Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
(photo by Davidbena) Beit Shemesh is centrally located, halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Many Moroccan immigrants were settled here in tent camps in the 1950s, followed by many subsequent immigrants, including from Ethiopia, the former Soviet Union, North America,…
Passover is coming! As we prepare, we think of what it means to be enslaved and to be free. Some seders focus on human rights. Others read and discuss Jewish texts about how to understand the holiday. Every year, we…
Female hand drummers from the Iron Age II (eighth to seventh century BCE), found at the site of what was Achzib, on the Mediterranean coast of northern Israel. From the Israel Museum collection. (photo by Deborah Rubin Fields) In February,…
The Torah portions at this time of year, in Leviticus, are sometimes described as a hard sell. Leviticus’s detailed narrative about what is pure and safe, what’s diseased or leprous, and how priests can tell the difference isn’t light reading.…
When we hear the word addiction, it often conjures up negative images or stereotypes. We might think someone has made poor choices, is down and out, or weak-willed; we might think that it’s a problem confined to the Downtown Eastside.…
In Rachel Kadish’s book The Weight of Ink (Mariner Books, 2017), the fictional Rabbi Moseh HaCoen Mendes, living in London, England, in the year 1657, writes a letter to Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel in Amsterdam (who was a real person), using…
There’s something extraordinary about Jewish texts. What is it? You may have heard of Hillel and Shammai, or any of the many famous rabbinic voices recorded in the Talmud and Midrash. Our foundational religious texts record and evaluate both the…
It’s sunny today as I write this, and there is a lovely breeze fluttering the leaves on a tree outside my window. I am reacquainting myself with myself, pleasuring in the solitude. Writing this story for you (and myself) is…
I’ve never seen my sister-in-law’s house look cluttered. Every piece of curated furniture and even the magazines are placed just so. I just couldn’t understand it, even though my mother told me that she was raised this way because her…
A couple years ago, I sat smugly through a lecture on helicopter parenting, feeling fully confident that nothing spoken during that time applied to me. Who were these overly involved parents who just couldn’t let go, even once their kids…
