Barbara Greenleaf: The Fifth Commandment in the Age of Covid While gathering information for my new book, Parents of Adult Children: You Are Not Alone, I found that while most of the older generation takes the fifth commandment, “Honor thy father and mother,” quite literally, the younger generation puts a different and much more casual [...]
Steve Zipperstein: The Silver Lining in the Covid Cloud The pandemic arrived slowly. We heard about it in January. No one thought it posed a threat. “Very low risk for North America,” we were told. I went to Europe during the third week of February for a conference, where I hugged and kissed many old [...]
Michael Singer: Fear I have been sitting in the energy of what people believe, write, and share adamantly on social media. People share what they resonate with and what they believe to be THE truth. I wonder though, why they have to do that? Yes, I know that they do it because it is their [...]
Marina Stephens: Words Matter Words matter. Definitions matter. I say this to my friends all the time. The reason is simple. We may communicate in many ways but when it comes to the most important, we use words, we define ideas, and we simplify complex concepts by labeling them. Cancel Culture is a widely and [...]
Susan Rakov: Covid Wanderings That first week, the moment I break down is when I get the email that CBB is closing its doors. I was involved in a painful decision a few days before to close down 50 offices and cancel thousands of summer jobs, but the emotional impact hits when I read that [...]
Evely Laser Shlensky: The Miracle of Denmark Creating a sometimes tolerable, occasionally rich life during the pandemic has been an ongoing challenge. While many opportunities are presented daily for online learning, for me the more interesting encounter at times has been with my past. With too much time on my hands during the lockdown, I [...]
Rabbi Ira Youdovin: Welcome to the Jewish New Normal Early in the current era of lock-downs, my friend and colleague Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin suggested that American Judaism was having a Yavneh moment. Yavneh, a small town not far from what is now Tel Aviv, was where the rabbis gathered in the late first century C.E [...]
Danielle Drossel: How the Pandemic Turned Me Into a Balabusta [Unofficially] A balabusta is a Yiddish word that refers to a Jewish homemaker of the finest quality – a person who loves to bring family together, to cook for them, and create a warm and comforting home. I come from a long line of balabustas [...]