The connection between human beings and their pets is like a love sonnet composed for someone who can neither read nor speak yet understands each line.
Despite our best efforts, few human relationships compare in terms of reciprocity, warmth, trust, constancy and unconditional affection.
Of course, not everyone welcomes the idea of sharing his or her home with an animal. There are those who can’t live without pets and others who wouldn’t buy that cute little doggy in the window if you paid them.
The affinity is similar to the taste of black licorice — either you love it or you don’t.
Judaism is ethically, morally and behaviorally pro-animal. For example, feeding a pet before yourself isn’t merely a thoughtful gesture. It’s pure Talmud.
This is a tale of two sisters. Of their manifold tragedies and misfortunes — and their rare good luck. Of their survival, not only of the Holocaust but the Blitz that raged alongside it.
Of their uncertain journeys, their unknown destinations, as children, as orphans.
Of the unlikely fact that both are alive today to tell the tale.
And of the love these sisters had, and still have, for one another.
Where to begin?
Let us choose a cold day in early November of 1938 in the troubled city o...
Wish your friends and family a Happy New Year, with your own personal message in the IJN's special Rosh Hashanah edition published September 14, 2012, before the High Holidays.
Print and mail out the form below, or even easier, call Rabbi Hillel Goldberg at the IJN office, (303) 861-2234 or email hillel@ijn.com by Wednesday, September 5 to have your message included.
Paul Epstein — 6’4”, wavy white hair flowing past his shoulders — bends slightly to greet his guests in the back hallway of Twist and Shout, Denver’s massive, independently owned music store on East Colfax Avenue.
His office, smaller than one might expect for the owner of this local and national landmark, is right down the activity-packed hall. Once inside, he suggests muting the music. “It might be less distracting,” he says with a sympathetic grin.
Epstein, 52, spent the first...
The art of Witold K. has taught Witold and painted a fascinated a great many people over the years, and mystified perhaps even more.
They have seen in his creations the elements the artist has intentionally put there — diminutive and lost-looking human figures, enigmatic black holes both terrifying and beautiful, images vaguely reminiscent of the American Southwest or of Eastern Europe, muted earth tones and vivid rainbow hues.
They have also very often seen, or felt, something less plainl...