Alef: The NEXT Conversation

8 Days of Action

They call it the festival of lights – it’s up to us to conserve them.

Dispatches from Moishe House: Meet Joshua in Hoboken

“As such, religion matters not to me, nor does theology, services, spirituality, the soul, prayer or religious tradition. In my almost 5 years in town I have been to the shul less than a dozen times, Baruch Hashem.”

The Language Barrier

She was a New York-bred Jew, Manhattan raised, and yet she used this language with me, all the while knowing that my foreign linguistic skills ended with the Russian I got from my family and six years of failure in high school and college Italian.

“Mi scusi, mi scusi,” I wanted to reply. “But why can’t you just speak English?”

Keeping the Faith

It’s not the blood in our veins or a common language that connects Shauna to the reason she gives.