Clothing is a leitmotif in the Joseph narrative. His father gifts him the coat of many colors; his brothers rip it off his back and dip it in blood; Potiphar’s wife grabs his shirt as he flees from her advances;…
Yaakov Avinu, The Flu and Acing Your Job Interview
If you were to look at a list of the all-time marquee fights, you would see Ali v. Frazier, Pacquiao v. Mayweather, Mayweather v. Mcgregor (maybe) and the Hulk v Abomination, to name a few. I don’t know if you…
Finding Female Empowerment in Judaism, Part II: Women’s Customs
In my prior article, Finding Female Empowerment in Judaism, Part I: The Stories of the Bible, I highlighted several Bible stories that demonstrate and exude female empowerment. I will now continue the series by examining women’s spiritual roles in the…
Parashat Vayetze: Yaakov, the master of a silent art form
The pen is more powerful than the sword, yet there is something more powerful than the pen: We live in talkee-talk world. We have talk radio, tv talk shows, news-talk and various other channels of people talking or communicating in…
The Mizrahi Project: The next generation of Jews are Mizrahi
When one feels like “the other” it is a surreal experience. Even more surreal is to feel like an outsider in a space that is so familiar. This is the Mizrahi experience in Ashkenazi Jewish communal spaces. It is to…
Isaac: A biblical introvert
We know less about Isaac than any of the other patriarchs. In the major events of his life he is acted upon – being bound for the Akedah and having Jacob steal the birthright by fooling Isaac in old age.…
Finding female empowerment in Judaism, Part I: The stories of the Bible
Judaism comes with a set of beautiful morals, including everything from making the world a better place to giving and donating. Another value I recently learned is very Jewish is female empowerment. Many tales of the Bible embody and exemplify…
D’var theory: The ancient and contemporary polymath
It often seems like one’s academic major in higher education is a blood-bound oath, and America’s culture of specialized labor promotes that stoicism in kind. Judaism by contrast touts the polymath, a person of wide-ranging knowledge or skill, as the…
Parashat Hayeh Sara: Maintaining our identity
The traditional Shabbat Torah reading this week is the section called Chayai Sora – our early history after the life of our matriarch Sora, or Sarah. We meet up with a number of key figures in the unfolding saga of…
Rabbi Menachem Schrader on Vayera: Maturation is a Part of the Experience
Rabbi Menachem Schrader studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion and Yeshiva University. He has a BA in Philosophy from YU, an MA in History from NYU, and received his Smicha from Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. In the year 2000 he…