Home > Holidays
כותב
The Quest for the Source In 1286 the Jewish world was in turmoil. Groups of rabbis and kabbalists whispered tidings of a new book of mysticism that had come to light. The rumors stated that...
Nothing Like a Mitzva Sitting down at the Seder table today, reciting the Haggada, and recalling the paschal sacrifice it describes, do we ever give a thought to the people who still celebrate Pesach as...
Purim Powidl The triangular pastries that developed in Central Europe and spread eastward beyond the Carpathian Mountains have in recent generations become a central Purim motif. Known in Hebrew as oznei haman, or Haman’s ears,...
Unwanted Guests Reb Yeshaya Priwes was not enamored of the Purim players, or of their plays. He had no liking for simple people, and theater was certainly not his scene. When Purim came, however, he...
The Megilla’s Darker Side Itzik Manger was born in 1901 in Czernowitz, although one version of the biography he invented for himself claimed that his tailor father had migrated from Romania, and that he himself...
Shai Secunda
Meet the Parsis On November 26, 2008, a Pakistan-based terrorist group unleashed three days of fatal strikes on Mumbai, India. People around the world looked on in horror as the attacks, primarily in the city’s high-class...
Guerrillas in the Hills The year 160 BCE found the Hasmonean family in a sorry state. Judah had fallen in battle, his army decimated and the Maccabee rebellion all but quashed. Seleucid king Demetrius I...
Why Hannukah? And Judah, and his brethren, and all the congregation of Israel decreed that the day of the dedication of the altar should be kept in its season from year to year for eight...
Antiochus' Castle People generally assume the history of Hasmonean Jerusalem began with the Seleucid conquest of Judea from the Egyptian Ptolemies, escalated with Antiochus Epiphanes’ anti-Jewish edicts and the idol he placed in the Temple,...
יואב שורק
A Few Numbers Every year, of the approximately 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, about 3 million pilgrims arrive in Mecca during the month of the Hajj. These enormous numbers mean that crowd control methods have...
Roads, Bridges and Parking A ring road would form an extended ellipse around Jerusalem, defining the city’s area of influence. This would be the Mt. Moriah metropolitan zone – which in the future, should be...
