On Shabbat Hagadol, which immediately precedes Passover, we read from the Haftarah of Malachi in which God promises to send Elijah the prophet before the coming of the “great (gadol), awesome day of the Lord” (Malachi 3:23). On the night of the Passover...

Without question, the night of the Passover seder is among the most powerful experiences of the entire year. We daven, sing, eat, discuss, debate and methodically make our way through the Haggadah and a long night filled with rituals, customs and practices...

We have been hosting first-night seder on Pesach for more years than I can even recall. Sometimes we have a crowd around our limited-seating dining room table, and other years have been more intimate. However, it never fails that something will always...

Pull up a chair. I have a story to tell. I was traveling around Mount Ararat near the Armenian border on my way to Kurdistan just after the Turks released their grip on the ancient land. You will recognize Mount Ararat from the biblical account of Noah,...

OCEANSIDE, N.Y. (JTA) — Nine years ago, Ellen Grossman wanted to do something special for her birthday.“I said we’ve had enough parties and enough pocketbooks and enough jewelry — do something different,” the Great Neck resident recalled.So...

By now, you would think we would be numb to it. Every day, across the globe, people die of gunshot wounds. In the United States, an average of 100 people a day are killed by guns, more than 36,000 each year. Hundreds more are shot and injured.  Perhaps...

BOSTON (JTA) — Four questions. Four cups of wine. Four types of children. At Passover, the number four figures prominently in the rituals of the seder, the ceremonial holiday meal that can be mesmerizing and mystifying.Four new delightful and brightly...

I feel like I’m always walking around my house turning off lights in empty rooms. It bugs me to waste electricity, to waste money, lighting rooms unnecessarily. I do the same thing at my synagogue, too. But there’s one light at synagogue that never...

One of the most popular programs on television during the 1970s was “Happy Days,” a nostalgic comedy about the late 1950s and early 1960s. During a turbulent era (when have we not lived through a turbulent era?), “Happy Days” provided a romanticized...

When was the last time that you experienced God in the world? I experience God on the face of a stranger, in the beauty of the snow, in the intricacies of a flower. I know that the way I experience God in the world is different from the way you do.  We...

On the heels of the molten beast, we slipped. Make us a god, we said last week, because that man who led us out of Egypt, we don’t know what became of him (Exodus 32:1). Did we want a god, or did we want a leader? Rashi taught that we were confused;...