Growing up in a predominantly Jewish upper-middle class neighborhood of Toronto and attending Hebrew day school I didn’t know a single person who celebrated Thanksgiving. Naturally, I assumed that it was a Christian holiday. I had learned the origins American Thanksgiving from TV. Canadian children are immersed in American culture well before we enter primary…
Of all the holidays I’ve never observed, Sukkot has always looked like the most fun. Growing up, I didn’t know anyone who celebrated the autumn festival; my awareness of it came entirely from reading. Sukkot would have seemed exotic if it wasn’t somehow so familiar, a combination of Thanksgiving and being allowed to sleep on…
This Sukkot, there is a religious battle going on in the city of Modi’in, Israel, and as often happens in such battles, it is being fought over women’s bodies. It actually started this past Passover, when the open, mixed city of Modi’in was inundated with visitors from the neighboring ultra-Orthodox town of Modi’in Illit, also…
Jewish children gather round: “A Horse for Hanukkah” hits bookstores today. Reuters reports that Myriam Halberstam, who is a filmmaker, author and German-American Jew, is releasing a light-hearted children’s book about one horse’s mission to destroy a family’s Hanukkah celebration. The book will be published in English and German by Ariella Books, the first Jewish…
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