For most of my life, I attended reluctantly, dreading the long hours of prayer. I was proud to be Jewish, taking satisfaction in my people's survival and success despite the attempts to annihilate us. But I was also embarrassed by what I perceived as Judaism's weirdness and obsolescence: all those nitpicky laws, and that implausible, reward-and-punishment God I thought was portrayed in the liturgy.
People who are suffering right now, people who cannot pay their mortgage, people who have been separated from their families, people who are sitting in deportation camps, concentration camps, foreign and domestic, those people do not...
Robert Einstein was cousin to the famous physicist Albert Einstein, both having a deep familial bond formed during their childhood in 19th-century Munich.
With the approach of this year's Pesach, I feel neither fortified nor replenished. I am, instead, trembling with contempt for those in my Jewish community ignoring the core lessons of the seder.
