Last month, The International Rabbinic Fellowship, the most liberal of Orthodox rabbinic associations in the US, voted against accepting female members, effectively withholding its recognition for Sara Hurwitz’s rabbinic status. The issue has sparked a lively debate among several Facebook friends about women’s abilities to serve in positions of religious leadership. Despite having spent my [...]
Posts under ‘Judaism’
The Incredible Edible Tu Beshvat Kid Craft
In Israel, the holiday of Tu Beshvat is associated with tree planting and dried fruit. The tradition of eating dried fruit is rooted in the years of exile, where fresh fruit was generally unavailable in the middle of winter. Despite the veritable cornucopia of fresh fruit available at any local grocery, most Israelis still go [...]
The Blessing of Being Imperfect
A couple of weeks ago, I finished a series of speech therapy treatments. Despite teaching and speaking in public for years, I felt very insecure about my communication abilities. Being asked to repeat myself several times in ordinary conversations didn’t do much for my self-esteem. That was why I decided to embark on a course [...]
The Rain is Here…
Today was the first day of rain this season here in Israel. Although we’ve had some occasional drops here and there in the past few weeks, the first real rain came this night. Somehow, all my kids managed to hear the rain at 2 AM and by the time they were up at 7, running [...]
Counting the Blessings on Rosh Hashana
As I was serving buckwheat for dinner tonight, my super-picky 10-year-old had a novel idea. “Mom,” she said, “I’ve decided to think of all the food you serve as man [as in Biblical food in the desert]. The man tasted like anything people wanted it to taste, so I’ll think I am eating passion fruit [...]
Shavuot – the Holiday of Unity?
Have you ever watched your kids fight? I am always amazed by their ability to go from scratch-bite-hit to hug-love-play in five seconds flat. No matter how hard they clash, after the fight is over, there are no grudges left. After all, they are siblings, so once the issues are resolved, there is nothing to [...]
What Your Car Can Teach You (With Some Help from Up There)
Here’s a real story from tonight. I was returning from a PTA meeting at my son’s school with a car full of neighbors. At one point, we saw a car parked smack in the middle of the street while the driver was animatedly talking to somebody. I flashed the lights, but the guy didn’t pay [...]
Dead Ends as Opportunities
It all began a couple of weeks ago, when my husband asked our friendly neighbourhood carpenter to turn a large bookcase in the guest room into two smaller units. For various reasons, we couldn’t schedule a time for the carpenter to come by and dismantle the unit, until finally he called Thursday morning and came [...]
Easy Passover Dessert
A couple of years ago, my mother gave me the gift of my dreams – an ice cream machine. We’ve been using it a lot for making coffee slurpees and frozen yogurt, but last week I had to do something with our passion fruit harvest, and so we had Passion Fruit Orange Sorbet for Shabbat. [...]
Passover Alert: Bugs in Your Lettuce
With Passover just around the corner, the Chief Rabbinate of Israel published the results of laboratory tests, which checked the presence of bugs in lettuce and celery marketed as being bug-free. In a radio interview, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, who spearheaded the initiative, said that some packages of “insect-free” lettuce had as many as 500 bugs [...]
