As we head into the holiday season, I am acutely aware of how much different this year is going to be than previous ones. I will be celebrating without my mom for the first time. My mother died in January 2021, and I'm still dealing with the unexpected waves of grief that wash over me, sometimes out of nowhere. As I head into this first winter holiday season without her, I'm not quite sure I know what to expect, other than everything is going to be very different.

There are a lot of creative ways to make Hanukkah meaningful when we pause to ask ourselves a few good questions before automatically going into shopping mode.

Limiting the time we are on our devices and setting an intention about what we do there are small steps that can alter our relationship to the digital world. By committing to these changes in our day-to-day lives, we can more readily guide our kids to do the same.

Mussar represents what I have come to call “the Jewish Road to Character,” a Jewish path of study and spiritual practice focused on building the soul traits or the virtues that are at the core of our being.

This is not going to be a sad story, I promise. But it does start out with the process of going through my parents’ condo after their passing.

Even though the Emancipation Proclamation declared all enslaved people free on January 1, 1863, it was not fully enforced until two and a half years later.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted so much of how we engage Jewishly, but Shavuot is a fantastic holiday for families to celebrate from the safety of their homes. Here are a few ways you and your family can observe this rich, festive Jewish holiday this year.

Isaac Hirt-Manheimer is the founder of Unity Ecovillage in Ghana, constructed according to eco-friendly principles that he learned while attending the Green Apprenticeship training program at Kibbutz Lotan in Israel.

My mother’s answer to hate is love. When I asked her what she wishes for herself and for the world, she said, “For myself good health, so I can be good to others. For the world, peace not war. No bad person wins in the end. What did Hitler achieve?”