Displaying 1 - 8 of 8
Hanukkah: More Than Just Presents?
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
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?
Be a Lamplighter: A Reflection on Newtown and Darkness
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.
Galilee Diary: Uncertainty
by Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Galilee Diary and Ten Minutes of Torah)
Galilee Diary: Fitting in II
by Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Galilee Diary and Ten Minutes of Torah)
My Homeland, My Self, part 1
Israel is the new frontier of Reform Judaism. Since the 1990s the number of Progressive/Reform congregations and minyanim has doubled from 15 to 30, many of them served by native Israeli rabbis ordained at our Movement seminary in Jerusalem. Five thousand families send their children to Reform-affiliated schools, and last year a record 50,000 Israelis attended Progressive High Holy Day services throughout the country.