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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
Three encounters from a day with 50 students from HUC, spending their first year in Israel before beginning their studies at the stateside campuses.
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.
Ghetto: A Poem
the path that we now follow / is the Exodus our ancestors never chose / flooding with pain they died not to swallow / the past spills into the river and flows
The Bitter and the Sweet: Observing Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut This Year
We at the URJ are working with you, our congregations, to instill a love of Israel, make it central to the identity of Reform Jews, and advance efforts toward ensuring that it is a nation of equality, tolerance, pluralism, and justice.
America Needs a Just and Equitable Immigration Policy: If Not Now, When?
It is difficult to imagine anyone not moved by the scenes of children seeking asylum at our southern border.
On Yom HaShoah, Hear the Message of the Saved Remnant
My mother’s answer to hate is love. When I asked her what she wishes for herself and for the world, she said, “For myself good health, so I can be good to others. For the world, peace not war. No bad person wins in the end. What did Hitler achieve?”
Tu BiShvat: Customs and Rituals
The Jewish mystics of the 17th century, the Kabbalists, created a special ritual—modeled after the Passover seder—to celebrate God's presence in nature. Today in modern Israel, Tu BiShvat has become a national holiday, a tree planting festivaTu BiShvat is not mentioned in the Torah. Scholars believe the holiday was originally an agricultural festival, corresponding to the beginning of spring in Israel. But a critical historical event helped Tu BiShvat evolve from a simple celebration of spring to a commemoration of our connection to the land of Israel. After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. and the exile that followed, many of the exiled Jews felt a need to bind themselves symbolically to their former homeland. Tu BiShvat served in part to fill that spiritual need. Jews used this time each year to eat a variety of fruits and nuts that could be obtained from Israel. The practice, a sort of physical association with the land, continued for many centuries.l for both Israelis and Jews throughout the world
Tu BiShvat: History
Although the celebration of Tu BiShvat has a long and varied history, the theme most commonly ascribed to the holiday today is the environment.
antisemitism
Hebrew Spelling
אַנְטִישֵׁמִיּוּת
Alternate Spelling
anti-Semitism
Irrational hatred of Jews.