Are We Moving Toward a Better Society—or Regressing?
In this challenging, chaotic time, there are moments when many of us, even optimists, fear that society is regressing.
Beshert | There Really Was a Punch Line
I first met Dawn in October 1982, by the punch bowl at a monthly singles event organized by the Northern Virginia Jewish Community Center. I was 27 and had relocated to Virginia from California that January to do a post-doctoral fellowship at the US Naval Research Laboratory in DC after getting my Ph.D. in theoretical physical chemistry. Dawn, 24, had moved to Virginia from Ohio that spring for a job after getting a master’s in gerontology.
A Wide-Open Conversation with Author and Linguist Deborah Tannen
Deborah Tannen, New York Times bestselling author of You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation and Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, discuss Deborah’s just-published book Finding My Father: His Century-Long Journey from World War I Warsaw and My Quest to Follow.
The Woman Who Drove Old Dixie Down
Eileen Filler-Corn, Virginia’s first female—and first Jewish—Speaker of the House of Delegates, is playing a key role in dismantling the state’s Confederate legacy, statue by statute.
What Will Happen to the Hitler-Haus?
By the curb in front of the three-story yellow house at Salzburger Vorstadt 15, in the picturesque town of Braunau am Inn in northern Austria, stands a memorial stone taken from the quarries of the Mauthausen concentration camp.
Moment Debate Round Two | Is Small Government Still Possible?
"I don’t think there’s a lot of evidence that the U.S. response to the pandemic was disappointing because the government was too small."
Talk of the Table | Fasting for Body and Soul
Eitan Okun only eats between the hours of 8 and 10 p.m., or, on days when he rides his bike, from 6 to 8 p.m.
Etgar Keret: Outside the Israeli Bubble
A woman sprawls face-down on a table, her face in a breakfast dish and a banana peel near her knee. Soon she wakes and arises with jerky but highly choreographed movements coordinated with a whimsical soundtrack. She turns on the television, a Japanese announcer appears, shuffling papers, and she quickly shuts it off. As she turns away, the television flicks back on of its own accord, and we’ve entered the slightly magical but recognizable world of an Etgar Keret story, recently made into a short film.
American Jews Largely Support a Liberal Replacement for RBG
Just as the remarkable life she lived, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s passing on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, sparked a mix of awe, appreciation and political controversy. And the coming days will provide much of the same: a celebration of the life of a trailblazing legal giant who served for many as the nation’s moral compass, and at the same time, a fierce partisan battle over the appropriate timing of choosing Bader Ginsburg’s successor.
Smashing Idols, Then and Now
The demolition of a statue, the withdrawal of public adulation for the erstwhile hero the statue commemorates, has echoes of a fundamental Jewish principle: the injunction against graven images.
Poem | At One
The English word atonement sounds abstract / And kind of Latin, but really it’s just “at one.”
Ask the Rabbis | Should Jews Support Reparations for African Americans?
Our team of rabbis weighs in.