The buzz surrounding the anomaly on the Jewish calendar this year when the first day of Hanukkah coincides with Thanksgiving is an oddity. As I told Sue Selasky of the Detroit Free Press when she interviewed me about Thanksgivukkah, I explained that the hype surrounding this day is palpable. It is truly a statistical oddity…
One of the greatest gifts in the Jewish community in the 21st century has undoubtedly been the addition of the PJ Library. Started by Harold Grinspoon’s philanthropic foundation, the PJ Library now sends over 100,000 free books to Jewish families each month through the generosity of local Jewish philanthropists. As I wrote about last June…
Here is my “5 Things You Should Know About Yom Kippur” article, originally published in the AOL/HuffingtonPost Patch.com in 2011: Here are five things you should know about Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement holiday that begins on Friday evening and concludes 25 hours later on Saturday night. Calendar Yom Kippur is the most…
Here is my “5 Things You Should Know About Rosh Hashanah” article, originally published in the AOL/HuffingtonPost Patch.com in 2011: The Jewish New Year celebration, Rosh Hashanah (Hebrew, meaning “the head of the year”) begins this week on Wednesday evening and lasts until Friday. Here are five things that everyone should know about the holiday….
As we celebrate the Jewish festival of Passover this year, we will ask several questions. One question I encourage all of us to ask — no matter our religion, age or current location on this earth — is how we plan to make this year different from past years? The tradition of the Passover seder…
I began collecting different versions of the haggadah, the Passover seder’s playbook-script-manual, when I was in college. It all started by ordering a new one each year in anticipation of the holiday and somehow my collection now exceeds 100 and has demanded its own bookcase. This pales in comparison with the vast haggadah collection of…
Passover, which begins on March 25, is one of the most widely observed Jewish holidays. Each year during the Passover seder, Jewish people attempt to integrate the old traditions of the holiday with innovations. Mostly, these innovations are meant to keep the children (and many of the adults too!) alert and engaged during the seder….
Yesterday was another fun Purim holiday celebration, but I didn’t post a Purim satire this year (last year’s edition). I also usually post a list of my favorite Purim YouTube videos before the holiday, but there really weren’t ten quality videos I could find to make my Top Ten Purim Videos list. A few standouts…
This Shabbat is one of the four Jewish New Years set forth in the Mishna. Tu Bishvat, or Jewish Arbor Day, occurs on the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Sh’vat. In addition to being a birthday for trees, the holiday is deeply connected to the agricultural cycle of the Land of Israel and…
A couple years ago I wrote about non-Jews observing certain Jewish customs. I looked at such examples as Justin Bieber reciting the Shema in Hebrew before each concert as well as non-Jews maintaining kosher diets, hanging mezuzahs on their front doors, dancing the Hora at weddings and erecting sukkahs. The new trend seems to be…