PHOTO: A girl celebrates her bat mitzvah at the Western Wall with Women of the Wall. PHOTO BY MIRI TZACH You might be surprised to learn that egalitarian prayer services, including celebrations of bar/bat mitzvahs, continue regularly at the Kotel (Western Wall). Lost amid the controversy concerning the Government of Israel’s decision to renege on its…
By Teddy Weinberger On Thursday morning Sept. 20, I will open my newspaper and see the traditional day-after Yom Kippur picture: one of Israel’s busiest highways completely deserted during the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Indeed, among the secular Israeli public, Yom Kippur is often thought of as “Bicycle Day,” since the absence…
PHOTO: Yonatan Razel at the piano, his instrument of choice. PHOTO BY OHAD ROMANO As I was thinking about the upcoming Passover preparations, two distinct thoughts entered my mind. This year, I want to share two recommendations for Passover. 1) We all have our favorite Passover seder melodies. If we are guests at a…
Chanukah, with its fighting Maccabean spirit, took on personal meaning for the Weinberger family recently. On Oct. 25, nine of us headed down to Mizpeh Ramon to see Elie graduate from Officers Course. Nathan and Ruthie took a train from Tel Aviv to Be’er Sheva, and Sarah and I picked them up en route from…
Many Americans have lost touch with the origins of Thanksgiving. When you ask someone to explain the reason for the holiday, they often link the holiday to American ideals like democracy, pluralism and freedom of religion. Since most Americans live their lives far removed from agriculture, few remember that Thanksgiving grew out of the same…
Before I moved to Israel I was always puzzled by the ending to the Book of Jonah, read on Yom Kippur as part of the mincha service. As you might recall, Jonah is upset at God for pardoning the city of Nineveh, and he says: “Please, Lord, take my life, for I would rather die than…
The school year in Israel runs from Sept. 1 through June 30. Israeli kids especially look forward to hahofesh ha-gadol (“the big vacation,” as summer break is universally called here), because they go to school six days a week. So during the school year they seldom get a chance to sleep over at a friend’s…
A century of my family’s living in Brooklyn came to an end a few months ago, when my parents moved out of their Flatbush home of 41 years to the Gurwin Jewish Assisted Living Community in Commack, NY. My paternal grandparents, who married in 1917, raised four children in Brooklyn, three of whom elected to…
The almond tree is blooming And a golden sun does shine Birds from every rooftop Announce the festive time Tu B’Shevat is here – the festival of trees! Above is the first stanza of the most well-known song for Tu B’Shevat (there are two other stanzas, both hardly known). Though the words to this song…
My son, Elie, is a graduate of Yeshivat Noam High School. In Israel, with so many public religious secondary schools to choose from, you have the luxury of looking for a school that matches your child’s personality. Each of our five children went to different secondary schools. Elie and Yeshivat Noam were the best fit….
