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Culture | History

History | Culture

Jewish Values and Shavuot | Jlife

As we know, Shavuot is the time when the Jewish people accepted the Torah and became Hashem’s nation. When we read the book of Ruth to children, we teach them the values of tzedakah, commitment, making choices, kindness, sharing, respect and faith.

History | Culture

Who Stood at Sinai? | Jlife

According to A midrash, “Every Jew who ever was, and ever will be born, stood together at Sinai when the mountain smoked and trembled and G-d revealed the law to them.” We assume that meant men, women and children. But not everyone sees it that way.

History | Culture

From Pesach to Shavuot | Jlife

You shall count for yourselves— from the day after the Shabbat, from the day when you bring the Omer of the waving—seven Shabbats, they shall be complete. Until the day after the seventh Sabbath you shall count, fifty days… -Leviticus 23:15-16

History | Culture

Light Over Darkness | Jlife

Light is the overarching, central, definitive metaphor for Jewish understanding of all of reality…

History | Culture

It’s Not All Latkes & Dreidels | Jlife

Hanukkah is more than eating a bounty of latkes and donuts, spinning dreidels, and watching cartoon Adam Sandler sing 8 Crazy Nights. Each year friends whip out the “Ugly Hanukkah Sweaters,” double-fisting gelt and gefilte into their mouths while lighting candles, unsure if the menorah should ignite from the left or the right

History | Culture

Hanukkiah | Jlife

Hanukkah comes early this year. Well, actually it doesn’t. It is always on the 25th of Kislev—it just seems early on the solar calendar.

History | Culture

DENOMINATIONS! | Jlife

This month’s issue addresses cultural diversity—a term we have all become very familiar with in this era of social awareness.

History | Culture

The Science of Happiness | Jlife

Happiness is firmly ingrained in Jewish tradition. In fact, when we evaluate the newest scientific research on happiness, we can correlate much of its findings with the Jewish way of life. Judaism encourages community participation filled with food and tradition while research shows us that those involved in community are happier people. Judaism prescribes family values, relationships, celebrations and working through loss according to accepted rituals.

History | Culture

The December Dilemma | Jlife

Here it is, coming around the bend. That magical—yet somewhat frustrating—time of year we affectionately call Christma-kkah. It can be tough. The American holiday season has evolved—for better or worse—into a highly-commercialized, sugary-sweet present-fest. Kids run around barely able to contain their excitement.

History | Culture

Jews of Many Colors | Jlife

When most American Jews think of their traditional Jewish culture, they think of Passover Seders and matzah ball soup, hamentashen and black-hatted, pale-skinned Hasidic men, and Yiddish-speaking bubbes (grandmothers) and zeydes (grandfathers). But, that is only one Jewish ethnic group of many.

History | Culture

Building the Multicultural Jewish Future | Jlife

The experience encapsulated the kaleidoscope of cultures and experiences available in Jerusalem. Here I was, an Israeli-born, California-raised twenty-something, discussing performance art with an Italian Catholic, a French Jew, and a Christian Israeli, on our way to meet a Jewish Slovenian Ladino scholar and a Polish Muslim to have a food brought by Iraqi Jews fleeing persecution in their home country in the early 1950s.

History | Culture

Fall’s Bounty | Jlife

It was such a natural transition. Food writer and cooking teacher Amelia Saltsman has long been an ardent champion of local family farms and farmers’ markets—her best-selling cookbook “The Santa Monica Farmers’ Market Cookbook” (Blenheim Press, $22.95) is as much an homage to the farmers, their histories, and their commitment to excellence as it is a collection of fuss-less, artful recipes—and now she brings her expertise and abiding respect for the food they grow to her newest cookbook, “The Seasonal Jewish Kitchen” (Sterling Epicure, $29.95).

History | Culture

A Second Bar/Bat Mitzvah | Jlife

Have you seen the promo for the new movie, “The Intern” starring Robert Deniro as a 70-year-old man who takes a positon as an intern at an online fashion site? “When you turn 70 you can say, `Oh, my G-d, the warranty is over and I’m on borrowed time,’ or it can (be seen as) a whole new lease on life,” said Rabbi Mark Gross of Temple Beth Orr in Coral Springs.

History | Culture

How to Grow A Mensch | Jlife

How do we grow a mensch? Inspire a generation of mensches? The Torah responds unequivocally: through education. We pass Jewish teachings from generation to generation to perpetuate a legacy of derech eretz, the value system that is imbued with Torah and secular education along with personal growth, self-discovery and insight into human relationships; values that our parents, grandparents and great grandparents modeled for generations.

History | Culture

A Work of Ark | Jlife

A look at the arks that have held the Torah through the ages.

History | Culture

High Holiday Activities | Jlife

Fun for the whole family!

History | Culture

Book Club Recommendation | Jlife

So this year when I greet people with, “May you be inscribed in the Book of Life,” I think I might add an addendum: “And may you have a hand in writing your own incredible stories.”

History | Culture

Caring For Our World | Jlife

Shemittah, Jubilee and Drought

History | Culture

New Traditions | Jlife

History | Culture

The Origins of Rosh Hashanah | Jlife

While we celebrate Rosh Hashanah as the Jewish New Year, as the day the Hebrew calendar begins, that wasn’t always the case.

History | Culture

Rachel Goes Rogue | Jlife

History | Culture

Good Food | Jlife

When Daniella Silver, a young mother with a burning desire to write a cookbook, dialed fellow Canadian Norene Gilletz, the best-selling cookbook author and “matriarch” of kosher cuisine, as she is sometimes called, her heart began to race. “What will she say?” Daniella thought. ”Will she even meet with me?”

History | Culture

Moptwo | Jlife

"Moptwo is a more intellectual form of social media because instead of posting small snippets of personal activity or uploading photos, it is about one thing: articles."

History | Culture

Energy Stored with Age | Jlife

History | Culture

From Africa to Israel | Jlife

History | Culture

Life Without Father’s (or Mother’s) Day | Jlife

History | Culture

Smashing the Glass | Jlife

History | Culture

Bringing Klezmer Back | Jlife

History | Culture

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay | Jlife

History | Culture

From Broadway to Poetry | Jlife

History | Culture

The Accidental Rabbi | Jlife

History | Culture

The Power of Women & Philanthropy | Jlife

History | Culture

Divorce Court: Talmud. Adam Kirsch's Weekly Daf Yomi Column Settles Scores

Literary critic Adam Kirsch is reading a page of Talmud a day, along with Jews around the world. Tractate Ketubot has ranged widely over many aspects of the laws of marriage, in the process revealing some of the rabbis’ key assumptions about gender rela

History | Culture

Baseball's Jewiest Moment of All - Culture

With catcher Joe Ginsberg behind the plate, Lou Limmer stepped into the batter’s box to face Saul Rogovin. Murray Greenberg looks back at the most Jewish moment in baseball history — 64 years ago.

      History | Culture

      Hilary Swank Will Play Deborah Lipstadt in Film About Court Battle With Holocaust Denier David Irving

      In 1996, British Holocaust revisionist David Irving sued Deborah E. Lipstadt, author of Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth & Memory, for libel. The book, published in 1993, depicts

      History | Culture

      Victor Rodack Stowed Away on an El Al Flight and Lived To Tell the Tale

      These days it'd be pretty hard to walk without a ticket onto a boarding airplane bound for an international locale. Between the TSA and sniffer dogs, any would-be stowaway would likely see the inside of a jail cell pretty fast. But before September 11, in