The Old City of Jerusalem is a taut knot at the center of multiple strands of spiritual longing. It is divided into Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Armenian “quarters” — but when you walk through the narrow old winding streets, you quickly see that the separations aren’t so neat in a place where menorahs can easily … Read more
A few days ago I had my bar mitzvah ceremony on a kibbutz in the Negev Desert. My wife and son and I gathered with Rabbi Menachem Creditor, his daughter Ariel, our guide Jared, and other members of our group at the top of a colorfully painted water tower. As the sun set and a … Read more
We entered Yad Vashem, the Holocaust-remembrance museum in Jerusalem, through the “Valley of Communities,” kind of a monumental stone garden. On giant slabs of rock are carved the names of over 5,000 Jewish communities that were destroyed during the Holocaust. The effect was disarming: Instead of trying to think of the six million individuals who … Read more
Last night (it’s early Sunday morning now) our group was in a park near our hotel, celebrating the end of the Jewish Sabbath. It was the first time I have experienced this ritual, which (among other things) seeks to help you make the difficult transition from a day of rest and reflection into the tumultuous … Read more
There is a windmill near our hotel here in Jerusalem. Sometime in the last 4,000 years — probably in the last century (I am making no claims of accuracy in this reportage; please offer corrections in “Comments”) — a rich Jewish guy paid for a bunch of idealistic but relatively helpless urban Jews (like me, … Read more