The Enneagram as Jewish Holidays

By Rebecca Lubow September 24, 2020

Do you know your enneagram type? Find out which Jewish holiday celebrates you best!

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Up All Night: A Shavuot Zine for 5780

By Rena Yehuda Newman May 27, 2020

Staying up all night to learn Torah for Shavuot is an old tradition – so why not print out a zine to enhance your at-home, quarantined learning experience?

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Revelation and Renovation: A Shavuot Zine

By Rena Yehuda Newman June 4, 2019

This zine was created by Rena Yehuda Newman, who is a 2019 fellow with New Voices and Judaism Unbound. It was originally published on Judaism Unbound’s website.

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Can I Eat Meat and Be an Environmentalist?

By Amram Altzman May 26, 2015

As a child who had made the decision—to my parents’ chagrin, at least in part because for the better part of my childhood I ate little other than various combinations of dough, tomato sauce, and cheese — to become a vegetarian, Shavuot was one of my highlights of the Jewish calendar. It was the one…

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Frida Kahlo’s Cannoli Cream for Shavuot

By Michele Amira May 22, 2015

If you’ve been counting the Omer, you are aware that Shavuot, a.k.a. the holiday of blintzes and cheesecake, is approaching this Saturday night. As a vegan, I have often wondered why Jews eat dairy on Shavuot. There are many answers to this question. One is that eating dairy foods symbolizes our continued acceptance of the…

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Apocalypse Now: Preparing for the Potential End of Jewish Statehood

By Jonathan Katz June 25, 2014

  Attention: I am doing something that is heretical across much of the Jewish spectrum. Very heretical – for two-state JStreet-ers, for your right-wing grandma at synagogue Kiddush, and certainly for anyone remotely associated with StandWithUs and other organizations dedicated to apologetics for the Occupation. I am preparing for the potential end of Israel as…

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The Ten Commandments of Recovery

By Jourdan Stein June 3, 2014

Shavuot commemorates receiving the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai. It is customarily observed by participating in a night of learning. Since I last wrote, I have relapsed and gone back to residential treatment for anorexia. Going back to treatment for the second time since January took a great deal of courage and taught me a…

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On Scruffy Beards and Their Spiritual Significance

By Lex Rofes April 15, 2013

My face itches a whole bunch right now, and it will continue to itch for almost two more weeks. While that may not generally be news worthy of discussion in a blog post for The Conspiracy, in this case it is. My face itches because I haven’t shaved in twenty days, and I haven’t shaved…

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Make Friends and Learn About Sports: Counting The Omer 2013

By H. B. Rubin April 8, 2013

Ways To Make Counting The Omer The Best Experience Of Your Life: Think about the unlimited cheese cake and ice cream that await you. Take time to appreciate the ephemerality of life Make music out of the silence (but don’t enjoy it too much) Hang out with the Simpsons and learn a lot of “fun”…

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Playing the White Man: A Day with the Abayudaya of Uganda

By Noah Hertz-Bunzl December 14, 2005

Last summer, on the eve of Shavuot, during one of my visits to the Abayudaya, a Ugandan community that converted to Judaism in the 1920s, I met a young man named Israel. Later that night, Israel’s older brother, Saul, his wife Samalie, and their newborn child, were hit on their bike by a motorcycle, on…

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