As we enjoy this year’s sweet charoset, let us cherish and express our gratitude for the essential workers, medical professionals, everyday heroes, and others who provided the sweetness that helped temper the bitters we tasted this year.

Hanan Harchol is a New York-based teacher, filmmaker, animator, artist, and classical guitarist. He was born in Kibbutz Kinneret, Israel, and moved to the U.S. at the age of 2.

Harchol wrote, directed, and produced his first dramatic feature movie, About a

Last Passover began the urgent quest to reinvent much of Jewish life, highlighting that some of the ways we “do” Judaism needed to be updated. This year has been a powerful catalyst to shifts in how we perform our holy work.

This year, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly all schools in Israel have been closed for most of the year, leaving students stuck at home and trying to complete their studies remotely. All of them are hurting – emotionally and socially.

Purim approaches, and like every other holiday we've observed during the pandemic, it will look and be different.

This is not yet the America most of us dream of, but it is an unavoidable part of our DNA. American equality and exceptionalism are checks that are still in the mail. If we truly love what this country is capable of, we must continue to speak the hard truth to power.

Today, comedy is a national vernacular, a social and cultural force. We communicate in memes. We look to late night to process the news. Good (and even dumb) comedy challenges and connects, activates and affirms.

In the 1980s and '90s, Israel committed to helping Ethiopian Jews make aliyah and become Israeli citizens. To this day, though, a small group of Jews remain in Ethiopia and have been unable to immigrate.

During a time when many feel so disconnected, Rabbi Jeff Glickman and Mindy Glickman of Temple Beth Hillel in South Windsor, CT, decided to take on a radical idea: Join as many Reform synagogues in America as possible.