Rosh HaShanah Worship Services: Haftarah Blessings
The blessing after the reading of haftarah always sanctifies the day on which it is read. Throughout most of the year, that day is Shabbat, but haftarahis also read on the High Holidays. On Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur the text changes from the familiar Shabbat text to refer to the holiday.
Yom Kippur Worship Services: Haftarah Blessings
The blessing after the reading of haftarah always sanctifies the day on which it is read. Throughout most of the year, that day is Shabbat, but haftarah is also read on the High Holidays.
Hanukkah Blessings
Sukkot Blessings
It is a mitzvah to celebrate in the sukkah. While the Torah instructs us to live in the sukkah for seven days, many choose to only eat meals in the sukkah. When eating or reciting kiddush in the sukkah, recite this blessing:
A New Year, a New Opportunity for Jewish Learning
Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish new year, is a wonderful time to assess the past year and consider what we hope to achieve, spiritually speaking and otherwise, in the year to come.
The Rebranding of Judaism
Let’s talk about branding. There’s Apple, of course. Anything with an Apple logo on it is golden! You could take a regular computer, stick an Apple logo on it, and sell it for twice the price. How about Starbucks?
Galilee Diary: All Our Children
We returned from the inspiring tour of the Galilee Jewish-Arab youth circus in the US to lurid headlines about a “lynch” in central Jerusalem, when a group of Jewish teenagers went from trading insults with Arab teens who happened to pass by, to beating them up, so badly that one was hospitalized in critical condition (in a similar event about a year ago, the victim did not survive).
Galilee Diary: Uncertainty Principle
The details of the lunar cycle have been understood for thousands of years.
Galilee Diary: One People
[The Eternal] will bring you together again from all the peoples where the Eternal your God has scattered you. Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world, from there the Eternal your God will gather you, from there [God] will fetch you.
-Deuteronomy 30:3-4