It was a Simchat Torah celebration that surely most of the Hasidim walking past had never before witnessed: hundreds of liberal Jews, men and women, young children and the middle-aged, dancing together with Torah scrolls held aloft. Revelers twirled round and round in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza, just outside the entrance to Prospect Park. “Simchat…
The 8-year-old son of a Brooklyn rabbi died in a Midwood house fire last night as his family celebrated the end of Sukkot and Simchat Torah’s start outside. Avigdor Krasny was the only one of six children who didn’t escape the blaze, according to an Associated Press report. His siblings were saved by their father,…
Jews all over the Diaspora loosened their belts and let out a collective sigh of relief Sunday evening as the holiday of Simchat Torah came to a close, marking the end of the fall Jewish holiday season — or as I like to call it, gefilte-fest. (The verdict is still out on whether it or…
Simchat Torah begins in Israel tonight, a day before it starts in the Diaspora. It’s the festival that is notoriously dull for women. If it’s an Orthodox synagogue you’re in, as the vast majority of Israeli ones are, women sit there for hours and hours while every man in attendance is called to the Torah,…
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