WRITINGS

Published at: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/first-bat-mitzvahs-from-bali-to-vilna/ Judith Kaplan’s Bat Mitzvah took place 100 years...

Published at: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/fight-or-flight-from-odessa/ The key which used to open the door to her home in Odessa is...

I have a life-long love of learning languages. At school I spent my lunch-hours learning Greek and took after-school classes in Biblical...

This year I have had the privilege to dream up and lead the Baalei Tefillah Europe 2021 programme, which taught participants about...

I adapted a popular holiday song for this year's festival - in the long tradition of Jewish protest liturgy... יום טוב לנו, חג שמח ילדים,...

Today I was sad to learn of the death of one of my teachers, Dr. Neil Hopkinson, earlier this year, and wanted to write a few words as my...

I have kept kosher all my life. It means - for better or worse - that I’ve never tasted seafood, or pork or ham. I’ve never enjoyed the...

Fifteen years have passed since I last moved to Jerusalem, and in 2020 we find ourselves living in the German Colony a few hundred metres...

Shmulik woke up one Saturday morning in a bad mood. When he came down to breakfast, his mum told him, “Hurry up, you’re going to be late...

The Aleinu prayer is a constant in our services, driving us forward to the conclusion of our prayers. We know how to chant it, we know...

“One of the great tasks of Jewish education is to deliberately create an atmosphere of rebellion among its students. Rebellion, after...

“Experience which is passed on from mouth to mouth is the source from which all storytellers have drawn. And among those who have written...

“On this subject, I do not wish to think, to speak, or to write with moderation. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not...

This week sees the end of the counting of the Omer and the celebration of the festival of Shavuot. All at once we celebrate the new...

Lag Baomer is one of those Jewish traditions that I’d be very interested to know whether anyone of you celebrated it in your youth, or...

One of the life lessons that my dear, late mother drummed into me, was that “you can do nothing with mothers”. That is to say, mothers...

This week we commemorated Yom Hashoah, and many of us experienced a very moving zoom ceremony in conjunction with the Israeli Embassy,...

Seventh Day Pesach is perhaps the most overlooked “chag” in the Jewish calendar. The Torah is clear: the first day of Pesach is a holiday...

Passover is synonymous with gefilte fish but it’s a lesser seen fish at the seder that I think helps illuminate our understanding of the...

Cuando el Rey Nimrod al campo salía miraba en el cielo y en la estrellería vido una luz santa en la judería que había de nacer Abraham...