Our Institute fosters an intellectually vibrant, compassionate and inclusive Orthodox Judaism. Your generous support of our "End of Year Campaign" is sincerely appreciated. Each contribution--large or small--is a vote for the ideas and ideals of our Institute. Thank you for your partnership in the Institute's work.
We are off to an extremely productive year of learning and programming at the Institute.
Our Campus Fellows continue to do terrific work on their college campuses. Each runs two programs per semester sponsored by our Institute, with the goal of promoting our core values on campus and recruiting new members to our University Network. Please read about our latest campus programs!
As a young boy growing up in Queens, NY, I always knew that my family’s traditions were slightly different from those of my classmates. Halakhot and practices taught in school, generally speaking, reflected what I experienced at home, but very often my customs were different. You see, my father was born in Afghanistan and my mother in Morocco, and as such, I was raised following Sephardic/Middle Eastern customs.
I always believed in Dizzy, that old Jew. He saw into the future.
Winston Churchill
( A review essay by Dr. Maurice Wohlgelernter, on Benjamin Disraeli, by Adam Kirsch. New York: Schocken, 2008.)
This article originally appeared in issue 7 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals. More than ten years have passed since its publication...and yet the issues raised in this article continue to be highly relevant today.
In our world, we will more and more have to face this new parent-child pattern, either as parents or as children (and some of us as both). What happens when the roles of the child’s youth are reversed, when the child is the one who lives the public life and the aged parent “no longer comes down into town”? What happens when parents are no longer making decisions for the best interests of the children but become children trying to safeguard the best interests of their parents?
Although we popularly refer to the upcoming fast day as Yom Kippur, the Torah calls it Yom haKippurim—the day of atonements (in the plural). The plural form reminds us that there are many roads to atonement. Each person is different and is on a unique spiritual level; each comes with different insights, experiences, memories. The roads to atonement are plural, because no two of us have identical needs.
During the Rosh Hashana/Yom Kippur period, some Jews have a custom known as “kapparot.” The ceremony involves swinging a live chicken over a person’s head three times, and then slaughtering the chicken. People who follow this practice believe that the ritual is a form of atonement (kapparah) for their sins. Many people see it as a primitive, quasi-idolatrous practice. Others view “kapparot” as egregious cruelty to animals.
I am often asked what appears to be a rather logical question to an illogical circumstance: Why is an observant young Jewish woman studying medieval canon law? In my doctoral studies in the Judaic Studies and History Departments at New York University, I focus on medieval Jewish-Christian relations through law, specifically examining the ways that canon law treats and presents Jews.