A non jewish family member has been making me feel crazy when I say "many if not most synagogues probably have an israeli flag displayed somewhere or in some form," - which I've personally found to be true through my upbringing and adulthood experiences.

Not trying to have a debate on whether or not they should or should not be displayed, but I recognize my experience is limited to only the places I've visited and congregations to which Ive belonged (reform). So I would love to crowd source some experiences from this group.

Edit: thank you for all the responses! The situation I described in a comment where a flag was ripped down, stolen and burned was not a hypothetical, unfortunately.

For Jews by Choice, what is your Hebrew name and what was the thought process behind why you chose it? Just curious!

So I am teaching Modern Jewish History at a pluralist day school that is about 1/3 Orthodox. Specifically, most of the students are part of two communities that I would classify as Open Orthodox (they have YCT Rabbis and women Rabbas and Rabbanits with shmicha from Maharat serving in clergy roles)

This is my first time teaching this topic to this age group in a setting with a large Orthodox population.

I was really shocked by the reaction I got when I started teaching about Moses Mendelssohn. They refuse to consider that he has any influence on anything other than Reform Judaism, constantly bring up the mostly untrue "fact" that none of his grandchildren were Jewish, and use language like "he exposed himself to secular subjects"

I was very surprised that teenagers have even heard of him, but even more surprised by this reaction. In my mind, if Mendelsohn were part of any modern denomination, it would be MoDox. He challenged neither halacha in general nor specific halachic practices and believed in Torah M'Sinai, but simply argued that traditional Jewish life is compatible with integration into the modern world. Does that not describe Modern Orthodoxy?

I'm wondering if our Modern Orthodox friends here can tell me what the specific issue with him is

Hi everyone,

I am 28yr old, raised in a Reconstructionist synagogue and I am looking at colleges in Cleveland and I have heard there is a large Jewish population. I have also heard that Cleveland is great for late 20's single adults. All of this has made Cleveland one of the top places on my list to move. My extended family has also become interested in Cleveland and I have 2 young nieces that my family would like to raise around other Jewish children. I heard recently that Cleveland is now mostly older orthodox Jews and that there are very few children and that any children there are, are orthodox. I am wondering if that is true and what the Jewish community is like in Cleveland, both for a 20 something adult woman and for raising a family.

Thank you!

I posted here a few years ago asking about whether Modern Orthodox men wear tzitzit. I grew up Yeshivish and I'm now OTD. I have a Modern Orthodox brother. I shared that I was surprised to learn from my brother that many of the men in his community do not wear tzitzit.

I was at his house last Shabbat and my nephew, who's a freshman at a prominent modern yeshiva high school, had a few friends over. They happened to be talking about tzitzit and who amongst their friends wears them. I asked the guys if they do and 3 said no and 1 said sometimes. My nephew, like his father, does not. I asked them what their fathers and brothers did. 3 said they didn't know, while one said he knew his father didn't. 1 had no brothers. 2 weren't sure what their brothers did and the last said that all of his brothers did.

So now a few years have passed since my first post, I have a few more pieces of anecdote about what the youth in the community seem to be doing. I'd like to ask again: Modern Orthodox men, do you wear tzitzit? Sometimes, always, never? For those of you who have sons, do you know if they do and is it important to you if they do or don't?

Hi all! I'd like to share with you a recent project of mine and get your feedback.

It's https://letzyiddish.com/, a website/app that teaches you Yiddish through a variety of content, focused on the best (in my opinion) classical jokes, sayings, stories, and songs.

The first thing I should say is that letzyiddish is not really for absolute beginners, as there are already Yiddish resources for such people on YouTube, Duolingo, etc. I'm assuming that the user can read Yiddish, more or less (there is transliteration for every word), and can string together a few basic sentences. The site has a unit called "topics" that covers important phrases and vocab for a bunch of common scenarios, but this is not really an intro course.

Letzyiddish is inspired by graded reader apps that have a curated selection of texts that have been annotated, together with dictionary, spaced-repetition study, audio, search, etc. I'm thinking of Du Chinese for, well, Chinese, or Readlang for Spanish, German, etc.

The site is built with AI assistance, but the curation of content is my own, as is the layout, the recordings, etc. Crucially, no texts have been written by AI --- they all come from old Yiddish sources (often over a century!), and AI was used to annotate. The recordings are in my own Russian/Chabad accent, which is fairly close to the YIVO standard.

Even if you don't speak Yiddish and are just interested in the jokes and expressions, I invite you to have a look. I always thought of myself as a collector of classic Yiddish jokes, but I discovered many new ones in the creation of this site.

Hi,

I’m an Orthodox Jew thinking of relocating my family to the 5 towns. I understand it’s mainly orthodox and that’s one of the reasons I’m looking to move there specifically.

My question is what’s the difference between the towns in terms of social life, community life, orthodoxy, and aesthetics?

I need help deciding which town I should look at.

Thanks everyone in advance

At least one Rabbi, Rabbi Ephraim ben Shimshon, seemed to have a rather literal interpretation of this line from Jacob's Blessing and believed that Benjamin, and presumably his descendants, would or could turn themselves into wolves.

Another explanation: Benjamin was a “predatory wolf,” sometimes preying upon people. When it was time for him to change into a wolf, as it says, “Benjamin is a predatory wolf,” as long as he was with his father, he could rely upon a physician, and in that merit he did not change into a wolf. For thus it says, “And he shall leave his father and die” (Gen. 44:22)—namely, that when he separates from his father, and turns into a wolf with travelers, whoever finds him will kill him.

Since we are approaching Halloween, this seems to be an appropriate time to talk about the weirder and wilder parts of Judaism, since we were no more immune to a belief in magic and superstition than other people, that existed and for the most part seemingly disappeared in the sense that most Jews today really don't know much about them and if they do don't follow them at all, and I think this true across the Halacha observant spectrum from Ultra-Orthodox to Secular Jews, while the supernatural traditions in other religions, especially other ethnoreligions like Shinto, remain more prominent. So what led to the wilder and weirder parts of Judaism falling into the background and becoming irrelevant in your opinion?