“The ‘Red Death’ had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal – the redness and the horror of …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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9/3/20
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My wife and I had known for well over a year that our granddaughter Clara was going to celebrate her Bat Mitzvah at Congregation Dorshei Tzedek, in Newton, Massachusetts, this past April 18, just two …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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8/7/20
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America is broken; our country has become the “Dis-united States.”
We routinely pledge allegiance to “one nation … indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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7/3/20
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Many, if not most, of us American Jews carry in our heads and hearts a sense of three separate but interrelated Israels: Am Yisrael, the people of Israel – that is, all Jews everywhere; Eretz …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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6/5/20
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This past March 3, the day of the Super Tuesday Democratic primary showdown between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, I made my final diary entry in the volume I had begun more than two years earlier. It …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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4/30/20
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In his 1985 book , “Time and Again: Autobiographical Essays,” Dan Jacobson (1929-2014), a well-respected South African and British writer, tells of growing up white and Jewish in a South …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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4/5/20
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Those of you who have found yourselves in the main lobby of Providence’s Temple Beth-El have probably noticed a striking art installation just to the left of the doors leading into the …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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3/8/20
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In a 1951 issue of the Israeli Yiddish journal, “Di Goldeni Kayt” (“The Golden Chain”), the prominent Yiddish writer, Sholem Asch (1880-1957), tells of the reaction of his …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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2/6/20
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Back in the autumn of 2000, in the midst of an unfolding tragedy in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, my daughter Karen, then 26 years old, phoned me to give voice to her anger and …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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1/8/20
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At first glance, it would seem absurd to link in any way, shape or form the life of the renowned 17th-century rationalist philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) with that of the major anti-Semitic …
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Rabbi James Rosenberg
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12/9/19
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