There’s a Key in My Challah
It's a fact that many people spend much time thinking and even worrying about par'nassah (livelihood). Jewish tradition teaches that different seasons have different spiritual strengths.…
What Not To Buy
The joyous holiday of Passover is now over. While one’s instinct might be to immediately run out to the supermarket and restock the pantry shelves with bread, snacks and all the desserts…
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…
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…
Tu b’Shevat is Coming
While it may seem as if winter has just begun, it may be time to look beyond the turbulent weather and see that spring is just around the corner. You might wonder how one can possibly…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…