Amy-Jill Levine, a New Testament scholar, has had a lifelong fascination with all things Catholic, and has devoted her life’s work to understanding Jesus as a first-century Jew. Recently, she received a unique honor: She was named president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America, the first Jewish scholar to hold the title. Levine joined the organization soon after she earned her Ph.D. from Duke University 42 years ago, and has been an active participant [...]
The Renoir Girls, Catherine Ostler Three daughters of a prominent French Jewish family, were painted as children by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. One would marry an English aristocrat and escape; one would collaborate with the Nazis; one would die in Auschwitz. This book details the history of the lives behind the portraits. The Jewish South, Shari Rabin In 1669, Carolina colony offered freedom of worship to “Jews, heathens, and other dissenters.” Jews settled in cities throughout [...]
In Weimar, Germany, where the streets once echoed with the notes of Bach, Liszt and Goethe, another European musical tradition has been reverberating for more than a quarter-century: Yiddish. The annual Yiddish Summer Weimar festival brings hundreds of musicians, students and scholars to the former Nazi city for workshops, concerts and performances celebrating the language, music and culture of Ashkenazi Jews that the Nazis sought to destroy. But since 1998, the program has grown [...]
Inmates at San Quentin prison celebrate a b’nai mitzvah. The ceremony, held in July 2026, was the culmination of more than a year of study for the nine participants, who ranged in age from late-30s to mid-60s. The multiracial group included men who were raised Christian or without religion, one who identifies as an Israelite, one who has been studying Kabbalah for more than 20 years, and one who wanted to learn Hebrew but became [...]
Tashlich is the symbolic act of casting away one’s sins by throwing bread crumbs into a body of water, usually during the High Holiday season. Some people have asked what kind of bread crumbs they should throw. Since bread isn’t healthy for the birds that gobble them up, our shul will be using birdseed this year. But that shouldn’t keep us from enjoying the humor of these bread choices: For ordinary sins: White bread For [...]
As President of the synagogue, a large portion of my mental real estate is currently occupied by the High Holidays. The holidays are early this year, with the first day of Rosh Hashanah falling on Saturday, September 12. I, along with the Board of Directors and several committees, have been busy making ready the annual pilgrimage of our community to the shul for hours and days of meaningful services. We will gather, we will [...]
The High Holiday season is a time for introspection, but introspection is not easy. Volumes have been written about it by the best minds in the history of Judaism, yet no one has ever found the key to making it an easy and straightforward process. Piercing through all the psychological layers we use to protect our egos is neither easy nor straightforward. It has to be done slowly and methodically, or else there exists the [...]
Congregation Tifereth Israel warmly invites our members, friends, and the wider community to observe the High Holidays with Rabbi Robert L. Wolkoff and Cantor William Weinstein. Join us for prayer, reflection, renewal, and community throughout Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Simchat Torah. Service Schedule Saturday, September 5 at 7:00 p.m. — Havdallah/Selichot Friday, September 11 at 7:30 p.m. — Erev Rosh Hashanah Saturday, September 12 at 9:30 a.m. — Rosh Hashanah, Day [...]
Jill Smokler, a mother of three who started the blog “Scary Mommy” as a diversion from bedtime battles and toddler tantrums, and built it into a juggernaut that drew millions of readers to its pages, died on June 29 at her home in Pikesville, MD. She was 48. Ms. Smokler “built her life’s work on a single, radical idea,” her brother Matt Epstein said in a statement. “That you could love your children more than [...]
Mark Singer, a staff writer at The New Yorker from the age of 23 who extended the magazine’s franchise of rich reporting and witty prose about offbeat, complicated and quintessentially American characters, died on June 26 in Manhattan. He was 75. Mr. Singer wrote urbane “Talk of the Town” pieces for the front of the magazine, reflected on serious national matters, and did a hitch traveling the country as the correspondent for the “U.S. Journal” [...]
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