First of all, humour: Passover for Social Distancers (The author is the spouse of Reconstructionist Rabbi Rachel Gartner, Director for Jewish Life at Georgetown University. NB – heavy on the wine jokes.) Next, music! Enjoy these contemporary and traditional songs for the seder (all found in the Reconstructionist Hagaddah A Night of Questions): Shabbat Unplugged […]
What does Judaism say about loss, separation, and living in times of stress and uncertainty? WHAT does JUDaism saY …..??!? I can’t do it effectively in print, but I’m imagining a voice, that inflected voice with the upturn at the end, one that perhaps you remember or still hear from relatives, from Jewish comedians, from […]
I am finding delight in the craziest little things. Or, more accurately, I’m allowing myself to seek, find, and relish such delight. Here’s one. The plastic bottle with the dish washing soap was almost empty, so I went downstairs to pull out the large jug for a refill. As I was spinning the top back on to […]
In 2018, the Environics Institute for Survey Research conducted the first ever survey of Canadian Jewry, inspired by the 2013 Pew Study of American Jews. On March 4, 2020, OrH and the Soloway JCC hosted an event featuring an overview of the report’s six themes by one of the project’s principals, ORH member Keith Neuman. […]
In anticipation of our annual Tu B’shevat seder taking place on Sunday, February 9, we are reprinting a Words of the Spirit column written in January 2016. What is the most awesome, inspiring, jaw-dropping moment of all? This may be as close to a universal accord as one can find. Surely the answer must be: the birth moment. The […]
Vehayyei olam nat’a betochenu … letaken ‘olam bemalkhut shaddai – endless potential lies within us to repair the world through the power of malkhut. These phrases are embedded in each and every prayer service, in the words of the Aleynu prayer. We don’t just say it, we sing Aleynu – it is up to us, through malkhut – sovereignty. It was during their interpretive […]
On December 9th, 1948 the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, and on December 10th voted to pass the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These landmark documents, created in direct response to the Holocaust, fundamentally transformed the ways in which the world thinks about responsibilities to every individual […]
Should we be surprised that a parasha entitled Hayey Sarah, “the life of Sarah”, in fact opens with the death of Sarah, and encompasses nothing of her life story? Torah is full of round-about tales and messages. Here is one that is perhaps more significant for being less straightforward. It is about Sarah, and yet not about one […]
And now, for something completely … regular. We say farewell to Tishrey 5780 the same week that we welcome (regard with annoyance? celebrate? ignore?) Halloween. Because nothing says the Jewish fall festivals are over more clearly than the proliferation of skeletons, ghosts, and the creepy spray stuff that covers doorways and shrubs. My view of […]
As a young Jewish Canadian kid, Thanksgiving was, well, nonexistent. I vaguely knew that it was a Big Thing in the United States, mainly because we had relatives there. And because it often overlapped with Sukkot, which I only celebrated at school or shul, the fall harvest festival season didn’t really have an impact in […]
