Holidays 480 articles

For most of the latter half of my brilliant public elementary school career in Levittown, Pa, Alan Schwartz and I were always the only Jewish kids in our class. He always...

My version of the song “Memories” is a bit different than the one Barbra Streisand made famous… Memories Of the chicken soup we ate Misty golden-colored memories, Of the “weigh” we...

The quest for a recipe for Mohnlach began several weeks ago with a phone call from my mother’s cousin Roy. “Norene, maybe you can help me? I keep thinking about the...

Purim is one of the most joyous holidays of the Jewish calendar. On the 14th of Adar we celebrate a heroic victory over those out to destroy us, by recounting how...

The story of Purim is a tale of venahafoch hu – things turning around and about and turning out, much to everyone’s surprise, just right. Things like that happen nowadays too....

Sometimes I think I’ve been endowed with an overabundance of feelings. Things often seem to affect me more deeply than they do other people. I used to think this heightened sensitivity...

You and I know what it’s like, because we’re both human: the sense of innocence, and of having been wronged. The keen desire to craft some put-down that will diminish the...

What if the shofar sounded last week, last month, last year? And what if we slept right through it? We all have moments when we feel something deep within our hearts...

The custom of reciting selichot (penitential prayers) in the days preceding Rosh HaShana is quite ancient, and is mentioned already in the early Rishonim. The custom of the Sephardim, as mentioned...

A theme which we encounter repeatedly in the mitzvah of Shofar is “confusing the accuser” (Satan). For instance: The Gemara tells us that we blow the shofar on Rosh Hashana both...