יום שני, ו׳ אב תשפ״וMonday, July 20, 2026
Follow Us
Dr. Rivka Press Schwartz is associate principal at SAR High School and a research fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America.
Read More
I think about the path that Hatzalah created for so many men to contribute and to be recognized for their contributions, and how important that was for their relationship to the Jewish community.
Some communities have renamed their motzei Shabbat learning programs from Avos U’Banim to Dor L’Dor, acknowledging that not every boy has a father or has a father who can accompany him to a learning program.
We could hand-wring over this, as some do, seeing it as a turning away from a more rigorous Judaism to one that is more accepting.
A manicure is still not all that important to me. But I understand more about the women for whom it is – both in its presence as a basic element of personal grooming, and in its absence as an announcement to the world that you've just gone to mikvah.
But if "all Jews are Jews, except the Jews I really don't like" is your stance, then you don't actually believe in achdut.
Torah Judaism makes all sorts of demands on us; of practice and belief, of moral stances that conflict with the culture around us. We have to contend with them, and prepare our children to contend with them.
If we valued, recognized, made more space for the wisdom of the hands, we'd allow more people to feel successful, accomplished, seen in our community.
I once heard someone say that our job is to keep them from making mistakes that are so bad, they can't recover from them.
It's worth asking ourselves, in this situation, is there something going on for this person that I haven't experienced? Is there something here about which I could be more understanding?
Thus has it ever been. Jews have been vilifying each other and attacking each other for thousands of years. What's new?
If we ever find ourselves dismissively commenting about the detail-orientation of halacha, or of other communities' halachic observance, perhaps we can remember that when we really care, we can indeed be very invested in the minute differences between Williamsburg Blue and its neighbors in the fan deck.
The clerk in the registrar's office was having none of it. When she heard about the name I wanted to change, and why, she gave me a buck-up talk about having pride in my background (I had plenty, thank you), and not being worried about others' confusion.
True kavod habriyot is not about treating well those whom we know, or like, or feel comfortable with. It is about honoring the bit of the Divine inside every human being we encounter.
His shiurim to the women of the shul were serious and substantive, and when he spoke at the annual melaveh malka, he made sure to position himself so that the women could see him. They were reckoned part of the kehillah, and he was addressing them, as well.
Too often, our community's discourse about women's Torah learning treats it as suspect, a threat, a challenge: why does she want to learn?
Every morning, looking out over the East River as the first lifting of darkness and lightening of the sky explodes into the brightness of sunrise, I am reminded of this promise. It's not why I wake up then, but it's a nice bonus.
When we talk about problematic influences from the world around us, we are likely to think about matters of ideology, entertainment and mass culture, or dress.
July 17, 2026 
