Ice Cream Soda Day

With the summer solstice arriving at midnight tonight, let us contemplate one of summertime’s favorite heat-quenching beverages. June 20th is Ice Cream Soda Day. The ice cream soda,…

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Ice Cream Soda Day

With the summer solstice arriving at midnight tonight, let us contemplate one of summertime’s favorite heat-quenching beverages. June 20th is Ice Cream Soda Day. The ice cream soda,…

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Green Cheesecake At Midnight

The holiday of Shavuot has three well-known, and well-loved, customs: Decorating our Homes and Synagogues with Plants and Flowers: According to the Midrash, at the time of the giving of…

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Bechukotai 5779-2019

“The Big ‘IF.’ The Gift of Free Choice” (Revised and updated from Bechukotai 5760-2000) by Rabbi Ephraim Z. Buchwald   This coming week’s parasha, parashat Bechukotai, is one of the…

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Happy Birthday Birkat Hamazon!

The Torah (Exodus 16:1) reports that the Children of Israel arrived at the Wilderness of Sin on the 15th of the Hebrew month of Iyar, approximately one month after the exodus from Egypt.…

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Good Fences Make Good Neighbors?

The term “ghetto” has a sad connotation in Jewish history and a very negative association when referring to certain poor urban areas. The term’s etymology, however, originates from a…

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Remembering Bergen-Belsen

The spring brings with it annual anniversaries that mark the liberation of Nazi concentration camps, death camps and a day of renewed life for tens of thousands of survivors of the Shoah.…

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Batman and the Torah

On May 1st, 1939, the cartoon character, Batman appeared for the first time in Detective Comics, #27. As such, May 1st is known the world over as “Batman Day.” If you Google “bat” and…

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Manna from Military Aircraft?

Is there a connection between “Manna,” the food from heaven that sustained the Children of Israel in the Sinai wilderness, and a World War II humanitarian military operation? On the…

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Kitniyot and Gebruchts

Are you Ashkenazi or Sephardi? Hungarian, Yekke (German), Litvak (Lithuanian)?At no other time on the Jewish calendar is it so important to know your ancestry as it is on Passover. What…

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