Judaism

Finding Her Calling

Gloria Rodríguez

April 12, 2004

Walk outside the Kingston Avenue stop off the subway station in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and you will catch a glimpse into the world Estee Schreiber left behind. On Fridays and Saturdays, bearded men stand outside the Lubavitch World Headquarters just across the street wearing black suits, black hats, and tallit or prayer shawls. Women wear long skirts and push their children's strollers. Walk down the quiet streets, and many of the stone homes have yellow signs with Hebrew words and the picture of the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994.
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Birmingham Today

Cassandra Uretz

March 20, 2004

Birmingham is a tough former steel town that looms over visitors. Every building seems self-conscious about the past, with a tribute to Justice carved over its front door and too many potted palms in the lobby. The Southern sun is bright, a merry little trolley circles downtown every few minutes to whisk tourists into the city's shopping districts, but the streets feel empty on this warm spring weekend.
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An Undeniable History

Gloria Rodríguez

March 1, 2004

A group of rabbis, wearing yarmulkes, stepped outside an Upper East Side theatre after the morning showing of Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ on the day it was released -- Ash Wednesday. While some Christians went to see the film for inspiration on the first day of Lent, the rabbis went to hold a press conference addressing the potential harm it could cause for the Jewish community. The controversy surrounding Jewish claims that the film portrays Jews as the killers of Jesus attracted a pack of reporters to the East 86th Street theatre.
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Mel Gibson: Judged by his Fruit

Deborah Pardo

March 1, 2004

It's difficult to assess the motivations of people -- let alone, a public figure like Mel Gibson. But sometimes what people produce reveal what's going on inside them.
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Hasidic Women Making Change

Gloria Rodríguez

February 16, 2004

Growing up in central California, Chani Marcus felt different than the others in her community. All of the houses on her block were decorated with colorful Christmas lights, some with reindeer and candy canes, except hers. Marcus and her sisters always wore skirts below the knees and her brothers wore yarmulkes or skullcaps. Her father, a rabbi, dressed in a black suit, white collared shirt and black hat every day. And there were other things that made Marcus and her family, who are followers of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, different from the rest of her Los Alamitos, Calif. community.
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Decide Debate

Deborah Pardo

February 11, 2004

Mel Gibson's upcoming film "The Passion of the Christ" sparked further debate last night when more than 750 Jews and Christians poured into a large room at the Hilton hotel in Manhattan to consider the question of who killed Jesus.
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Reading From the Torah -- No Longer Just for Men

Gloria Rodríguez

February 9, 2004

As Tamar Blanchard finished her reading of the Torah, the women in the basement area of the New York City synagogue joined and melodically chanted the words with her. What was at first a distinctive 12-year-old's voice, struggling at times to pronounce her Hebrew correctly, soon turned into a chorus of about 100 women, chanting and dancing. The women gathered around her and moved in a circle as they clapped to celebrate her bat mitzvah, or Jewish coming of age.
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The Ink Is Not Yet Dry

Deborah Pardo

February 8, 2004

"In the words of Torah, we hear our ancestors' experience of the divine. We communicate with generations and perhaps on occasion we hear Torah as the word of God refracted through human speech."
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Reconstructionist's Central Ritual

Deborah Pardo

February 1, 2004

Throughout the mainly Hebrew liturgy, the rabbi, Michael Strassfeld, guided the congregants in English to the page numbers in the Reconstructionist prayer book, called Kol Haneshamah, or the Voice of the Soul.
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Synagogues Fade in the Northeast Bronx

Deborah Pardo

September 1, 2003

The 35 seats remain empty, but the aging rabbi and his 41-year-old son continue to parade their sacred scroll around the synagogue sanctuary on Saturday morning, as though worshippers were still extending their hands to touch it.
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