The end of the Jewish harvest festival, Sukkot, is near. The annual holiday, when Jews build temporary huts known as sukkahs and eat, celebrate and in some cases, sleep under them, ends tomorrow night, Sept. 27. Many Jews throughout St. Louis built...

Sukkot is one of Judaism’s three pilgrimage festivals, when our ancestors trekked to the temples in Jerusalem to make sacrifices. Now, many Orthodox Jews in the New York area make a different sort of holiday pilgrimage — to amusement parks. During...

Sukkot 2021 sure does feel a bit more like Sukkot 2020 than I thought it would a few months ago. We are still in the midst of a pandemic, still physically distancing, still not seeing each other’s lips. Luckily, a sukkah is mainly an open, outdoor...

Given the ongoing concerns about COVID-19 and the fact that gathering outdoors is considered safer than indoors, Sukkot and its huts have provided the perfect circumstances for celebrations. Plenty of St. Louis Jews built sukkahs this year — some...

Last spring, Bob Kaiser, a member of Nusach Hari B’nai Zion and Olivette resident, spoke with a Muslim neighbor who had just finished celebrating Ramadan. Kaiser learned that they both missed the same thing: community. “There are lessons from COVID,...

The festival of Sukkot is one of the easiest on the Jewish calendar: You’re not required to fast, repent or eat copious amounts of donuts for a whole week. Instead, (almost) all that’s required is to erect a simple structure in your garden or...

It’s old news by now, but wow, the High Holidays are early this year. With erev Rosh Hashanah colliding with Labor Day and Simchat Torah wrapping up before the month of September ends, I feel like I’ve been flung into fall even though most days...

A tradition in some ultra-Orthodox communities before Yom Kippur is kaparot, the ceremonial swinging of a chicken...

(Israel21c) - At Yom Kippur, Israel grinds to a halt. For 25 hours, schools, restaurants and businesses shut down, roads empty out as driving is prohibited, and there are no buses, no trains, and no planes. Known as the Day of Atonement, it’s...

"A Look at the Jewish Year", a new series from the National Library of Israel and the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, includes three videos highlighting core texts and concepts surrounding the holidays in the Jewish month of Tishrei, as well as source...