosh haShanah, the Torah reading tells the story of the binding of Isaac, in which a ram is sacrificed. The ram’s horn or shofar is also a central part of the ritual: the sounds of … Read More
The Henna Ceremony
Zeek is pleased to present this excerpt from the forthcoming book, The House of Secrets, an inside look at the mikveh and its rituals, by Varda Polak-Sahm. This section focuses on a henna ceremony practiced mainly by Sephardi and Mizrahi … Read More
Outrage: Memorial for LGBT Teens
Gregg Drinkwater of Jewish Mosaic has taken photos of an August 2, 2009 rally in Jerusalem mourning the slaying of two young LGBTQ youth in Tel Aviv. On August 1, a masked murderer entered a Tel Aviv community center and … Read More
Poem: Lost
Fenno tells me how he got lost in his own village on a visit back to Kenya. When he was a boy, they always avoided the tangled trees where the ancestors worshipped. He has been in Berkeley for twenty three … Read More
A Midrash on the Month of Av
In the month of Av falls Tisha b’Av, the ninth of Av, when Jews commemorate the destruction of the first and second Temples. A woman who conceives and bears a male shall be taboo seven days, just as during her … Read More