Judaism

Coronavirus’ Toll on Weddings and B’nai Mitzvah

March 25, 2020

Chicago native Debbie Steinberg never imagined she’d have to cancel her dream wedding celebration and move it to the living room of a friend’s house. But that’s exactly what she and her fiancé, Jordan Kagan did on March 16, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Within a few hours, they had gathered close friends, brought out a chuppah, dresses and suits, and filmed the ceremony on Facebook Live for family and friends.

“Everything was basically planned,” Steinberg told the Journal of her original dream wedding. “It’s devastating at first to put so much into something like...

The new sound of worship services: ‘Can you mute your mic? Amen.’

March 20, 2020

It was the last day of a 19-day period of daytime fasting for Baha’i believers all over the world. The Washington area’s Baha’i community would have ordinarily been looking forward to joining at night to feast in celebration and welcome in the Baha’i new year.

Instead, alone in their kitchens and bedrooms and living rooms on Thursday afternoon, they opened up a Skype window.

The sounds of religious worship these days are intermingled with the vocabulary of conference calls: “Try to mute your microphone.” “You’re frozen.” “I can...

Purim and coronavirus: How Jewish celebrations could be upended

March 10, 2020

Slipping on a black tricorn hat, 7-year-old Daphne Greene grinned at her mom while they eyed costumes on Thursday at the West Side Judaica & Bookstore on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Daphne told her mom she should buy the penguin outfit hanging from the ceiling.

Described by some as the “Jewish Halloween,” Purim is a festive holiday where people dress up in elaborate costumes and don masks to celebrate the biblical story of Queen Esther rescuing the Jewish people from mass slaughter. But fear over the spread of the novel coronavirus has...

Race, Religion and Art in Nissim Black’s ‘Mothaland Bounce’

March 6, 2020

“This is the first rap that I have actually enjoyed,” wrote Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Mordechai Becher. “That alone is an incredible accomplishment for Nissim Black.”

Rabbi Becher was referring to African-American-Israeli singer Nissim Black’s latest runaway music video, “Mothaland Bounce,” an explosive fusion of Zulu warriors, inner-city street youth and chasidic shtreimels, an unlikely mix in the genre of music appealing to Orthodox listeners.

Raised in Seattle, Black made a career for himself as a rap musician before converting to...

Coronavirus reshapes Chicago religious practices, but some not changing their ways

March 6, 2020

Even as coronavirus concerns spread across the world and religious groups in the Chicago area made changes to their practices to deal with the disease, some churchgoers said they aren’t worried enough yet to change how they worship.

At St. James Episcopal Cathedral, a group of about 15 parishioners gathered for an afternoon Mass on Wednesday. Prior to beginning the readings, the Rev. Courtney Reid told the group that some tweaks in the ceremony will apply because...

How synagogues are dealing with coronavirus fears

March 4, 2020

As the coronavirus has spread across the global Jewish community — first in Italy, and then in Israel and the United States — religious leaders have adjusted ritual practices in order to prevent further contagion.

Many synagogues and other Jewish institutions have sent out emails to members urging them to follow the health recommendations of the ...

Faith before basketball for Yeshiva University champions

March 2, 2020

Each of the mighty Maccabees has his role on the men’s basketball team. Gabriel Leifer sinks three-pointers; Daniel Katz is the defense wizard; Simcha Halpert makes the perfect alley-oop passes to Ryan Turell who soars for dunks.

Kids pretend to be them in pickup games. The home crowd sings in Hebrew and roars when they score. But before tipoff, the team always gathers around Tyler Hod, a senior guard and their unofficial rabbi.

Reading passages from the Torah, Hod shares a story, all the while drawing lessons...

Pittsburgh tragedy helped build deep interfaith cooperation

February 28, 2020

“The Quran tells us red and yellow are the most distracting colors, the ones that should not ever be used for a prayer rug,” the imam tells us, looking down at the red and yellow rug beneath our feet in the mosque. He adds, “It was a donation, there was nothing I could do about the improper coloring.”

