My youthful admiration for religious teachers, and my desire to please and even emulate them, ultimately helped me connect with myself as a Jewish adult

My mother’s terrifying fear of losing me started with her fear of being lost herself

Why Jared and Ivanka’s anonymously granted Shabbat exemption is problematic

My father taught me that a Jew waits. And so I wait, out here in the pumpkin patch.

If I wanted my daughter to learn to love the Sabbath, I had to bend my own rules just a little

Entering a weightlifting contest challenged everything I was raised to value

It was a moral imperative, but it also fueled a different urgency among Jews

The holiday gives us permission to mourn for many things, personal and communal, that we avoid discussing the rest of the year

We tend to overlook the gentiles who keep synagogues running. As we begin the Torah anew, let’s acknowledge our debt to them.