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 that the new year ... [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?!"  I had sent a box of the CDs I produce to my distributor on the ... [Read more]

Angetevka

As a New Yorker, a Jew and a mother, September is a curious mix of beginnings and endings.  Every year I remember and relive 9/11; every year, I celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the beginning of the new year; and every year, my kids return ... [Read more]

Allah is the Light: Prayer in Ramadan and Elul

It is a sticky August evening in Garrison, New York. I'm sitting on a park bench at a retreat center with a woman I've only just met. I'm wearing capris, a tank top, and my rainbow kippah. She's wearing a turtleneck and long ... [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 ... [Read more]

High Fidelity

"And the Glitter Is Gone", the final track on Yo La Tengo's rewarding new album Popular Songs, opens with a fade-in, gradually immersing the listener in the pools and eddies of a groove whose source lies somewhere upstream. For ... [Read more]

What It Means is War

Time, we are hearing with increasing frequency, is running out for the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This is often attributed to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, but whatever ... [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."  Jay stared across the desk. "I know. It's a ... [Read more]

Angetevka

Following an afternoon of serious Labor Day sale shopping downtown, in which Lili and I each buy the same multi-colored, plaid dress, which is surprising because I am a good nine inches taller than Lili and we tend to have vastly ... [Read more]

Dual Allegiance

At the recent World Congress of Jewish Studies, held in Jerusalem in August, Israeli philosopher Eliezer Schweid gave an impassioned response to a panel on Judaism, Zionism, and the Diaspora. He began by claiming that the election of Barak ... [Read more]

Twice a Heretic

"Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh," we say to You in prayer, three times over. "Holy, Holy, Holy." And now I find myself before You, at thrice the age of a boy who has had his bar mitzvah. I cannot count the times over all ... [Read more]

All-Inclusive Racism

Criticism of European anti-Semitism always neglects its context. That is, it mistakes its object, frequently construed as being Israel, for being more important than what it has in common with other continental racisms. It is always a ... [Read more]

History Rewritten With Lightning

There are scenes in Quentin Tarentino’s new film Inglourious Basterds sure to make your heart race. The film opens with a tour-de-force of tension, in which SS Colonel Hans Landa, superbly played by Christoph Waltz, interrogates a ... [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, ... [Read more]

Angetevka

Two thousand six hundred years ago, they were laid to rest in their burial cave.  Over the years, family members placed gifts of pottery, silver and gold jewelry, glass bottles, oil lamps and amulets in a repository under a burial ... [Read more]

Grassroots Jews

Logging onto Facebook recently, I received an invitation to join an initiative called Grassroots Jews, a project led by a small group of people working together to put on High Holy Day services in north west London this year.  Not within an ... [Read more]

The Missing Mizrahim

Some critics have faulted Rachel Shabi’s We Look Like the Enemy: The Hidden Story of Israel's Jews from Arab Lands as one-sided. Shabi neglects the animosity that existed between Jews and Muslims long before 1948, the critics say. She ... [Read more]

In Defense of Spiritual Vulgarity

The other day, I was having lunch with a yoga-teacher friend of mine who, after years of teaching, was beginning to get burned out.  He still enjoyed the daily routine of teaching, and he was continuing to grow in how and what he ... [Read more]

Who Watches the Watchers?

In the world of politics, especially that of Israeli policy and related activists worldwide, there is a constant effort to demonize the other side. Nowhere is this more evident than in the small cottage industry that has grown up to ... [Read more]

Angetevka

It's an open secret amongst my family and friends that I have a thing for rabbis.  I really do.  When a rabbi walks past on the street, or when I bump into one at a Jewish event, my girl friends will giggle and poke me as if we are ... [Read more]