Jewish Treats

How Pharaoh Enslaved the Israelites

While reading the Book of Exodus, one might wonder at the swift descent of the Jewish nation from being the privileged family of the Viceroy, Joseph, to becoming downtrodden and abused…

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Jewish Treats

Beauty of the Book

Illuminated manuscripts inlaid with gold or silver leaf and spectacularly illustrated are most often associated with the Medieval church (the Gospels, Psalters, etc), where texts were…

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Jewish Treats

The Meaning of “Lamed”

Today’s Treat is brought to you by the Hebrew letter lamed and the number 30, as that is its value in gematria (a mystical system of understanding deeper meanings through numeric…

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Jewish Treats

Painting Our People

Born on December 26, 1902, in Rahachow, Belarus (in the Pale of Settlement), Anatoli Lvovitch Kaplan was a Jewish painter who celebrated his Jewish heritage and the Jewish world in his…

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Jewish Treats

Challenge of Fitting In

The weekly Torah reading of Mikeitz (Genesis 41:1-44:17), which almost always coincides with Chanukah, tells the story of the rise of Joseph, the son of Jacob, from slave to…

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Jewish Treats

All-American Giver

Mervin Pregulman earned his initial fame as a college football star, but his real success was achieved later as a man of business and as a philanthropist. Born in Lansing, Michigan, on…

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Jewish Treats

Albania and the Jews

Albania, which today marks its Independence Day, is a small Balkan country with an almost minute Jewish population. While it was never a country with a large Jewish population, there have…

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Jewish Treats

Kristallnacht

Kristallnacht, literally the Night of Crystal but generally translated as the Night of Broken Glass, was a tragic turning point in the fate of Germany’s Jewish community. The country-wide…

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Jewish Treats

The Jews of Puerto Rico

On October 18, 1898, the “Stars and Stripes” flag of the United States was raised over Puerto Rico, announcing that the island was now under American sovereignty. Today’s Treat presents…

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Jewish Treats

I Am To My Beloved

The Torah verse that epitomizes the emotion of love is: “Anee l’dodi v’dodi lee” - I am to my beloved, and my beloved is to me (Song of Songs 6:3). The ideal love relationship…

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