Dan Ornstein

Dan Ornstein is the rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom and a writer living with his family in Albany, New York, where he also teaches Judaic Studies in the middle school of the Hebrew Academy of The Capital District. Rabbi Ornstein is the author of Cain v. Abel: A Jewish Courtroom Drama (Jewish Publication Society 2020). He and his wife, Marian Alexander, are the proud parents of Joseph, Shulamit and Vered.
WHY SUCH joy from our poets about redemption at night? Because they recognize that however agonizing and slow, despair does dissipate as morning comes and light arises.

Passover, finding freedom: From Yannai to Bruce Springsteen

Unlike Yannai, Springsteen recognizes that the truest redemption happens within the individual: in the blessed, rare moments of the night, out of reach of the cruel binaries of boss man and worker

APRIL 6, 2023
Rabbi Ornstein is the author of 'Cain v. Abel: A Jewish Courtroom Drama,' Jewish Publication Societ, 2020.

Genesis: The Bible's stories of sibling rivalries - opinion

Bruce Springsteen's song "Adam Raised a Cain," reflected upon what he has referred to as "the hard inheritance handed down from father to son."

OCTOBER 23, 2022
AS THE NEW YEAR begins, we need to feel that God is on our side, helping us to wipe out the mistakes of the past, not etching them in God’s long, perhaps punitive, memory.

Yom Kippur: How to pray with meaning when prayer seems meaningless

Having slogged through COVID, we’re aware of how cruel a belief in God as “master of the cosmic ledger book” can be. How is it possible to find meaning and solace in the High Holy Day prayers?

OCTOBER 4, 2022

Self-censorship and its discontents - comment

I stopped by my student’s desk to see how her research was coming along. No stranger to the endless goldmine of internet mis/information, she was busy at work.

MAY 10, 2022
book censorship

Hiking with the hassidim - opinion

My new hassidic friends and I became members of the Jewish people again, a people continuously redeeming itself from the petty bigotries of our righteous ignorance.

JANUARY 22, 2022
MEN SEARCH the cloak room for their jackets at a mass gathering of Satmar Hassidim in New York

Cain and Abel are embodied in American race-based killing trials - opinion

The three most recent racial hatred killing trials in the US had vastly differing verdicts.

DECEMBER 6, 2021
Kyle Rittenhouse trial begins in Kenosha