Sunday evening the Jewish world begins its celebration of Shavuot (which literally means weeks). In preparation for the holiday, the Torah orders us to count 49 days (seven weeks) from the second night of Passover until the festival\’s start.
Authors Cherie Bennett and Jeff Gottesfeld remember the exact moment they conceived the idea for their latest book, \”Anne Frank and Me.\”
The temporary tattoo is a replica of the \”Ha\’am Im HaGolan\” (\”The Nation Is With the Golan\”) bumper sticker popular among many Israelis and some Diaspora Jews.
An outstanding football and track star in his high school in Portervile, near Fresno, Efseaff was courted by most Pac-10 football teams. He picked UCLA, he said, because the presence of a small Molokan and large Jewish community in Los Angeles would assure a ready supply of kosher food.
Each film in this justly praised series presents an unusual situation standing in oblique relationship to one of the Ten Commandments.
Honesty, morality and ethical behavior — these are the calling cards of Leviticus, and they are the centerpieces of Jewish behavior and identity. Amongst the mitzvot enumerated in Leviticus 19 (known by some scholars as the \”Holiness Code\”) are respect for parents, charity for the poor, prohibitions against stealing and lying, a reminder to pay an employee\’s wages on time, the moral obligation not to take advantage of the deaf or blind, honesty and fairness in justice, prohibitions against holding grudges or exacting revenge, and the famous mitzvah to \”love your neighbor as yourself.\”
Now we recognize that alcoholism, spousal abuse and AIDS (to name a few) are Jewish realities. We live with their presence in our lives. Whether it is a relative, co-worker or close friend who endures these trials, we have slowly begun to move from silent suffering to communal care.
It\’s neither new nor shocking to most of us that the earth is round or that the Torah isn\’t a history book dictated to Moses by God on Mount Sinai.
During Passover and on Good Friday the Los Angeles Times published a front-page article titled \”Doubting the Story of Exodus.\”
Pack up your Passover dishes for good. The Exodus, according to some modern university scholars and liberal rabbis, never really happened. That\’s what the Los Angeles Times told us in great detail last week in a long article published at the end of the holiday. But the piece, while raising some important questions, skirts some of the most fundamental issues.
