Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
“Doctor, it hurts when I do this,” says the patient in an old joke. “Don’t do that,” advises the doctor. In a decidedly unfunny twist on that old joke, the German government’s Commissioner on Antisemitism Felix Klein responded to the…
I chatted with a friend recently about what it was like in “the old days” when someone had to take a cellphone call during synagogue. This is when there were only big, clunky cellphones. I remember seeing a doctor on…
Israel’s Eurovision 2019 entrant, Kobi Marimi, didn’t fare very well but he gave an emotional performance. (photo © Martin Fjellanger, Eurovision Norway, EuroVisionary) The Eurovision Song Contest, like the World Cup, is one of those cultural phenomena that seems to…
In 2015, the federal New Democratic Party nixed Paul Manly’s hopes to run for Parliament, barring his candidacy because his anti-Israel politics were deemed too extreme. Manly joined the Green party and, this month, won a federal by-election in Nanaimo-Ladysmith.…
It is the instinct of all living things to try to stay alive, humans among them. Most religious doctrines pay a great deal of attention to this issue. And many people, whether part of an organized religion or not, believe…
Worn out by recent events? Me, too. For most of my work, I write things in advance to meet a deadline, but I can’t predict the future. Like Jewish balabustas (Yiddish for a woman who manages her household) throughout time,…
There is a world of difference, needless to say, between the murder of a congregant in a California synagogue and the publication of an overtly antisemitic cartoon. But, while the incidents are incomparable in magnitude, they both implore us to…
Let’s talk about goats. When I was doing research for my book Fiber Gathering, about U.S. fibre festivals, which attract thousands of people, I learned lots about goats. But what do goats, which produce milk, fibre and meat, have to…
(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,…
Binyamin Netanyahu appears comfortably ensconced in the Israeli prime minister’s office after last week’s elections. While his Likud bloc effectively tied for seats with the upstart Blue and White party, the smattering of smaller parties are mostly of the nationalist,…
