By Bill Simons
A manila envelope, containing DVDs, arrived at our hilltop farmhouse, postmarked July 12, just five days before the death of its sender, Bob Ruxin. It was a documentary record of a remarkable August 29-30, 2004, event, “A Celebration of 143 American Jews in America’s Gam…
By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
Saints, demons and other mythical creatures
When one describes a novel as containing “everything but the kitchen sink,” it’s usually not meant in a positive way. In the case of “The Hidden Saint” by Mark Levenson (Level Best Books/New Arc), that phrase s…
By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
Is it possible to objectively critique films, TV, books and music? In the past, scholars/researchers acted as if they were independent observers whose socio-economic and religious backgrounds had no impact on their opinions. In contemporary times, though, there are…
By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
On Sunday, August 14, at 2 pm, nearly 50 of us gathered in the sanctuary of Congregation Bnai Israel, a simple, but beautiful, 100-year-old wooden synagogue in the picturesque Catskill village of Fleischmanns, NY. Punctuating a lecture by Dr. Eric Goldman on “The…
By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
My mother said the first time she tasted pizza it was love at first bite. She also claimed that someone in her family’s past must have been Italian. (That doesn’t seem plausible because her mother’s family was from Germany and her father’s from Russia, but …
