This year our Sigi Ziering column focuses on the ethics of kashrut. Each month an esteemed guest columnist will wrestle with what Jewish texts and our tradition teach us about the food we eat; the preparation of food; the people who prepare our food; the food and restaurants that are deemed kosher. This column is sponsored by Bruce Whizin and Marilyn Ziering in honor of Marilyn's husband, Sigi Ziering, of blessed memory.

Homelessness: Prayer as a Call to Action

Tamar Kamionkowski
While the plight of the homeless is addressed in a number of traditional Jewish texts (especially within law codes), one is hard pressed to find explicit petitions to God to provide shelter for the homeless in our liturgy.

Free Loans and Housing

Shana Novick
The highest degree of tzedakah, most famously articulated by Maimonides, is to help someone achieve self-sufficiency by means of a gift, an interest-free loan, or a partnership. Of these, only loans preserve the dignity of the recipient while also offering the possibility of enormous philanthropic leverage. That is why Central and Eastern European Jewish [...]

Responsibility

Jacob Montgomery
After one spends time in Washington D.C. and Philadelphia, the sight of homeless people in American cities becomes normal, just one of the more unpleasant aspects of urban life. Seeing people sleeping in parks and on benches becomes an ordinary sight, one that doesn’t seem disturbing or unusual.

The Housing Crisis: Who Should Be Helped?

Mordechai Liebling
In Mishneh Torah 9:6 we learn: “A person who owns houses, fields, and vineyards that if sold during the rainy season would fetch a lower price than during the summer, should not be made to sell them; rather, [the person] should receive out of the proceeds of the poor person’s tithe [community tzedakah fund] up to half the value of the properties, so that the person should not be forced to sell at the wrong time.”

The Housing Crisis: Who Should Be Helped?

John C. Weicher
The crisis in American housing and financial markets started in February 2007 when a number of large mortgage lenders began reporting unexpectedly large losses on their portfolios of subprime mortgages, or securities backed by subprime mortgages.

Encountering the Homeless

Jason Kimelman-Block
As part of my work, I regularly introduce Jewish high school students to homeless people on the streets of Washington, DC.

Landlords and Tenants

Jill Jacobs
Residents of a rent-stabilized apartment building in the Bronx were recently shocked to receive rent increases of up to 16 percent, far above the currently permitted increase of 4.5 percent.

Homelessness

Aryeh Cohen
At the most intense moment of the Jewish liturgical year — Yom Kippur/the Day of Atonement — the tradition dictates that the portion we read from the Prophets, the haftorah, is one that challenges the very practice embodied in that holy fast day.

Broken Silence

Andrew Silow-Carroll
Last year the New York Times ran a despairing series of articles on how hard it was becoming to prosecute street crimes because of witness intimidation.

Silence is Not the Opposite of Speech

Sheila Peltz Weinberg
When Sylvia Boorstein and I cooked up the idea to bring rabbis on retreat to learn meditation and have them be in silence for four days, people thought we were crazy.