Tisha B’Av, the fast day that commemorates the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, comes this year at a particularly fraught moment for the Jewish people. The only surviving architectural element of the Temple, its western restraining wall, has become a site of contention both between different religious movements and between world Jewry and […]
The Jews’ saddest day is the Ninth of Av, which this year is Tuesday. During a fast as long and stringent as Yom Kippur, the children of Israel chant dirges mourning their alienation from God. Study of sacred texts, excepting certain theodicical and funereal writings, is forbidden, limiting the greatest intellectual expression of a Jew’s love […]
A mere half-year ago, before collusion and Comey, before Mika’s face and Muslim bans and the Mooch, there was a shining moment where millions of Americans flooded the streets in cities across the country to register their rage that an unapologetic misogynist had just been made leader of the free world. Donald Trump’s election was a watershed […]
