Jewish Treats

Ushpeezin (Oo’shpee’zin)

During the festival of Sukkot, the sukkah is intended to be our home. For example, since one would normally dine in the house, on Sukkot one dines in the sukkah. Because the sukkah is…

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Jewish Treats

Wise as Solomon

King Solomon is best known for his brilliance and wisdom, attributes that were actually a requested gift from God. It happened this way: One night, God spoke to Solomon in a dream and…

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Jewish Treats

Smashing the Tablets

The sages declare that five tragedies occurred on the seventeenth of Tammuz, which is why the day is observed as a fast day. Days of what we might now call “bad karma” (on which bad…

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Jewish Treats

Latrun: Battles for the Hilltop

Today, the hilltop of Latrun, just 15 kilometers west of Jerusalem, is a popular commemorative site that features an armored corp museum. This landmark, which was once the location of a…

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Jewish Treats

Choral in the Capitals

The history of Jewish settlement in Russia is as long and complex as the narrative of the ever-shifting areas of Russian power. In the 18th century, Empress Catherine the Great banished…

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Jewish Treats

A Different Set of Loaves

There are several well-known connections between the holiday of Passover and the holiday of Shavuot. The most obvious of these is that the celebration of Shavuot is dependent on the count…

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Jewish Treats

A Brief History of the Jews of Georgia

Located between Russia and Turkey, at the intersection of Europe and Asia, Georgia was, until the mid-1800s, a place of relatively little anti-Semitism. According to tradition, Jews first…

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Jewish Treats

The Passover Story in Brief

On Passover, we commemorate the exodus from Egyptian slavery. The following is a brief summary: Jacob's family came to Egypt to escape a famine in Canaan. Joseph, Jacob's son and the…

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Jewish Treats

The Rebbitzen

Esther Jungreis became a rebbitzen when she married Rabbi Meshulum Jungreis in 1955. She became “The Rebbitzen” when she founded Hineni in 1973. Born in Hungary in 1936, Esther and her…

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Jewish Treats

Adding Candles

Lighting Shabbat candles is an essential element of Shabbat. The Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) states that two candles are used to fulfill the mitzvah in order to…

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