This Hanukkah, it hit me: We can do anything. The beauty of this holiday — and especially of experiencing it amidst a global pandemic —is that we have the opportunity to make it our own.

I want everyone to hear the poetry of these young people’s lives; they are about joy, accomplishment, and love. And I want others to join them. The lyric “We know we are whole” means all of us; the glue uniting us is God’s breath that we all have inside and deserves to be heard.

As a Jewish autistic bisexual transgender woman, “I will be what I will be” is something I have had to tell many people throughout my life, as they have questioned, judged, mocked, and discriminated against me for who I am.

Not knowing if I would be shunned or accepted, I decided to give my religion another chance. I was not prepared for the warm and welcoming atmosphere I found at temple, where being gay was as acceptable as having brown hair.

We hear the story of Jonah on Yom Kippur, as an example of the power of repentance and redemption. But my favorite thing about this story is how perfectly messy it is to heed God's call.

Ato Essandoh isn’t Jewish, or British, or an astronaut — but he plays an African-British-Jewish astronaut on TV.

As we no longer serve God through temple sacrifices, many Jews have come to understand the entire world, in essence, to be God’s temple. This year, I believe we have vandalized God’s temple with the blood of the innocent.

One person can change your life forever. For me, this person was Robert Clary, an entertainer and author who rose to fame starring as Corporal Louis LeBeau on the classic sitcom "Hogan’s Heroes."

As the mother of a transgender child, Rabbi Ari Moffic knows that personal transformation is a key and beautiful part of who each of us is.