Lag b’Omer begins tonight (May 18) at sunset. It’s a bit of a weird holiday because it commemorates a number: the 33rd day of the Omer, the 49-day period between Passover and Shavuot. Lag b’Omer is also an oddity because there’s no real consensus...

The annual Lag BaOmer pilgrimage to Mount Meron in Israel – which in 2022 falls on Wednesday night, May 18 – until recently has attracted as many as half a million visitors every year. The annual gathering, which takes place at what is believed to...

Lag B’Omer will be celebrated this Thursday. The name of the holiday means “the 33rd day of the Omer,” a period that begins on the second day of Passover. Counting the Omer historically references the harvesting of the new barley crop to be brought...

A tri-lingual Crown Center Senior Living Passover event on April 21 combined food, wine, and memories. The occasion was a special seder for the Jewish Russian immigrants who call Crown Center home. A joyous group of 20 residents gathered at the [email protected]

(JTA) — A 13th-century Sephardic haggadah from Catalonia, Spain. A 15th-century haggadah from Prague. A 20th-century haggadah from Fez, Morocco. For the first time, a selection of some of the most historic haggadahs from the National Library of Israel’s...

(JTA) — Just days before Jews around the world gather with their families and friends to read the Haggadah as part the Passover holiday, one family of reunited Holocaust survivors filed a lawsuit to reclaim a 700-year-old haggadah that they say was...

Passover was on March 30 the first year I ever celebrated it. I remember it was a stormy spring in Los Angeles. Rainwater roared through the city aqueducts. I had never witnessed so much rain in Southern California before. Everything seemed to be moving...

(JTA) — Between air-raid sirens in Odessa, Svetlana Niselevitch, an 84-year-old Ukrainian-Jewish Holocaust survivor, has been preparing to join a Passover seder for the first time in her life. “We didn’t observe Jewish traditions in my family,”...

(JTA) —  When the war came, Galina Chornobyl fled so fast she left her teeth behind. That’s one of the first things she shared with me when I met Galina at the Siret border crossing in Romania late last month. Kyiv had become untenable —...

Ethan Schuman is a dentist, collector of Judaica, violinist, woodworker and, at this time of year, a matzah maven. The earthen matzah oven in his University City garage was the subject of a 2016 story in the Jewish Light. Baking matzah from scratch...

Dear Jewish Light reader, Please help me put an end to a mystery. I'll just say it straight up, I think the kid, featured on the cover of my very own Maxwell House Haggadah, is now grown up and is a major Hollywood star. Many of his fans simply know...

You've heard it before. Purim is the Jewish holiday in which the imbibing large amounts of alcohol is practically mandated. But, don't forget about Passover. Four cups of wine? And while no one is suggesting you become farschnickert, Passover is certainly...