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 [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Torah’
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 [...]
Chanuka in Russia
This Chanuka, I’ll be going to Russia to visit my 96-year-old grandmother. If the book of Job were to be staged in the 20th century, my grandmother would have been the perfect candidate for the role. Widowed at the age of 23 (her husband was put to death by the Stalin regime for “sabotaging” the [...]
Torah as a self-help book
Are you looking to make your life more fulfilling? Shell out $20 or mosey over to the synagogue near you. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5O4WfyuwCA&hl=en&fs=1&]
Simchat Torah experience
Like most Yemenite Jews, my husband’s family is very careful to safeguard its heritage, especially when it comes to liturgy and Torah learning. In an effort to preserve their unique Hebrew pronunciation (considered by some to be the closest one to the way Hebrew was spoken two thousand years ago), kids are taught to read [...]
Motivating Atonement
With Yom Kippur less than 24 hours away, I would like to share a novel thought I heard from Rabbi Reuven Fireman. Though a person’s ability to mend his ways through teshuva (repentance) is a very basic concept in Judaism, like every other rule it has an exception. The Talmud states one and only case [...]
On modesty and spirituality
A Mother in Israel blogged about a sign from a Jerusalem playground, which had called on women maintaining a high level of tzniut (modesty) to stay away from other women, dressed in a more relaxed fashion. Most people have a gut feeling that this kind of segregation within a community is wrong, but in my [...]
