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8 Blogs for 8 Nights of Hanukkah
Blog #1: Oil and the Secret of the Jew
Question: Why do we need to use a candle - the Shamash (helper) candle - when we can just as easily use a match to light the Menorah?It has to do with the "Way of the Long Pole."Some background:...
The authors, Shimon Perez and David Landau, made it clear from the outset that their views on David Ben-Gurion as a man, his accomplishments and failures, as well as his vision for Israel could be...
The history of Hanukkah squeezes us between two competing narratives: one of idealization and one of consternation.The former encourages us to view Hanukkah as a holiday of...
Over 30 years ago, I read an article which reported a statistical study of Jewish observances. The big news in that article was that while many Jews assumed that the most observed Jewish holiday of...
According to traditional Jewish belief, the Sabbath has its origin in God’s divine command to observe the seventh day as a day of rest and sanctification. Scholars, on the other hand, are divided...
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is a concept I came to understand in my early adult years. But this was my understanding during my childhood: Yom Kippur really translated into “Indian Summer...
by Marc Rosenstein(Originally posted in Ten Minutes of Torah and Galilee Diary)When the queen of Sheba observed all of Solomon's wisdom, and the palace he had built, the fare of his table, the...
…At [Akko] also the inhabitants of Zippori of Galilee who (being sensible of the power of the Romans) were for peace with the Romans, received Vespasian, the Roman general, very kindly, and readily...
A man is nothing but a small plot of land,A man is nothing but the image of the landscape of his birthplace, Only what his ear recorded when it was still fresh, Only what his eye took in before it...
If the idea of Israel as imagined by American Jews sometimes seems like a fantasy that could not ever exist in reality, there is a reason for it. In many way, this country was founded as an...
Yom HaShoah is a day filled with paradoxes.
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The sight of neo-Nazis parading through Lithuania’s capital city in an unsanctioned march sent chills down the spines of many people both inside and outside this small Eastern European country –...
“It must have been so scary,” is the refrain I have heard over the course of last week.
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Jason Collins is black and gay. Who is Collins and why do these things matter? Some background: Collins is a good (albeit not great) active NBA basketball player, which means he is better than 99...
This Independence Day weekend also marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg during the Civil War. Marc Saperstein, Professor of Jewish Studies at King's College in London, tells...
Okay, I admit it. I am not overjoyed by the announcement of the birth of the future heir of the British throne. I do wish the new mum and dad all the best with their spanking new lad, but I don't...
Stepping inside the Touro Synagogue feels a little bit like stepping inside an Old World Sephardic shul. There's a good reason for that: All of the oldest congregations in the New World were...
[Editor's Note: Rabbi Jacobs gave the following address on Saturday, August 24, 2013, at the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.]
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Ruth Messinger reflects on the Jewish community's involvement in the March on Washington and Civil Rights Movement.
Is 10 days enough time to fall in love with Israel? Absolutely. Is 10 days enough time to make a sincere and meaningful connection to the land and people? It turns out that it is.
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Rabbi Robert Nosanchuk reflects on the history of Jewish engagement in civil rights, and the shared values of the Jewish community and African-American community in the work of continuing to build...
Vilna, Lithuania. Once, this city with its narrow, twisting lanes was renowned as the Jerusalem of the North, a flourishing center of Jewish culture.
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As you’ve undoubtedly heard, the Jewish calendar and the secular calendar offer a strange convergence in the United States this year as Hanukkah and Thanksgiving coincide. The Jewish media has been...
As the United States continues to struggle with a broken immigration system, six members of the House of Representatives with Jewish backgrounds are sharing their family's immigration stories. ...
The Hebrew word hanukkah means "dedication," and refers to the rededication of the second temple to the service of God during the successful revolt of the Maccabees against the Seleucid rulers of...
"We were friends, I thought. And here she was with the others in the mob!”
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Things really can change in 35 years. That was my reaction to the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., which I visited I was in the city participating in the Religious Action Center of Reform...
Many Christians and Jews know of the connection between Passover and Easter. But what about the connection between the 40 days of Lent and Passover?
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Today, on the 103rd anniversary of the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City, we recall how in 18 minutes, a fire took the lives of 146 Jewish and Italian immigrants. This...
Much ink has been spilled since the release of the Pew Research Center survey on Jewish identity in the United States. Many have addressed a number of the findings of the survey, with varying...
Zachor. A powerful imperative to remember. An anthem in opposition to forgetting. A symbol of the Jewish approach to history: zachor, remember, remember as if you experienced it yourself.
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When I was an undergraduate, I spent a semester abroad in Germany. I was there, of course, to learn German: that was the express purpose of the trip. But I also had felt a need to go there to find...
On the 28th of Iyar, Israel celebrates Jerusalem Day. This day was chosen to symbolize the continued historical connection of the Jewish People to Jerusalem. What started as a symbolic event became...
Rabbinic tradition teaches that when God spoke at Sinai, the world was silenced - birds did not sing, breezes did not rustle leaves in the trees. Out of that profound silence came the word,...
The Arc de Triomphe, the grand monument at the heart of Paris, was built to celebrate victory. It honors those who fought and died for France in the French Revolution and in the Napoleonic Wars,...
Two very different events I attended, hundreds of miles apart, demonstrated the wide range of ways in which the memory of Jews and the Holocaust are commemorated in Poland.
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Yesterday began the three-week period leading up to Tishah B’Av (August 4-5 this year), the darkest, saddest day on the Jewish calendar. On Tishah B’Av, we fast and we mourn for the destruction of...
Thousands of years ago, the Jewish people were expelled from the land of Israel into the Diaspora. They remained there until 1948, when the Jewish people finally achieved the dream of a homeland...
On Tishah B'Av, we bear witness for people around the world who suffer destruction and exile, knowing that return, recognition, and redemption are possible. But we don't stop with remembrance. We...
As I watched Israel's Iron Dome intercept a Hamas rocket, I began to get some insight into why we mourn on the Ninth of Av.
It is Shabbat, and my wife Anat and I are relaxing in lounge chairs in the small backyard of our home. We call it the "Nachlaot garden,” because it’s reminiscent of that Jerusalem neighborhood...
Turning on the news, it seems like all that anyone is talking about these days is the Ebola virus. From the news, to our offices, to our conversations amongst friends, we’ve been hearing every day...
Almost as soon as the Central Conference of American Rabbis' conference began in June of 1964, the presiding rabbi stepped forward with an urgent telegram from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. King...
It was Saturday evening, November 4, 1995 – the 12th of Heshvan, 5756 – when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin joined hundreds of thousands of Israelis at the square in front of Tel Aviv’s City...
Soon, Jews around the world will gather in our homes and our synagogues, even in public places – to light the hanukkiyah (menorah) and celebrate the festival of Hanukkah. The holiday commemorates a...
In 1974 in Philadelphia, a small menorah was lit in front of Independence Hall, home to the iconic Liberty Bell. The menorah was crude and made of wood. Five people attended what is now considered...
Human beings have been paying attention to the ebb and flow of daylight for a very, very long time. Stonehenge, that iconic circle of stone slabs in Great Britain, was built sometime between 3000...
