Every Sukkot, families with sukkahs invite the spirits of the seven biblical matriarchs and patriarchs into their tent. These guests – or ushpizin – cut impressive figures. While we earthly chosen spend our time schmoozing outdoors, kvetching and noshing and pontificating on all manner of mundane things, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Rebekah, Leah and Rachel…
The Bible may be the most-recognized book in the world, but its origins remain obscure. We can’t say with certainty who wrote much of it, when the bulk of it was composed or even where. But we now have a handy primer to the most significant theories about those questions in John Barton’s “The History…
'How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together in unity!'
“Can I quote some Hebrew to you?” Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey asked rhetorically on Wednesday night during a CNN presidential town hall. “Because I studied the Torah too.” Click here for video; scroll to the 1:40 mark for the Hebrew. Booker, who was mostly talking about his Christian faith, is known in the…
Yehuda Webster has a routine when it comes to Torahs. Just about every month, he picks up a rented Torah in a plastic sleeve from J. Levine Books and Judaica in Manhattan. He uses the Torahs for the bar and bat mitzvah ceremonies he arranges through an organization he founded, for families that don’t belong…
Despite fires raging in the distance, a Southern California rabbi ran into his synagogue to rescue its Torahs. Temple Adat Elohim, a Reform synagogue in Thousand Oaks, sits in the path of two fires, Hill and Woolsey. Rabbi Barry Diamond and President Sandy Greenstein made it to the synagogue before mandatory evacuations to save the…
(JTA) — A man in Louisville, Kentucky, was arrested after he stole a Torah scroll from Jewish Hospital. The Torah scroll, which was on display at the medical center, was stolen on Sunday, local media reported. The theft of the religious object, which is valued at about $30,000, was captured on surveillance camera. Hospital security stopped…
(JTA) — More than 20 years after the theft of ancient Torah scrolls from a synagogue in Nablus, the Israel Antiquities Authority retrieved one page from the missing objects and invited its owners to view it. The piece of parchment retrieved earlier this year during a customs inspection came from one of two missing 14th-century…
100% of profits support our journalism
