Altar

My Relationship With Shabbat

Tova Weinstock

I have one friend who keeps Shabbat. One. And she struggles with it every single week. That used to be me until I slowly let the traditions and rules that I grew up with slip away – finally bringing me to a place where I act like Shabbat is just an average Saturday. I wear what I want, I do any and all sorts of activities and I rarely partake in the traditions or go to shul. To an outsider, it must seem like this all comes naturally to me. Like I’ve embraced this new way of functioning and welcomed it with open arms. I wish it were that easy. Instead, I’m left struggling with guilt and discomfort for my actions. It feels incredibly strange waking up on Saturday morning and checking my phone or walking around outdoor Saturday food fairs as if I’m a weekend regular. READ MORE

A Subterranean Significance

Joey Rosenfeld

The recent attempt on behalf of scientists, physicists, psychologists and countless others to uncover the depth and basic form of reality awakens certain questions and murmurings. Why now? Why ever? If reality as we know it in our individual, as well as universal consciousness works, if the way things are just seem to flow naturally with the external stimuli we experience, why question it?

Many a man has attempted to tear the delicate quilt of waking reality asunder in the hopes of finding a subterranean significance within the chaotic abyss, and all return with a face full of ash as the traumatic abyss stares right back at them. READ MORE

Finally Released

Zahava Markovic

Exiting an abusive marriage in 2010, I found myself suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. I was only 22 when I got divorced, too young to have the tools needed to properly deal with something so distressing. Emotional scars aside, my body clearly displayed my suffering: I looked like a skeleton, it was impossible for me to sleep without being medicated, and panic attacks were ruling over my life. I lost trust in people and felt disconnected from everyone around me.

While simultaneously going through therapy to combat my PTSD, my mother suggested massage therapy to help me relax. At the time, the thought of being touched by anyone, let alone a stranger instantly brought me back to a dark place. I worried about having my boundaries respected. I felt isolated from the world and did not want to feel vulnerable and allow someone else to effect any change within my body or me. READ MORE

Unfinished

Jacob Frommer

In the summer of 2002, my father was riding his motorcycle on a local street, where my three siblings and I happened to go to grade school decades before. According to the societal timeline, it was the ides of his midlife crisis, but we knew him as reserved and responsible. He wasn’t a crisis cum motorcycle type of guy. This was one of the few times he did something for himself.

No one is sure exactly what happened, but he fell off and his head came in fast contact with a rock. His helmet broke in two and for four months, my father was in a coma. He died, leaving my mother and the four of us. I was fourteen.

When I arrived to the hospital the day he died, my uncles told me my father’s death would steal my childhood­, that it would launch me a decade ahead mentally. What they didn’t tell me was how much my father’s death would stunt my ability to form a functional, romantic relationship. READ MORE

A Class Act

Tova Ross

In my Jewish community, choosing a prospective school for one’s children is a mission that possesses Talmudic intensity, and is a topic of passionate debate among my contemporaries. Buzzwords like blended learning, iPads and SmartBoards help assure anxious parents that their children will get ahead and get into Harvard; what more could a modern Jewish mom want?

But I pay extra attention to talk of anti-bullying programs and a commitment to fostering the value of kindness. I wonder if these programs will be enough to counteract the unfortunate tendency children often have to band together and winnow out the “nerds” and “losers,” or to make it okay to be different in an typically homogeneous environment like a Jewish day school. I wonder if it would have been enough for me.

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Sara Leah stood out like a sore thumb among the neatly-pressed and perfectly coiffed schoolgirls in our right-wing yeshiva elementary school. She had huge curly hair that resisted attempts to be corralled into a ponytail, and her shirt was consistently untucked. She wore pastel pink coke-bottle glasses and saddle shoes, way before they became ironically vintage, and her knee socks were embossed with things like rows of hearts when everyone knew classic argyle was the way to go. Academically, she was weak. She had no clear, defined role to play except that of class nerd, and she fulfilled her purpose beautifully. READ MORE

Defriended

Periel Shapiro

It’s almost midnight and my wife yells at me to close my computer. I ignore her and click “write a comment” feverishly. I have to show this guy on Facebook how wrong he is. I rattle off a poorly-researched, slogan-dropping response. A debate ensues; one or two coherent ideas are exchanged before the back-and-forth starts to get a bit vicious, sarcastic, and personal. The debate ends 74 comments later, when one of us either lightens things up with a closing joke or signs off in a huff.

This unfortunately describes many exchanges that I’ve had on Facebook. This strange thing we call a social-network actually fosters lots of anti-social activity. It’s hard enough to maintain an appreciation for the background and personal perspective of others when having a face-to-face conversation with someone, all the more so when you’re simply staring at a computer screen. You can say something hurtful in a post without confronting downcast eyes and a reddened face. Our capacity for empathy is drastically reduced on Facebook. READ MORE

An Existential Cry From My Cubicle

Aryeh Amsel

For a while, all I could think about is “am I wasting my days?”

I work for an investment bank where our task is to identify accurate values of corporations for investors. Being philosophically inclined, I tend to ask deeper questions, like what exactly is the market, who defines these values, and why assume that there is an accurate value anyway. My questions usually get dismissed or overlooked due to the daily routineness and tedious nature of work but during one instance I froze with anxiety when I was told: “Stop being so philosophical.”

The response startled me and left me in a daze for weeks. Although the response was about a very specific context, the idea of being told not to ask bigger questions, fundamental questions, questions that matter, was so unbearable, because it represented something bigger. READ MORE

The Utter Audacity of Jewish Hope

R' Shmuel Braun

We need to stare deeply at the resounding elegance of the candles to see it and hear their message. All the power and vigor needed to surmount any challenge is conveyed and displayed in the deceptively small flames of the Channukah candles. They might not be apparent immediately; one needs to listen to what the candles are whispering. For their message is too profound to be accessible without effort.

President Obama titled his book about reclaiming the American dream, “The Audacity of Hope” based on a sermon he had heard from Reverend Jeremiah Wright. The beautiful idea that Wright delivered in that sermon was actually a comment on a painting by the great Victorian artist George Frederic Watts called “Hope”. The

"...painting depicts a female allegorical figure of Hope…sitting on a globe, blindfolded, clutching a wooden lyre with only one string left intact. She sits in a hunched position, with her head leaning towards the instrument, perhaps so she can hear the faint music she can make with the sole remaining string."

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