“Why don’t people know what the Quran has to say about these things?” my teenage daughter asks.

“Well,” he explains, “there is a lot to know: 6,000 sutras, 20,000 hadiths and 100,000 stories about the life of Muhammad.”

My...

Women Holocaust survivors find joy in fighting poverty

February 24, 2020

Frumie Cisner remembers the first time she witnessed a Holocaust survivor picking through trash — how the woman scavenged a box of baked goods from a dumpster in front of a Brooklyn synagogue.

“It was heartbreaking,” Cisner said. “You’re not talking about luxuries. It’s food. You would never dream that they go through this kind of poverty.”

Source: Women...

Do religious dating apps like Mutual, Christian Mingle endanger users?

February 24, 2020

When Marla Perrin, now 25, first heard about Mutual, the dating app designed for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she was thrilled.

Perrin had tried dating apps like Tinder in the past, but found the experience fruitless and frustrating: the men she matched with often didn’t share her faith, and her guard was always up, worried that someone would harass or stalk her.

But Mutual seemed like a dating oasis to Perrin, who was living in Hawaii and looking to find a partner. She thought that the men on...

TweetYourShabbat Is All About Embracing Diverse — And Imperfect — Shabbat Dinners

February 21, 2020

It’s Friday afternoon and Jews across the country are gathering on their phones for the traditional…Twitter Shabbat posting.

Yes, for a brief period every Friday, Jewish Twitter is filled with questions about kugel or brisket, and menus of gefilte fish, roasted chicken and pareve babka.

The tweets are tied together by a single hashtag —#TweetYourShabbat. Started by Carly Pildis, a social activist and a contributing editor at Tablet, in ...

Pride and peril as Democrats inch toward first Jewish nominee

February 19, 2020

Generations of American Jewish children have been taught that in the United States, even a Jew could be elected president.

For the first time in history, the Democratic Party appears to be inching closer toward making that a reality. Going into Wednesday’s Democratic debate (Feb. 19), Sen. Bernie Sanders and former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg, both of whom are Jewish, occupy the top two spots in recent polling.

Sanders, after Iowa and New Hampshire, is now the Democratic ...

Rabbis’ perspectives vary when it comes to co-officiating at interfaith funerals

February 14, 2020

With the rise of interfaith marriage, it is no surprise that families are seeking ways to meld the traditions of various faiths. From weddings performed jointly by clergy representing different religions, to the December holiday mashup “Christmakkah,” cultures and customs are being blended in ways unimaginable a century ago.

Interfaith funerals, co-officiated by a rabbi and a non-Jewish clergy member, while not yet ubiquitous, now can also be added to that canon.

Rabbi Chuck Diamond, spiritual leader of Pittsburgh’s Kehillah La La, recently co-officiated a...

Rockland County’s Jews Have Complicated Relationships

February 10, 2020

Sometimes, when Katrina Hertzberg sees a visibly Jewish person in her neighborhood in Nyack, N.Y. — a woman wearing a wig, say, or a man in a black suit and hat — she thinks to herself, “Oh my God, are we next?”

She wonders whether her area of Rockland County, N.Y., is next to receive an influx of Hasidic neighbors, which she worries could mean lots of disruptive changes and new construction — housing, yeshivas, synagogues.

But then, Hertzberg, 74, who runs an after-school program, said, she remembers her own family’s Orthodox roots. “I transpose...

Jerusalem of the South? The very Jewish history of this very Texan town

January 30, 2020

With its colorful Victorian houses, wide streets and palm trees, downtown Galveston, Texas is almost like Main Street at Disneyland.

Home to around 50,000 people, this barrier island off the Gulf Coast isn’t only a coveted vacation spot – and an occasional hurricane victim – but also a place where diversity thrives. The town once had a flourishing Jewish community too; almost every store was Jewish-owned, and the synagogues were full to capacity on the High Holy Days.

Today, after many of Galveston’s Jews moved to bigger metropolitan areas in Texas or as far afield...

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