I have long believed that Judaism is a system of vocational education — that is, of education for a vocation, a calling (from the Latin vocare, to call). I needn’t elaborate here on the substance and texture of that calling. I note only that such questions as ayeka (“Where are you?”) and such injunctions as…
It’s rare that an Orthodox rabbi chooses to omit an important Jewish ritual in his holiday celebrations. But in the spring of 2000, Rabbi Yosef Lipsker cleared his living room of furniture, set up three large dining tables and invited dozens of people to a special seder that included all the standard Passover observances –…
A town in northern Spain is preparing to hold its first Passover seder since the areas Jews were forced to flee during the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. The festive dinner will take place in the old center of the town of Ribadavia on March 25 and is being organized by the municipality’s tourism department in…
Last year I put a tomato on my Seder plate. I invite you this year to consider doing the same. The retelling of our liberation story at Passover is powerful, but we deepen the sense of the story through tasting it symbolically. We ingest the bitterness of slavery through the maror. The saltiness of the…
Passover, which starts on March 25 this year, is just around the corner. Families can keep children involved in the Seder with Passover Bingo, a board game invented by Denver lawyer Tamara Pester. “I have a niece and nephew who are now 9 and 12, and we always do Passover at my sister’s house in…
If ever there was proof positive that a once-marginal feminist Jewish ritual is now mainstream, this is it: The latest Pottery Barn catalog touts a new seder plate — holding an orange. The modern, leaf-themed Passover tabletop accouterment has seven compartments. In addition to spaces for the ritual re-telling’s traditional symbols, there’s a leaf meant…
Jonathan Safran Foer’s best-selling, star-studded New American Haggadah failed to credit original Hebrew text lifted from another prominent Haggadah, the novelist has acknowledged to the Forward. Future printings of the New American Haggadah will credit the older text, Foer said. The lifted Hebrew text came from “The Feast of Freedom,” a Passover Haggadah published in…
At our Seder, before we tackle the Haggadah itself, there are words — they change each year — that are intended to frame the proceedings. Here were some of this year’s introductory words: Any serious consideration of the freedom we celebrate at the Seder table is inherently political (as, obviously, was our rebellion against Pharaoh)….
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