Matzah, the Bread of Sufficiency

Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller

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Thursday, April 2, 2009

The Next Big Question...

By Julie Gruenbaum Fax

The seder is all about questions. The evening starts with the famous four, asked by the youngest present, but if the seder is what it should be, it doesn’t stop there. Everyone around the table — from the youngest all the way to the oldest — is encouraged to dissect, debate and shamelessly pontificate over each bit of the haggadah and over any part of Jewish tradition, ideally well into the night.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Civil War Jews Who Weren’t Just Whistlin’ Dixie

by Dara Horn

At the Passover seder next Wednesday evening, our children will recite the traditional question, “How is this night different from all other nights?” But the adults at the table are the ones who appreciate how this night really is different — not only from the rest of the year, but from the Passover seders of the past. As I started writing my third novel about Jewish spies during the Civil War, I began to wonder if American Jews had ever sat down at a seder where every part of the meal was served by slaves. As I discovered in my research, they did.

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Thursday, April 2, 2009

The Diet Cycle — One Woman’s Journey to Get Off the Bike for Good

by Debi Pomerantz

One day, almost three years after the birth of my youngest child, I looked in the mirror. I hated what I saw. I had been carrying around “baby weight” through four births, at least that’s what I kept telling myself. It seemed, though, that I was suddenly able to see clearly that this wasn’t baby weight at all. I was fat, plain and simple.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

A Seder Is Not a Seder Is Not a Seder…

by Ruth Broyde Sharone

My Passover odyssey began in 1991, when I decided to organize a community seder. It would be homemade affair in a rented room, with my children, cousins and friends creating the decorations, skits, music and conversation topics.

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Making Songs Stick

By Jason Lipeles

When Mara Elena Arenson rolled her plastic crate of matzah, horseradish, tambourines and rhythm sticks into the preschool classroom at the Reconstructionist synagogue Kehillat Israel in Pacific Palisades, the 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds excitedly called out her name. They knew that the lesson would be interactive: They’d be able to sing, sway and play instruments to the music of her guitar. What they didn’t know is that Arenson, a cantorial student at the Academy for Jewish Religion in Los Angeles, uses the principles of the Suzuki rhythm method with the hope that these songs will stick with them for the rest of their lives.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Our Bhutanese Seder

by Ron Leibow

Protected on all sides (except in the South) by the mighty Himalayas, and bounded by India, Nepal and Tibet, Bhutan is a small country about 200 miles long and 100 miles wide. Its fewer than 700,000 people are mostly Buddhist, and have lived in peace for the past 800 years. Bhutan is an isolated country which only very recently opened its doors to the West.