Author: Neta-Lee Zellweger

(JTA) — Between 2008 and 2011, one of the ways I survived in yeshiva was “The Wire,” HBO’s groundbreaking police drama. Tosafot and Rambam throughout the day, Brother Mouzone, Avon Barksdale and McNulty late at night. Our beit midrash had a main lower part and an upper part up some steps. These were the low […]

This article originally appeared on Kveller.  One of the distinctively Jewish benefits of the pandemic is that we can attend services virtually anywhere in the world. This time last year, probably like many of you, my family chose to spend Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur on Zoom with our home congregation in the Berkshires of […]

(New York Jewish Week via JTA) — Shortly before he died, my dad gave me a trove of family documents, some dating to the 19th century. For the first time I had confirmation of what our family name was before a great-uncle changed it to Carroll when he and his brothers immigrated to America. My […]

This article originally appeared on Kveller.  My father, Michael Horen, was an artist by training and a graphic designer by profession. But the word I most often use to describe him is “humanitarian.” That’s not because he ever did any international aid work, but because throughout his life, he really sought to make connections with […]

(JTA) — Every year during the High Holidays, Jews recite a litany of ways we have fallen short in a confessional prayer. Known as a viddui, the prayer is a centerpiece of our Yom Kippur liturgy. This year, we again will reflect on our shortcomings. But one takeaway from the past year is that even […]

(JTA) — I was born in Jerusalem, a city that is the pinnacle of multifaith expression. Yet instead of growing up with a sense of coexistence, I was surrounded by segregation both politically and communally. I did not know what truly living together in unity with other practitioners of Abrahamic faiths would be like.  When […]

(JTA) — On the second night of Rosh Hashanah, in my second year of rabbinical school, while working at my first-ever High Holiday pulpit, I accidentally conceived. I had my first bout of morning sickness in our introductory Talmud course, and my first pregnancy craving during Hebrew Literature and Grammar (I still swear that pickles […]

(JTA) — Deborah Lipstadt, recently named by President Joe Biden as the U.S. Special Envoy To Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, won’t just combat anti-Semitism but may well eliminate it. And that would be a mistake. To be clear, the Emory University historian is a fierce opponent of Jew-hatred and Holocaust denial, having vanquished the Holocaust […]