Interview
A Conversation with Lawrence Kushner
Do we need bingo nights and banquets in our shuls? Can we get past our third-grade theology? And how about those awful responsive readings? Noted rabbi and author Larry Kushner offers an original perspective on American Judaism and what we can be doing better. By William Novak
Feature Articles
Binding the Beast: Yetzer Hara and the Psychology of Evil
A Harvard professor of psychiatry revisits the ancient Jewish concept of the “evil inclination” to discover an integrative approach to dissociative identity disorder. By Dr. Ronald Pies
A Tribute to Ze’ev Falk
An extraordinary mind and heart were lost to the world in 1998. A moving tribute by Rabbi Marc Gopin, and a new English translation of an essay on “peace theology” from Ze’ev Falk.
Divrei Torah
Three Views of Sotah
The ordeal of bitter waters which the Sotah — the adulterous woman — undergoes stands as one of the most offensive passages in the Bible for egalitarian readers. Can a new reading calm the bitter waters? By Gilah Langner
Envisioning the Promised Land
Moses as unrequited lover? What did Moses see when he gazed from afar at the land he had for so long yearned for, the land he would never reach? By Sara R. Horowitz
Parents and Children
A Rosh Hodesh Ceremony for Bat Mitzvah Daughters
Forget the Modess brochures and the slap on the face!Sherry Rosen takes us through a recent ritual for three bat mitzvah girls developed by their mothers’ Rosh Hodesh group.
On Fathers and Daughters
Aryeh Cohen explores the mystical element in teaching a precious child Torah — a daughter, at that!
Parsha Terumah, My Father’s 30th Yortsayt
A poetic tribute by Michael Steinlauf
Yizkor, Yom Kippur 1998
A grown man reflects on the first time he heard kaddish as a child of five, standing next to the father he now mourns. By John Spiegel
Stories
Little Pesach on the Prairie
Even for New Mexico, Levi ben Zalma is having a most unusal Passover. A story for adults and children too. By Richard Goldstein
The Ladies Anti-Beef Trust Association
A true shandah far di goyim. By Garth Wolkoff
The Nakedness of Adam and Eve: A Modern Midrash
By Rabbi Anson Laytner
Nachshon: A Midrash on a Midrash
By Rabbi Michael M. Cohen
Photography
First Wave
An acclaimed series of photographs taken of Russian immigrants arriving at formerly Lod Airport, Israel in the early 1970s.
By Sherry Suris
Dance
Seven Pits
A finger-dance in two acts and 12 minutes, based on a passage in the Talmud. Got that? By Solomon G. Jacobson and Robert Rovinsky
Poetry
Snowflakes, my mother called them
Marge Piercy
The Believers in Mercy
Sharon Dolin
Beduins Can Find Their Mothers
Doreen Stock
Yom Kippur
Sheila Freeman
Departure of the Sabbath Queen
Richard Chess
Rabbi Akiva in Jerusalem
Leo Haber
Leo
Jay Liveson