Multiple times during the course of our Yom Kippur services we recite the confessional, the Viddui, and the Al Chets. Together, they...

One of the things I enjoy about teaching our children, particularly the younger ones, is that they will say what is on their minds, not...

Have you seen the news from Israel on local media recently? Neither have I. I was, in fact, struck by the utter paucity of stories from...

Trying to make an involved subject as simple as possible, the Conservative Jewish rules for Shabbat are pretty much the same as any...

The shalosh regalim, or pilgrimage festivals, are the central holidays mandated by Torah. Each of these three celebrations - Pesach,...

This was sent to me some time ago without attribution. I don’t know if it is copyrighted or not but it is well worth the read. As we...

The section of Torah dealing with the ritual of the red heffer, from the portion of Hukat, opens with the words zot hukat hatorah...

In October of 1916, with regard to the domestic issue of temperance, the Reverend Charles F. Aked stated that: “It has been said that for...

In the movie Fiddler on the Roof, young Leibesh asks the rabbi, “Is there a proper blessing for the Czar?” to which the esteemed rabbi...

Much of what we learned (or, perhaps, didn’t learn) in religious school when we were young is not quite the whole truth. This is not a...

A calendar is really a pretty simple thing; a collection of days, weeks, & months collected onto some sort of grid, paper or electronic,...

There is a remarkable exchange between the rabbis of the Mishnah and those of the Gemara at the end of Tractate Sotah in the the...

Each year, our celebration of the High Holy Days, renews in me a sense of the orderly passing of time. A mild depression sets in when, at...