KtBlog
The Hazards of Chanukah
The psychiatric hospital where I work as an interfaith chaplain has a strict holiday policy: no flammable objects and no decorations with cords on the locked wards. That means no…
Repent, Ye Wall Street
I do not normally look forward to Yom Kippur. It has always been, for me, a somewhat dutiful holiday, whereby the moral struggles of everyday life, as if they didn’t…
For Every Life Saved
The last Yiddish writer. A story from the newest book to come out of KtB, Sweet Heaven When I Die.
A Debate Not for the Faint of Foreskin
Okay, here goes. Ready? The length of what follows should make this obvious: gird your loins. “Barefoot Intactivist,” from New York, wrote in last week about Gordon Haber’s ever-controversial essay…
Our Sons’ Willies
As expected, we’ve gotten a lot of mail about Gordon Haber’s circumcision essay, “Uncovered.” People get worked up about penises. Let’s start positive. Jessie Bennett, from Boston, writes: I’m just…
Black African Rabbi Aims High
Matthew Fishbane of Tablet magazine has a great two-part long piece of narrative journalism about the Abayudaya of Uganda, who have been Jewish since a colonial-era chieftain decided to follow…
Shabbat and the Gospel Choir
There is exactly one day of the year when I make sure I get my ass to temple, and it’s not the day you’re thinking. Yom Kippur is too obvious…
Aharon Friedman: Messiah Stopper
What’s stopping the Messiah from coming? It’s you, Jewish husbands who refuse to give your wives “gets” and thus create agunots—women who are legally divorced but cannot marry again in…
What’s the Real Story of Hanukkah?
Our friends over at Obit are taking a super-revisionist approach to the Hanukkah story: Some time ago, a group of fanatics grew irritated and agitated by the lack of zeal…
