11/17/2016 - 11:33 | | Special To The Jewish Week | A Rabbi's World

When the patriarch Jacob was deceived by his sons into thinking that his beloved son Joseph was no longer alive and told that he had been eaten by wild animals, Jacob became inconsolable. Joseph’s brothers tried to comfort him, but the Torah tells us Va’y’ma’en l’hit’na’hem (he refused to be comforted.) One commentary suggests that the reason why he could not be comforted was that Joseph was not, of course, dead. He had merely been sold off into slavery. The comfort extended to one who has lost a son was not going to impact his grief.

11/16/2016 - 08:46 | | The JW Q&A

(JTA) - Men were writers and women were researchers. That’s the way it was when Lynn Povich and 45 of her colleagues at Newsweek decided to take a stand. In 1970, the women banded together and became the first women in the media to file a lawsuit on the grounds of sex discrimination — resulting in the breaking of numerous (though by no means all) barriers for professional women.

11/15/2016 - 15:57 | | Travel Writer | Travel

On Election Day, I waited in line to vote in West Philadelphia, where my husband took a teaching position this year. I’d scrambled to file my new registration in between trips, excited to vote in a swing state. But the local mood was anything but purple.

11/15/2016 - 13:30 | | Special To The Jewish Week | Culture View

Like many people here and around the country, the results of the election on Nov. 8 plunged me into a deep depression. The ramifications of a Trump administration are not yet fully known, but some of its contours are beginning to take shape: Republicans, with the president-elect at the helm, will control both houses of Congress; Trump will make a nomination to the Supreme Court almost immediately upon taking office (he has said he will appoint a pro-life justice); his cabinet may feature Sarah (“Drill, Baby, Drill”) Palin as secretary of the interior; and he has already put a host of corporate lobbyists in equally incongruous roles.

11/14/2016 - 14:58 | | Jewish Week Online Columnist | Matchmaker

Lisa Barkan remembered the words of her late husband, Jeremy: “A year after I’m gone, I want you to go out and find someone else.  When I look down from the Heavens, I want to see you wearing colorful clothes, laughing and having fun.” 

11/10/2016 - 13:31 | | A Rabbi's World

 

Because of the traditional Jewish teaching that, before a boy’s BarMitzvah, whatever sins he might perform are debited, as it were, against his father’s account, the practice developed that, on the morning of the Bar Mitzvah ceremony, the father would recite these words: "Baruh she’p’tarani mei’onsho shel zeh." Which translated to "Praised [be God] who has freed me from this one’s (his son’s) punishment."