by Rabbi Rachel Esserman
There are numerous ways to study the biblical text. Some commentaries focus on the portion of each week. Others look to find meaning in the text as a whole. Nechama Price offers a slightly different way of organizing the material. In her “Tribal Blueprints: Twelve…
“People who purchased this book have also purchased...” Most bookstore websites offer lists of books similar to the book you just looked at or bought. Those suggestions usually don’t work for me. I prefer to rotate genres. For example, if I’ve just read a serious literary novel, the …
In rabbinical school, my research papers focused on different aspects of Jewish dietary laws. One year, I explored the biblical commandments concerning forbidden animals. There were many theories about why Judaism forbids the consumption of animals who do not have cloven hooves and chew thei…
Our actions can be easily influenced by family and friends. Sometimes we resist their attempts to change/sway us, while other times it’s easier to follow their lead, even if we aren’t thrilled with the course our life is taking. Two recent works of short stories – “The Man Who Loved …
By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
“Nuestra América: My Family in the Vertigo of Translation” by Claudio Lomnitz (Other Press) could be called a memoir about his maternal grandparents’ various emigrations: he writes about how they moved from Eastern Europe to Peru, then Colombia and then Paris…
