Displaying 1 - 9 of 9
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?
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.
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?
Galilee Diary: Distance
Asher did not dispossess the inhabitants of Acco or the inhabitants of Sidon, Ahlab, Achziv, Helbah, Aphik, and Rehob. So the Asherites dwelt in the midst of the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land, for they did not dispossess them.
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
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.
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?
B'haalot'cha: This Passage Is Out of Place
This week’s Torah portion, B’haalot’cha, begins with the instructions for the lifting up of “the lamps,” haneirot, to illuminate the Tabernacle. The initial letter of the word, “lamp,” neir, is nun.