By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
During my childhood, I was taught that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were innocent of spying. For those unfamiliar with the case, the Jewish couple was convicted and executed for passing U.S. atomic secrets to the U.S.S.R. Both proclaimed their innocence and my father …
By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” – L. P. Hartley
L. P. Hartley’s statement came to mind after reading Cynthia Ozick’s short novel “Antiquities” (Alfred A. Knopf) and Edmund De Waal’s musings in “Letters to Camondo…
By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
Post-Soviet Union Jewish identity: is there such a thing? It’s difficult to come up with a specific name for those who once lived in what is now the former U.S.S.R.: Soviet Jews, Russian Jews, or Jews-whose-identity-card-may-have-said-they-were-Jewish-but-who-don…
By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
Readers might think there are no more World War II stories to tell. Yet, new nonfiction works appear on a regular basis. Sometimes, it’s because a researcher takes an interest in a different aspect of the war or because top-secret files have finally been declassif…
By Rabbi Rachel Esserman
Spoiler alert: Rabbi Wayne Allen’s “Thinking about Good and Evil: Jewish Views from Antiquity to Modernity” (The Jewish Publication Society) does not solve the theological problem of good and evil. In fact, Allen notes that’s not even the purpose of his book…
