JOFA’s Torch

For years I studied and taught Torah, learning and teaching in many settings, including several batei midrash, teacher training programs, ...

Last week, the Israeli ultra-Orthodox paper, HaMevaser, photoshopped German Chancellor Angela Merkel out of a photograph of the solidarity march ...

“Tzi-tzit tzitzit tzitzit, where are you today? I need you for a bracha, I need you right away!”This was a ...

In December, the New York Times printed an article about the new fashion guidelines for state legislators in Montana. In ...

Don’t be mad, but I am ordaining myself as a Hazzanista, which is like a cantor, barista, and fashionista rolled ...

Two weeks ago, I joined thousands of families around Israel for a time-honored ritual: the Saturday night grand finale of ...

Looking at the award-winning photograph “Chayla in Shul” I wonder:What is Chayla thinking? Here she is. Alone in this cavernous ...

I’m a runner, a three-time marathoner. Whenever someone asks when I took up running, I say I started 12 years ago. ...

With great fanfare, David Zvi Kalman and Joshua Schwartz announced their production of a new, “egalitarian and queer-inclusive” bencher, Seder ...

I hope we can all agree that the tragedy of the Freundel case is the harm that was done to ...

In third grade, most learning stopped while we prepared for our class play. It was quite the production. We each ...

I didn’t mind the mechitza  at first. The wall—more frequently a short partition—separating men and women in ritual spaces was ...