Page 14 - Robert Alter News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Student: Rabbi, I have a terrible problem. Rabbi: How can I help? Someone told me that they are thinking of killing themselves, and made me promise not to tell anyone. You must tell someone. Break it. But if I do, they will hate me forever. Good. Let them hate you for a lifetime; then they will have a lifetime. You need to tell someone because whatever they are feeling now, this feeling can be overcome. But if they end their life, there is no return. Have you ever lost someone to suicide? Yes, and I am still upset with them.

Please note that the posts on The Blogs are contributed by third parties. The opinions, facts and any media content in them are presented solely by the authors, and neither The Times of Israel nor its partners assume any responsibility for them. Please contact us in case of abuse. In case of abuse, Modern religions seem tremendously concerned with the moment of death and the inception of life. These are very thorny issues which straddle the divide between religion and science. I’m not going to contribute to these debates. I’m very happy to go to an august Halachik authority, and ask...

Philip Roth 2002 (Dennis Van Tine/ABACAPRESS.COM) The reviews of Blake Bailey’s Philip Roth: The Biography have been pouring out on both sides of the Atlantic. What is striking is how badly written the British ones have been and how smart the American ones are. What makes the British reviews so much worse? First, the bizarre omissions. Tim Adams’s review in The Observer of Bailey’s biography doesn’t use the words “Jew” or “Jewish” once. This is extraordinary. Not only was Roth Jewish, he wrote constantly about Jews, from Anne Frank and Kafka to his own fiction...

Readers and tweeters dispense timely advice for difficult times How to explain vaccines to people who resist them Your body’s immune system has produced antibodies that will kill a few thousand kinds of germs and virus. Since you are alive, the chances are quite high you will survive its producing another. Here is how the system works. The vaccine contains cells that are a harmless model of the germ or virus that feels like the one it prepares your body to fight when it invades your body. And, except when we had a president running for election who pushed producing one to increase his chanc...

March 4 @ 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm Arun Viswanath talks about his challenges in translating “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” into Yiddish. Moderated by Hebrew Bible translator Robert Alter. Presented by UC Berkeley Center for Jewish Studies. Cost TBD.Event Website