In a world of Purim—where good and evil are blurred, where absurdity reigns, where truth is hidden, where fools are powerful and the righteous are frequently oppressed—what could/should the holiday of Purim be? In an already upside-down world, what might be this year’s charge of v’nahafoch hu?  The heart of Purim is arguably captured in this deceptively simple phrase: v’nahafoch hu—“and it was overturned.” The verse appears toward the end of the Megillah, describing the thirt

First published in 2016, this article has been updated to reflect the current moment. In 1968, German-born political theorist Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) published a book called Men in Dark Times . It was a series of biographical essays, portraits of individuals who, in the midst of darkness, offered illumination. Borrowing the phrase from Bertolt Brecht, she described “dark times” as characterized by a particular kind of malaise:  If it is the function of the public realm to t

Welcome to the Aseret Yimei Teshuva, the Ten Days of Repentance, that lay between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. With the month of Elul...