Galilee Diary: Why is This Night Different?
"Tu" (the Hebrew abbreviation of 15th) in the month of Shvat was set (Hillel's opinion generally overrules Shammai's) as the beginning of the tithable year for tree fruit: Calculating the tithe on fruit starts again for fruit that sets after that date.
Happy Tu BiShvat: Environmental Responsibility in the Berkshires
Book Discussion: Day After Night
The English essayist and poet Alexander Pope wrote, "Hope springs eternal in the human breast..." That adage is challenged by the four protagonists in Anita Diamant's book, Day After Night.
Galilee Diary: Galilee encounters
Planting and Parenting: The Lessons of Tu BiShvat
Here is the quintessential Jewish question: How do we emulate God? We are told that we were created by God. We are told that we have a divine spark within us.
Galilee Diary: Winter
It is life we want, no more and no less than that, our own life feeding on our own vital sources, in the fields and under the skies of our homeland, a life based on our own physical and mental labors; we want vital energy and spiritual richness from this living source.
It’s Hard to be a Jew at Christmas, But Even Harder on Tu BiSh’vat
It is a truth universally acknowledged that it can be difficult to be Jewish at Christmas time. It has seeped into North American cultural consciousness so thoroughly that South Park even wrote a song about it, complete with trademark expletives.
Preserving the Truth About World War II Vilna
“NOVA”’s new one-hour film, “Holocaust Escape Tunnel,” reminds us that in an era of alternative facts, science and history still can separate fact from fiction.
Honoring Jewish Rescuers this Holocaust Remembrance Day
More than a half century after the Holocaust, it is surely time that we acknowledge that saving one’s own is worthy of recognition and praise. Jews everywhere ought to take pride in these heroes of their own people.
This Synagogue Embraced a New Narrative for Teaching the Holocaust
Have you ever noticed that when we teach the Holocaust, we let the perpetrators dictate the story for us? We use their pictures and their propaganda to tell our story, forgetting that their agenda was to dehumanize the Jews.