…synagogues are suffering a precipitous decline in attendance for in-person activities and religious worship. It is understandable that some may be reluctant to attend in-person services for a variety of reasons: fear of attending large gatherings; enjoyment in taking a break from communal obligations; competition created by outdoor services at people’s homes; and a sense that services no longer feel “compelling.”

Every time I swipe my debit card, I hold my breath until I see that magic word: “Approved.”

For years, I never knew if my card was going to get approved whenever I used it at the store. If it got declined, my face would turn flush in the checkout line and I would hurriedly try the other cards in my wallet, hoping one would go through so I could get out of there.

As Americans are soon to experience their own national rejuvenation project, the sabbatical year might serve as a guide. Improved commuting time, faster shipping and shorter downloading time will no doubt improve individual lives. How the new mandates, and liberated time gained, can be leveraged for bridging societal divides remains subject to the imagination and the responsibility of those who dwell beneath the heavens.

It might smack of QAnon, the conspiracy theory that the world is controlled by an elite cabal of child-trafficking Democrats. Except that the creator of Birds Aren’t Real and the movement’s followers are in on a joke: They know that birds are, in fact, real and that their theory is made up.

When Miriam Marizan spent four hours on a recent chilly morning being photographed smiling and laughing at flowers, she was sending a message: Orthodox Jewish women belong in the picture.

Yet, as important as participating in the photoshoot was to her, she felt it was even more important for her two young daughters.

For most of my life, the shopping mall was the symbol of the capitalist experiment. Everything about it celebrated consumerism and the illusion of plenty, and fueled the suburbanite’s need for a real-world simulacrum—one that could replace scary diverse downtowns with “safe,” artificial Disneyland-ish approximations that substituted commerce for community.

Joseph, like us, was an inheritor of this tradition rather than a progenitor. In this, he has perhaps more to teach us than the patriarchs. After all, few of us Jews will be the parent of a great nation, creators of something utterly new under the son. Much more likely, we will spend our lives trying to navigate what it means to be the inheritor of a tradition that is ancient and alluring, formidable and strange.

So now, please let your servant stay as a slave to my lord instead of the boy, and let the boy go up with his brothers.

-Genesis 44:33

Judy Gruen: Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argues that Joseph subjected his brothers to these tests as a way to lead them through the three stages of teshuva (repentance): confession, expressing remorse, and not repeating the sin when another opportunity arises.

Joseph stored the grain of his early years before the time of famine came upon him. He learned things in his parent’s home that would sustain him throughout the trials to come. Each human being builds up a stock of spiritual reserves.

David calls in from New York and discusses how the Big Apple is coming back from the pandemic, the rise in crime in Los Angeles and this week’s Jewish Journal cover story featuring Aomar Boum.

Shmuel Rosner and Harry Freedman discuss his latest book “Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius”. Harry Freedman is a British author who writes on history, religion and culture.

This week on Unorthodox, we’re prepping for the great cream cheese shortage of 5782.

First we call up friend of the show Joshua Malina, who wrote an impassioned essay in The Atlantic asking why, after such a public history of antisemitism, Mel Gibson is still getting work in Hollywood.