Before New Year’s Day, 2000, the New York Times created a mock front page for New Year’s Day, 2100. They concocted all kinds of news stories for the front page, and since New Year’s will fall on Friday that year, the editors added the time for Shabbat candle lighting. At …
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The Odd Celebration
Simchat Torah is a festive holiday. We carry the Torah scroll around the Bimah (Torah reading table) and dance the night away. The reason for this great joy is the completion of our annual cycle of Torah reading.[1] Every Shabbat we chant a portion from the Torah and …
Shema and Shabbat
The Midrash in this week’s Parsha quotes an interesting argument between Rabbi Levi and the sages as to the primacy of mitzvot. Rabbi Levi felt that the recitation of Shema is the primary Mitzvah. The sages felt that observing the Shabbat is primary.
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What is Matzah?
Almost everyone knows the answer to that one; it is the cracker like bread, round or square, hand or machine made, that we eat on Passover. True enough, say the Jewish mystics, but wrong answer; matzah is bread of faith. (1) How so?
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A Holiday
Joseph Stalin reputedly visited a Jewish inmate in prison who was rumored to foresee the future. Can you tell me, asked Stalin, when I will die? Well, replied the Jew, I can’t tell you the exact date, but I can tell you that will die on a Jewish holiday. …
These past two days have been the most difficult for our people in the last fifty years. It was Simchat Torah, a time for rejoicing, yet it was a time of horror. Nearly a thousand members of our family were brutally murdered, more than a hundred were taken hostage, and …
