JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
For generations, inherited recipes have allowed American Jews to preserve links to their immigrant ancestors and envision the lives they lived before arriving on these shores. But is grating potatoes for latkes really the iconic Jewish experience we like to think it is? It may be that a more ubiquitous rite of passage is discovering…
Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish year. It might even be the only occasion on which you go to synagogue. Its long services and many rules can be daunting — so we’ve written out these explanations to help you untangle some of its laws and customs. What is Yom Kippur? Yom Kippur…
Yom Kippur begins just before sundown this Tuesday, September 18, and ends after sundown on Wednesday, September 19. In the course of the day you may pray. You may sing. You may prostrate. You may book end the experience on one side by swinging a chicken, and on the other by immediately and enthusiastically building…
A version of this article originally appeared in New Voices. Throughout college, I struggled with an eating disorder. In many ways, it first manifested itself during Yom Kippur freshman year. From there, it was a downward spiral into self-hatred, an obsession with calories, and compensatory cardio. Four Yom Kippurs in a row, I fasted too…
When Rabbi Edward Feld was a teenager, he decided to buy a seat for High Holidays services in a synagogue where no one knew his name. Feld was raised on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and he says that there were always old synagogues that weren’t completely full even on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. By…
Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year. It’s the day when we become like angels: We pray all day and night and we don’t eat as we beg God for forgiveness; for Him to grant us a good year. But that doesn’t mean we always succeed. At least we don’t always succeed at…
Yom Kippur Eve And Teshuva (Repentance) • The guiding rule in observing Yom Kippur is maintaining a balance between respecting the sanctity of the day and one’s physical health. • According to Shulhan Arukh (Code of Jewish Law), the practice of doing Kapparot with chickens should be eliminated. • We must ask for forgiveness and reconcile with…
I grew up in a semi-religious household. My father was Orthodox; my mother was resentful. It wasn’t that she rejected Jewish beliefs, but she didn’t exactly respect them either. Nowhere was this more evident than in the small kitchen of our Lower East Side apartment. Keeping kosher was a constant source of conflict. Jewish food…
