When I started out wanting to be a writer, my plan was to show all the beauty of religious life as I had experienced and understood it. If, at that time, anyone would have described to me the books that I was destined to write, books in which religious men beat their religious wives; books […]
Truth is Not Stranger Than Fiction Read More »
For most of our married life, my wife and I have been members of minyanim with a mehitzah, and currently we are members of Kol Sasson, the partnership minyan in Skokie, Illinois. As a family with two young children, we’ve been at both egalitarian and partnership minyanim over the past five years, with occasional participation
Family Seating at Life-Cycle Events Read More »
Memorial Day 2009 was a milestone in the life of our family. My wife and I had chosen that Monday as the date for our daughter Eliana’s bat mitzvah, for two main reasons. First, it would obviate concerns about Saturday travel by our non–Sabbath-observant relatives (and any time Jews have the opportunity to relieve ourselves
My Bat Mitzvah Lesson Read More »
“But where will you sit?” That was the very first question I was asked by the very first reporter to interview me after I was hired to serve as a member of the clergy at Shaar Hashomayim, my Montreal synagogue. This first question was not about my job function, nor about my role in life-cycle
The Maharat Behind the Mehitzah Read More »
Miryam Kabakov: Tell us about your family—how it began, and what it looks like now. Shlomit Metz-Poolat: Like many other Modern Orthodox Jews, I married at a young age. I met my [now] ex husband through friends at college. We were married for twelve years and had one daughter, J., who is now sixteen. During
Finding a Place for My Family under the Umbrella of Ahavat Yisrael Read More »
Married people are more religious than unmarried people. Of course, on the face of it, that’s a patently absurd statement. Plenty of married people aren’t all that religious; plenty of unmarried people are. But hear me out. If you don’t compare the masses of couples to the hordes of singles, but consider each person—where he
Modern Orthodoxy can be thought of as a broad continuum that runs from “centrist” near yeshivish Orthodox on the right to “Open” Orthodox on the left. Across that continuum, Modern Orthodox Jews observe—and some experience—the changing gender roles and gender fluidity, non-marital sexuality, late marriage, non-marriage, intermarriage, and related transformations occurring throughout American society, as
Changing Personal and Family Choices in Contemporary Orthodox Lives Read More »
Expressing gratitude is not only a mark of good manners, but also an essential component of the religious life. Praise and gratitude to God are characteristic of liturgies of all traditions. In Judaism, these qualities of our relationship with Hashem are encapsulated both in daily prayer and in the regular recitation of various kinds of
Thank God for Woman: Blessings of Praise for the New Arrival Read More »
As I sit down to write this article, we are in the midst of a unique time period in the Jewish calendar. A few short weeks ago, on Pesach, we celebrated the birth of our nation by recalling the period of enslavement and the ensuing salvation by God. We retold the story of a people
How Do We Remember? A Personal Reflection on the Loss of the Temple Read More »
After the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE, the city was no longer the physical center of the Jewish world. A new Roman city was built by Hadrian on its ruins and Jews were forbidden to enter it. For many centuries, Jews were not allowed to live in the city legally and there were harsh
Mourning for Jerusalem Through the Centuries Read More »
