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.…
Evian!
Before Evian became a popular brand of natural spring water, the French resort of Evian was host to an international conference to address the mounting crisis of Jews seeking to escape…
Both Oral and Written
The development of the printing press had an incredible impact on Western civilization. Prior to the printing press, all documents were hand-written, limiting their dissemination and…
Around the World in One Place
In honor of International Museum Day, Jewish Treats presents Beit Hatfutsot, The Museum of the Jewish People (often referred to as the Diaspora Museum). In 1959, at the World Jewish…
Assisting a Runaway
Once upon a time, slavery was an almost universally accepted economic system. Whatever our values and opinions about slavery may be today, slaves were a fact of life in the not nearly so…
Women of Vision
Our sages teach that there were seven women famed for their prophecy. (Talmud Megilla 14a states that only prophecies with a message for the future were recorded. In reality,…
Celebrating the Groom
A great deal of the wedding seems to focus on the bride. In fact, it is not uncommon to hear of a wedding referred to as “her day.” In Jewish tradition, however, there is one…
Memorial Prayer
According to Jewish belief, when people pass away, they move on to sojourn in the “next world,” to hopefully enjoy the spiritual rewards they have earned from their good acts in “this…
The Salty Ghettos
It is a fairly well-known fact (perhaps due to Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice) that Jews in many European cities were forced to reside in ghettos. The first of these areas of restricted…
Changing Ukraine
Kiev, Odessa, Zhitomyr, Uman...the cities of Ukraine are places marked in Jewish history for both horror and hope. Jews have lived in Ukraine for well-over a thousand years, and there is…