Truth
By David Bidussa
There are few things that are worthwhile keeping in mind, especially today. Truth is a challenging process, not a ready-made product that someone else has already prepared and assembled for us.…
Pilpul/Opinion
Traditions
By Anna Foa*
The Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer (Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer) explained in chapter 25 that the people of Sodom made a proclamation that everyone who strengthened the hand of the poor or the needy with a loaf of bread …
Stubborn and Rebellious Rabbinical Hermeneutics
By Yaakov Mascetti*
As I have been studying the topic of the “Stubborn and Rebellious Son” in the Sanhedrin Treatise of the Babylonian Talmud, the text has faced me with one of the most blatant examples of the rabbinical hermeneutical …
Notizie felici – Latke v. Hamantasche
By Susanna Calimani*
Every December, the Weihnachtmarkt comes to Frankfurt: same stands, same food, same objects, same souvenirs, same locations. I know them by heart: there is first the flammlachs (the salmon cooked on the fire), then the gluhwein (the …
Double Life – Service
By Daniela Fubini*
After coming back from four years in the United States, aka the most service-oriented place on earth, I was once with my dad in a restaurant and the waitress did a terrible job. She was not polite …
Songs
By David Bidussa*
In Naples at the Umberto High School the students’ representatives are fighting over adding the song “Bella Ciao” to the program for a concert on December 20. “Bella Ciao” has never celebrated victory, but it has been …
Laughing at Hierarchies: Rabbi Nahman of Breslav and the Dreidel
By Yaakov Mascetti*
The celebration of Hanukah brings the individual to expand the reach and quantity of light as the year reaches its lowest point. Yet, while the accepted rhetoric for Hanukah is that of the contrast between light and …
Pilpul – Protesting
By Anna Foa*
We’re still commemorating the anniversary of the Racial Laws of 1938. Eighty years ago, a different law targeted the Italian Jews every day, while the Fascists cheered and all the others kept quiet. As we know, the …
Double Life – South
By Daniela Fubini*
There are many types of double lives.
Some are a bit sketchy, and usually involve a job that should not be known to the wide public: like many, I too know a few people who might serve …
Buone notizie – Meet a Cute Dumbo-Octopus
By Susanna Calimani*
The doubt gripped me for some weeks: the choice between going back to my random-thoughts writing and staying in my mourning silence. In the last months a vast assortment of facts stole my words, one after another: …