Features

Off the Shelf: Using Jewish ideas to parent by Rabbi Rachel Esserman

There are numerous books on how to raise children, including several with Jewish themes. For Rabbi Amy Grossblatt Pessah, the seder (Jewish prayer book) gave her the tools she needed to become a better parent. In “Parenting on a Prayer: Ancient Secrets for Raising Modern Children” (Ben Y…

Off the Shelf: A biography, a memoir and a history by Rabbi Rachel Esserman

Courage and determination: that’s what ties the stories found in the three non-fiction works in this review. Whether it’s fighting for the right of workers to unionize, helping the French resistance, or using a road race to symbolically represent a defeat of fascism, each character or na…

Off the Shelf: Different styles of love by Rabbi Rachel Esserman

Sometimes when looking at a book featuring a love story, I end up debating to which genre it belongs. Would it be placed on the romance shelves of a bookstore or with works of literary fiction? The reason for my debate is that I like to judge a work by what the author is attempting to accomp…

On the Jewish food scene: Neither meat nor milk, sort of

By Rabbi Rachel Esserman

“What’s this par-va thing,” said the voice on the other end of the phone. That question came from the mother of a non-Jewish friend. She’d just learned she was allergic to milk and her doctor told her to look for the kosher symbol with the word pareve next t…

Baseball’s all-time Jewish all-star team by Bill Simons

By Bill Simons

When Esquire magazine named all-time baseball all-star teams for various ethnic groups, sarcasm preceded its Jewish selections: “There haven’t been many Jewish ballplayers, let alone Jewish ballplayers of quality, and this creates problems; anyone who is left off the team…