Category archive for ‘Ignorance’ 
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Jewish with the Drawbridge Pulled Up
There’s a right way and a wrong way for Jewish institutions to welcome visitors. The moment the balance between security and openness starts to close an institution off from the wider community is the moment it gets harder to repair the world.
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Secular vs.
Shifting from a secular life to a religiously observant one can definitely teach you who your friends are–and aren’t. My social circle looks very different at the end of my Jewish conversion journey than it did at the beginning of it. That’s OK.
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The Kippah of Conversation
Yes, I’m becoming a religious Reform Jew. Yes, I wear a kippah full-time. Yes, my last name is Doyle. Uh, can we talk about the weather now?
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Oy to the World
When a well-meaning friend asked me on Christmas Eve, “Is being at temple tonight hard for you?” they were surprised I said, “No.” I wasn’t surprised at all.
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“Yenta, please.”
Saturday after temple in a north side Starbucks, I sat down with a Reform Jewish friend. I had my kippah on and my computer open. As we were walking out, an Orthodox woman sitting nearby turned to a stranger and told him I wasn’t going to be a good Jew. And as you may have guessed, I marched right back in.
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Target Corp: How About a Nice Menorah for Christmas?
Why does Target Corp. think delivering Chanukah menorahs by Christmas Eve is a selling point for Jews?
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Tikkun Olam in a Targeted Synagogue
My synagogue was one of the Yemeni mail-bomb terror targets. It is impossible to write a sentence like that without feeling the worst of humanity well up inside your being. But sometimes it’s when you feel the most hateful of urges that healing the world has the best chance to begin.
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Live and Let Live (But Only If You Live Like Me)
Last week, I was concerned my friends wouldn’t be able to accept the idea of me as a Jew-in-Training. But it never occurred to me that some of them might not be able to accept the idea of me as religious at all.
