Yom Kippur is the holiest day in Jewish calendar. Its central themes are atonement and repentance. Jews observe this day with a 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, spending most of the day in synagogue services. Yom Kippur completes the High Holy Days. G-d inscribes each person’s fate for the coming year into a [...]
One more Rosh Hashanah musical parody. This time by The Ein Prat Fountainheads from the Ein Prat Academy. The Fountainhead’s are a group of young Israeli dancers, singers, actors and artists, all graduates and students of the Ein Prat Academy for Leadership, who have have joined forces to create new Jewish artistic content for today’s [...]
The Shabbat.com website gives Jews the opportunity to stay as a Shabbat guest with Jewish families around the world. Anybody interested in being a guest just needs to fill out a profile page with some personal details like age, profession, preferred synagogue (Orthodox, Modern etc…), a character reference – and of course, their location. You say [...]
“Though summer still lingered and the days were bright and sunny, change was in the air. One could already smell the scent of Elul; a wind of teshuva was blowing. Everyone grew more serious, more thoughtful… All awaited the call of the shofar, the first blast that would announce the opening of the gates of [...]
וְהָיָה עֵקֶב תִּשְׁמְעוּן אֵת הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים הָאֵלֶּה וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם וַעֲשִׂיתֶם אתָם וְשָׁמַר ה’ אֱלהֶיךָ לְךָ אֶת הַבְּרִית וְאֶת הַחֶסֶד אֲשֶׁר נִשְׁבַּע לַאֲבתֶיךָ: And it will be, because you will heed these ordinances and keep and perform them, that the Lord, your God, will keep for you the covenant and the kindness that He swore to your forefathers. It can be [...]
Black Tefillin, Blue Numbers And you shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for ornaments between your eyes – Deut: 6,8. There is a well known saying, “Never judge anyone until you have walked a mile in their shoes.” Less well known is the humorous conclusion to that sentence: [...]
Parshat Devarim is the beginning of the longest sermon in Jewish history – Moses’ final speech to the Jewish people took 36 days. In this address he reminds them of previous downfalls and prepares them for a new life in the Promised Land, a land he himself was not permitted to enter. I would like [...]
Is Twitter a good medium for Judaism? Two articles were recently posted on the Web that took opposing viewpoints on this question. Donniel Hartman, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute and the director of the Engaging Israel Project, penned a critique titled “Judaism is not a Twitter-able Religion” in which he explained that the ideas [...]
The original Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam was set up in 1932 in a small room at Weigh House but during the 1940 German invasion, most of the artifacts were confiscated and destroyed. In 1955 the Joods Historisch Museum was re-opened with only one-fifth of the original collection, so private collectors and even the general public [...]
The Jewish Culture Festival in Cracow, Poland is one of the most important and largest events of its kind in the world. The First Festival took place in 1988 and its program focused on a scholarly conference on the encounter between two cultures, Jewish and Polish. Shaped by outstanding figures in various fields of Jewish [...]
Start each day with wisdom from G-d’s Biblical Book of Proverbs. Then use the memory list feature to commit memory verses to memory. The Daily Proverb iPhone App uses a memorization technique that allows you to memorize scripture faster and more easily than you though possible! If you decide you want to memorize the scripture, [...]
Education is the cornerstone of the Morasha experience. Camp Morasha integrates the best in informal and formal Jewish education in all of its programming and activities through a transformative and fun, co-ed, outdoor summer experience for Jewish youth. Through commitment to Torah principles and engagement with nature and the larger world, the camp inspires and [...]
This year we celebrate the 11th year of the JCC Ames Amzalak Rochester Jewish Film Festival underwritten by Friendly’s. Born of the desire to bring Jewish themed film to Rochester, the birthplace of film, Festival has turned into something no one could never have imagined in 2001. With more than 65 donors supporting the Festival and nearly [...]
In the classic joke, a man asks a rabbi: “Why do Jews always answer a question with a question?” The rabbi answers: “Do we?”. Bay Area artists Ken Goldberg and Gil Gershoni present a contemporary take on the inquisitive impulse with a new media installation at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco until July 31, [...]
New Artscroll’s eBook - “On Judaism” by Rabbi Emanuel Feldman Have you ever wondered what it means to be a Jew? Why Judaism is still relevant in the modern world? What Judaism says about such topics as faith… covenant… chosen people… ethics… mitzvah observance… kashruth… love… G-d… sin… holiness… pleasure… Shabbos… prayer… Torah… food… countless other [...]
