Tag: Judaism

It’s common knowledge that as Hitler’s bid to rid the world of Jews escalated, so did the world’s refusal to let them in. What’s not well known is that when those borders, ports, doors, windows,...

I’ve often heard (and many rabbis lament) that Shavuot is the only major Jewish holiday many Diaspora Jews have never heard of or ever celebrated. If you are one of these newbies to the holiday,...

Counting of the Omer (Hebrew: ספירת העומר‎, Sefirat HaOmer, sometimes abbreviated as Sefira or the Omer) is an important verbal counting of each of the forty-nine days between the Jewish holidays of Passover and Shavuot as stated in the Hebrew Bible: Leviticus 23:15–16. This mitzvah ("commandment") derives from the Torah commandment to count...

What happens when a devout Christian minister and equally devout Orthodox Jew 9,000 miles apart wrestle with the most sensitive of subjects, while 100,000 people across the country eavesdrop? They discover is that their two...

In the word “Terumah” ("תרומה") we find a hint of things to come within a certain time period. The word Terumah conceals the word Torah ("תורה") and the letter “Mem” (“מ”) which is 40...

Avi Shafar, a 40-year-old man from Teaneck, N.J., went to Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx last week and donated his kidney to someone he had never met. Immediately after transplantation, within a couple of...

It was June 2009, and Rabbi Avi Weiss, along with Bar-Ilan University Professor Daniel Sperber, had just conferred upon Sara Hurwitz the title “Maharat,” a phrase coined by Weiss for “Manhigah Halachatit Ruchanit Toranit,”...

Every winter, just as we start to think about spring, a minor holiday comes along. Minor enough that not all of us know what it means or how it came to be. Tu Bishvat first...

This Parasha has a very odd opening verse; it basically states that HaShem was worried that Bnei-Yisrael might go back to Egypt upon the prospect of war. The Torah writes that Pharaoh “sent” the...

Liberal Judaism has published its first new draft Shabbat service in more than two decades, as it begins a year-long process to produce a new Siddur. The new Siddur will be the movement’s first since...