CORINNE N. DARVISH, Special to the Jewish Light
• Published April 4, 2012
When I tell people how my Persian family celebrates Passover, many people tell me that they want to be Sephardic. I don’t know that we’ll be able to swing the rice and legumes, but as far as I know, there are no prohibitions on green onions.
During...
By design, the Passover seder is perhaps the paradigmatic family holiday. Relatives, distant and close, friends, even strangers crowd around the dinner table to laugh, eat and of course to read the Haggadah, telling the story of the Israelites Exodus...
By Dr. Erica Brown, JointMedia News Service
• Published March 28, 2012
Three times in the book of Exodus and once in Deuteronomy, we are commanded to tell the master narrative of our people to our children. Sometimes it is because children ask, and we have a responsibility as bearers of a legacy to answer. Sometimes children...
By the Jewish Light Staff
• Published March 28, 2012
Too often a good idea leads to less desirable—though unintended—consequences. So it was with the Jewish Light’s Matzah Taste Test. Wouldn’t it be helpful to buy a bunch of different brands of matzah and recruit staff members to judge the brands...
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly NOW. Love mercy NOW. Walk humbly NOW. You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it.—TalmudThe Earth may be big and its pain gigantic, but everything...
Polish police are investigating the desecration of a Jewish cemetery in northeastern Poland. Monika Krawczyk, the CEO of the Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Heritage in Poland, said vandals spray-painted swastikas and anti-Semitic images and...
By Matt Robinson, JointMedia News Service
• Published March 14, 2012
Appointed Chief Historian for the 350th commemoration of the American Jewish community, Jonathan D. Sarna is recognized as one of the leading commentators on the history of his people in the U.S. That history, however, includes episodes when those people...
Poland is issuing commemorative coins this month to honor three Catholic-Polish families who were killed by the Nazis for having rescued Jews during the Holocaust. The two coins, in denominations of two zlotys, worth about 65 cents, and 20 zlotys, worth...
NEW YORK -- A new study found that Jews are the most internationally migratory of all the world’s major religious groups. “Faith on the Move,” a study released Thursday by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, found...
Letter provokes responses Norman Pressman raises an interesting point in his objection to the all-girls musical productions of Block Yeshiva and Bais Yaakov (Letter to the editor, Feb. 29). He is correct that I will not be able to attend my own daughter’s...
TOKYO—Sitting in Tokyo shortly before the first anniversary of the tsunami, I recalled my surprise the first time a Japanese person thanked me, as a Jew, for Israel’s immediate response to the disaster. It was certainly not the time to instruct that...
By Margi Lenga Kahn, Special to the Jewish Light
• Published February 29, 2012
You don’t need to consult your calendar to know that Purim is near. Walk into your neighborhood supermarket and you will be greeted by a display of packaged hamentashen. The iconic cookies originated in Germany as mohn-taschen (translation: poppy seed...
