Israel to plant more than 3,000 trees to memorialize Newtown victims

Published on December 31, 2012

More than 2,000 people have donated funds to plant a grove of more than 3,000 trees in Israel in memory of the victims of the Newtown shooting.

The Torah and the JST: Pharaoh’s heart, Lot’s daughters, Noah’s altruism, and wicked witches

By Mark Paredes
Published on September 24, 2012

Raising the bar brings zest, creativity to rite of passage

By Rachel Heller
Published on April 25, 2012

At his recent bar mitzvah, Noah Genco-Kamin managed to tell one of the most well-known stories in the Jewish canon — that of the Israelites wandering in the desert after the Exodus — in a way that no one present had heard it told before: from the perspective of a cow.

Michael Fassbender on “Shame,” sadism, playing a Jewish supervillain and why he’s not in therapy

By Naomi Pfefferman
Published on December 6, 2011

Unique Capabilities: Parashat Noach (Genesis 6:9-11:32)

By Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater
Published on October 26, 2011

There are places in the Torah where many of us moderns have a hard time relating to our ancestors and the societies in which they lived. Oppression of women, slavery, animal sacrifice, a God that intervenes and directs our lives in a forceful and immediate way, to name a few. This parasha, however, is not really one of these moments. In fact, as I read through Noach again and again this year, I couldn’t help but think how much hasn’t changed since those fateful days, in primordial time, when the first humans brought about the destruction of the Earth.

Briefs: Questions women can’t ask the rabbi, cartoon Torah, parking tickets, Latino Sukkot

Published on October 29, 2008

Asking your rabbi a question about your period or your sex life might seem odd, but couples who observe the laws of family purity -- where they refrain from sexual contact during and after a woman's menstrual cycle -- occasionally need to provide intimate details to male rabbis.

Noah’s deadly lack of curiosity

By Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky
Published on October 29, 2008

Parshat Noach (Genesis 6:9-11:32) Was Noah someone who would have been recognized as a tzadik in any generation? Or was Noah only a tzadik in a relative sense, only in comparison to those around him?

Picking up the pieces

By Rabbi N. Daniel Korobkin
Published on October 11, 2007

Noah's behavior after the flood represents the ultimate consolation to mankind.

Noah is full of animal crackers

By Shoshana Lewin-Fischer
Published on October 26, 2006

Jewish Journal for kids. Animal Crackers and Halloween.

A grown-up children’s story

By Rabbi Karen Deitsch
Published on October 26, 2006

Noach invokes juvenile fascination upon reading the pshat. But we are not children. And underneath whimsical images and happy songs exists grown-up information to which we must attend if we have any hope for hearing youthful voices in our future.

You Rule

By Rabbi Haim Ovadia
Published on November 17, 2005

Man's quest for a perfect form of government started at the dawn of civilization and is still far from conclusion.

Lenin, Meet Noah

By Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein
Published on October 14, 2004

Fall was just beginning to turn the Moscow air crispy when the lot of us -- 10 high school seniors and three faculty members of Yeshiva University Los Angeles Girls' School -- trudged down the stairs of our Intourist Hotel in the late '80s, and began our walk of several miles, not to the better-known Chabad Lubavitch Synagogue or to the Moscow Choral Synagogue, but to another shul in the city's north.

Captains of Destiny

By Rabbi Allen I. Freehling
Published on December 26, 2002

This week's Torah portion, Shemot, finds us studying the Book of Exodus for the first time this year. Probing the text, I began to think about the Hebrew word tevah (ark) that is found only twice in the Torah -- in parshat Noah and in this one.

Law and Order

By Rabbi Allen I. Freehling
Published on October 10, 2002

In a Sept. 11 New York Times Op-Ed piece by Thomas L. Friedman on the feelings of angst that linger a year after Sept. 11, 2001, the distinguished columnist reports that he turned to Rabbi Tzvi Marx, a teacher in the Netherlands. Here's what Marx told Friedman: "To some extent, we feel after Sept. 11 like we have experienced the flood of Noah -- as if a flood has inundated our civilization and we are the survivors. What do we do the morning after?"

Your Letters

Published on October 25, 2001

Letters to the Editor.