Adult Ed

Fauda’s theme song “Menasim” (Trying) is by Idan Amedi, the actor who plays Sagi. The lyrics, in Hebrew and Arabic, move between searching for serenity and living in chaos (fauda, in Arabic). The chorus promises that we’ll wake tomorrow in a better world. The Fauda characters probably won’t, but American lovers of Israeli TV already have. When Season 4 drops on January 20th, it will be just one of many Israeli TV shows we (and the...Read more...

This post originally appeared in eJewish Philanthropy:

https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/groundhog-day-is-the-high-holy-days/

It was Lenny Bruce who explained that Count Basie, Ray Charles, black cherry soda, and Italians are all Jewish. Also fruit salad. Fruit salad is obviously Jewish. So is the movie Groundhog Day – he didn’t say that, I did. But you can see it, right? The movie is a fast-tracked swing through the annual...Read more...

Shavuot is known as Z'man Matan Torateinu - the time of the giving of our Torah - and it's three days away. Yiscah Smith suggests that we understand this Hebrew phrase as follows:

The Torah was given on one day (Shavuot) by one God to one nation (the Children of Israel). But on every other day of the year, each person can decide how they want to receive it. And, however you receive it, that's how you'll reflect it back into the...Read more...

Our Sages truly understood human foibles. Math? Not so much. The 10 Commandments includes at least 12, and that's not even counting the one that's just a statement. But we do have 613 mitzvot, right? Let's put it this way - we already ordered the stationary, we're not changing the house number.

What we can all agree on is that no one has ever fulfilled 613 of them. Some are understood to be impossible, some only apply to certain...Read more...

Coming in at #4 on the Top 10 Commandments chart is Remember (Zachor) the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Also coming in at #4 on the charts is Guard (Shamor) the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Those two tablets we got at Sinai on the first Shavuot - which was also a Shabbat! - show up twice in the Torah, once with Zachor, once with Shamor. Why?

Jewish tradition tells us that God spoke both words - Shamor/Zachor - simultaneously, and...Read more...

Most people do a countdown to something exciting, but Jewish tradition goes the other way. Starting on the second night of Passover, we count up - day by day - for seven weeks. And then, after 49 days of ritualized counting, we hit the biggest Jewish holiday you're likely to forget.

Today is day 40 out of 49, which means we're just 10 days away from Shavuot, the holiday that celebrates the revelation at Mt. Sinai and the giving of...Read more...

Is there a more iconic, more central, more parodied, more necessary (and more poorly named) segment of the Seder than the Four Questions, which, technically speaking, is just one question and four statements? And is there a longer answer to a single question than the Passover Seder?

Part 3: We're going to need more questions.

Can you think of another people, another religion, that loves questions as much as we do? Can you even...Read more...

You know that section at the end of the Passover Seder with the songs about God that sound like drinking songs? Yeah, those are drinking songs. They come - depending on your family traditions - hours or minutes after the Four Questions, the Four Children, and the Four Cups of Wine. Wine gladdens the heart according to the Psalms of David, our #1 partying king, but our kings don't get a mention in Who Knows One?, a song celebrating God, Torah,...Read more...

There’s something comforting about hiding behind a mask, and there’s something distressing about not being seen – the pandemic has made that all too clear. But none of us were strangers to the mask which is why the Jewish calendar reminds us to start taking them off today.

Today is the 1st of Elul, the month that leads to Rosh HaShanah, and it’s the month in which we each...Read more...

Another week is coming to a close. Another Shabbat nearly upon us to provide that sustaining refuge, that sacred sanctuary in time. I think we could all use some Shabbat.

I've been sending these eJudaism emails to share links to the digital Jewish world, but not this week. I've hit a wall of digital fatigue. Am I the only one? Other than buying avocados I'm not much of a gambler, but I'd bet a few bucks that some of you are feeling...Read more...

There's a moment at the start of the Seder when we hold up the matzah and declare, "This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry enter and eat." In his commentary to the Haggadah, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks asks whether it is actual hospitality to offer the hungry the taste of suffering. The matzah, he says, represents two things: it is the food of slaves, and it is the bread the Israelites ate...Read more...