5 Sukkot Activities You Can Do with What You Have at Home
Why I’m Not Hiding My Religion Any More
I tried to hide my religion during my entire childhood. When I look back, I wonder who I was kidding.
Is Halloween Right for Your Jewish Family?
Do Jews celebrate Halloween? Well, it depends on whom you ask. Reform Jews seem to be particularly divided on the subject of celebrating the spooky holiday.
Comedy Helped My Catholic Family Embrace its Jewish Secret
I was born in 1961, baptized, confirmed and given First Communion. But when I was 9, my father began telling me bedtime stories about his narrow escape from the Nazis in Vienna, his entire family murdered – how my maternal grandmother was assassinated in my mother’s childhood home in Bremen, Germany, on Kristallnacht and how, by a miracle, my mother survived.
Building a Jewish Community... Three Hours Away from the Nearest Torah
Even so far away from my home, the words we prayed were familiar, and the melodies connected us all.
In the Face of Injustice, Even a Soft Voice is Better Than Silence
The worst sin of all is failing to speak up. When we say nothing, we are saying everything wrong. Worse yet, when we say nothing, we are saying everything wrong is right.
Where We Find the Best Stress Relief for Teens
Teens today are coming of age at a time of intense competition. The pressures they feel to be successful at school, in sports, in pursuit of their passions, in their social lives and in romantic relationships, as daughters and sons, and as leaders – are at an all-time high.
The Sound of Shofar: Leading Us to Revelation and Freedom
Count off seven sabbath years — seven times seven years — so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years. Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan. (Leviticus 25:8-10)
In this week's portion, the Jubilee year is established. Called yovel, our parashah explains how every forty-nine years — seven weeks of seven years — in the seventh month, on Yom Kippur, the shofar of freedom is to be sounded throughout the land for all its inhabitants. This iconic verse to proclaim freedom throughout the land is inscribed on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.
What My Arabic Lessons Are Teaching Me About Coexistence
This new year, I’m studying Arabic to be able to converse with Palestinians in Israel and the West Bank, augmenting my lifelong caring relationship with Israel.
Is Time Ours or Is It God's?
In Parashat Emor, the verses in Leviticus 23:1-44 name and describe the sacred times of the Jewish calendar: Shabbat, Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, and the Pilgrimage Festivals of Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. Time becomes a holy thing, and the "normalcy" of time — of one day being no different than any other — is forever differentiated by the weekly Sabbath and by these special festive days.