JewsByChoice.Org

Yair is a Jew by Choice who made his conversion in 2003 after a couple of years of study. He came to Judaism from the evangelical Christianity in which he was raised, and he is now a member of Temple Israel in Duluth, Minnesota, a congregation dually-affiliated with the Union for Reform Judaism and the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation. In his community Yair serves as a gabbai, he leyns Torah and Haftarah, teaches Torah and Haftarah cantillation to b’nei mitzvah students, and leads the occasional adult education class. His specific areas of interest and study in Judaism include Jewish mysticism, the history of Jews in Muslim lands, Mizrachi and Sephardi music, and the relatedness of Eretz Yisrael to Jewish rituals, traditions, and collective consciousness. As a convert, issues of Jewish peoplehood are also a special interest, as are Jewish men’s issues. He maintains his own blog called Northwoods Jew.

Judy Siegel wrote an interesting piece in the Jerusalem Post today.  One premise of the article is that the raging materialism which infects many American Jews could be mitigated by a focus on Zionism.  Whether one considers saving money for travel to Israel instead of spending it on cheap plastic crap (or that bigger condo [...]

Hi all,
I’ve been spending lots of time home with my family since the arrival of our new daughter, Nadia (I’ll tell you her Hebrew name after the naming ceremony!), and recently I had a pretty deep discussion with my older two daughters about creation, the Bible, dinosaurs, and how all of that can get really [...]

Hi all,
So I’ve been a bit out of touch lately, as my family is expecting the arrival of our third child any day, and we’re staying with my sister until then - closer to the midwife.  Anyway, I will be away from my shul this weekend, when we read Parshat Behalotkha.  Five years ago, on [...]

Hi All,
If you haven’t checked out The Sephardi Perspective blog on the Jerusalem Post website, I highly recommend doing so. While I live in the U.S., I have been to Israel, and it is my passionate hope to make aliyah one day; as a result, I spend lots of time “in” Israel vicariously through [...]

Hi All,
Haaretz recently had a nice little piece on the “Na Nachs,” the offshoot of Breslov Hassidut that one sees everywhere in Israel, and increasingly in New York and elsewhere in the U.S. The group is known for the distinctive kippot they wear, which sport the slogan/mantra of the group, and the practice they have [...]

Hi all,
Well, as some of you know I’ve been a rather infrequent visitor lately, let alone contributor. Hopefully I’ll be around more frequently now. But feeling a little uninspired (writing all day at work on grant proposals will kill one’s ability to think creatively ;)), I thought I’d share some websites I like, [...]

Hi All,
I originally wrote a pretty acidic post about Jimmy Carter’s recent groping of Hamas founder Khaled Meshaal in Damascus, but given the great job Chavi did in her recent post on being holy, I thought a post on a situation I’ve faced recently was in order. As many of you may be aware, [...]

Hi all. I was perusing the Jerusalem Post tonight when I read one of my favorite regular columns, The Sephardi Perspective, which on a regular basis examines the Sephardi view on various aspects of Jewish practice; in the U.S. we often forget there are other experiences and approaches than what the majority Ashkenazi Jewish [...]

Hi all,
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the ethics of speech from a Torah perspective, and particularly, how they relate to disagreements among adherents to different streams of Judaism. From time to time these conversations happen on this blog, and they certainly happen elsewhere on the Jewish internet. Personally, this is an [...]

Shalom Chaverim,
The last few days have been difficult for me, and for all of us in the Jewish community in Duluth, Minnesota. Today we laid to rest a very dear member of our congregation. Phil Myzel, or Fivel as he was named at birth and affectionately called by many of us, was a [...]