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A man and woman exchanging a Hanukkah gift in a bag patterned with colorful dreidels

Hanukkah: More Than Just Presents?

Katharine Nasielski

This weekend, we will gather together with family or friends (or, if you’re on the RAC staff, with 215 high school students at L’Taken) around the Chanukah lights, spin the dreidel, eat latkes and sufganyot and engage in the great “applesauce or sour cream” debate.

Rise up Maccabean Style for Rights of the Disabled

Rabbi Lynne Landsberg

Raechel Banks

The sages of the Talmud had a debate about how we are to light the Chanukah menorah: Should we begin with eight candles and remove one each night, or begin with one and add through the holiday?

GOTV: What Would Susan Do?

On November 5, a middle-aged woman walked up to her polling place in Rochester, New York. She entered the voting booth, and filled out her ballot indicating her preferred candidate. She dropped her completed ballot into the ballot box and went home.

Happy Hanumas? Ditch Season's Greetings

Linda K. Wertheimer

Happy Hanumas? Happy Chrismakah? Merry Chanukah? The winter holidays are fast approaching. It's time for non-celebrants of Christmas to read yourselves for the onslaught of seasonal niceties from store clerks and acquaintances.

Be a Lamplighter: A Reflection on Newtown and Darkness

Rabbi Sari Laufer

I have a bunch of blog posts brewing in my head, but felt like I couldn't write anything until I wrote about Newtown. But, what could I say? What can I say?

The History of Hanukkah Gifts: Is This Custom Really a Jewish One?

The contemporary custom of wrapping presents gifts arose in conjunction with Christmas, but many aspects of gift-giving have distinctly Jewish roots, each of which has helped set the stage for the development of the ritual into what it is today.

Musical Settings: Adon Olam

When I was a student at the Anshe Emet Day School in Chicago, Illinois, I had a Hebrew teacher who suggested that every night before we went to sleep, it would be meaningful to recite the last verse of Adon Olam. As an impressionable and obedient fourth grader, I took to heart her suggestion and incorporated what became a comforting and soothing personal prayer with my nightly recitation of the Sh’ma:

In Toledo, Asleep in the Room of the Moneylenders

Ilana DeBare

We took advantage of our empty nest status to take a week-long trip to Spain this month, the first time in almost 20 years that we could travel at a time when schools weren’t on vacation.

Hanukkah: A Re-Dedication to our Highest Values

Tom Heyn

A few weeks ago I attended a local event featuring Joseph Goldstein, the world-renowned Buddhist teacher and author who was here in Brattleboro to help the Vermont Insight Meditation Center celebrate its fifth anniversary. I enjoyed the gathering immensely and was energized by seeing so many bri

My Secret Siblings

Childhood memories are vague at the best of times. Our remembrances tend to be pictures shown and stories told to us by others. But what happens when a family chooses not to remember because the memories are too painful or too shameful?