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My name is Amanda Winer and I am a Jew. Sounds like I’m in an AA meeting or something, eh? The reason I introduce myself as such is twofold. Firstly, I fully acknowledge that this is an important part of my identity. Secondly, I helps to put this entire blog in context. This is who […]
It’s an idea so simple you may wonder why you didn’t think of it yourself: Grab a few friends and bake some deliciously eggy challah, then sell it and donate the proceeds to help feed the hungry around the world.
That idea was the inspiration behind Challah for Hunger, an organization with chapters at 44 colleges and universities across America–and two in Australia–dedicated to making and selling the much-loved traditional Shabbat bread to raise money for hunger and disaster relief organizations. CfH was founded in 2004 by students at the Claremont Colleges, a consortium of seven liberal arts colleges in Southern California. So far, the have raised over $250,000.
The High Holidays are upon us, and so is a newly updated and expanded edition of the Hillel machzor (High Holidays prayer book), “On Wings of Awe.” The original 1985 edition was ground-breaking in its inclusion of transliterations for many prayers, which was then a rarity even among liberal Jewish prayer books; the new edition’s cover boldly proclaims itself “A Fully Transliterated Machzor for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.”
While Bernard Scharfstein, vice president of “On Wings of Awe” publisher Ktav, told me, “We sold maybe 1,000 a year; it’s not a bestseller,” it has been a constant presence in many Hillels and in a handful of congregations for many years.
I spoke on the phone recently with the editor of both editions, Rabbi Richard Levy, about what makes “Wings” a Hillel machzor, what has changed in the new edition and how worship has changed over the last quarter-century.
The Irvine 11 were convicted on Friday of conspiring to disrupt and then disrupting a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at UC Irvine. Our own Gabe Schivone interviewed one of them, Taher Herzallah. Making the rounds online: a nifty graphic showing which countries will support the PA’s statehood bid at the U.N. Finally, Jewish […]
Taher Herzallah is one of the newly convicted students collectively known as the “Irvine 11”. Ten of the original eleven were prosecuted (one had his charges dropped) by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office and, this past Friday, convicted of “disruption” and “conspiracy to disrupt” a public lecture by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren at the […]
1000 tables. That’s right. You heard me. 1000 tables. Round ones. Picture this: A warm Tel Aviv September night. Motzaei Shabbat (Saturday night). The Tel Aviv Museum plaza is filled with round tables—several hundred of them, in fact. Sitting around the tables, in groups of about eight to 10, are several thousand people. Around the […]
Turns out there was no need for such a fuss. On September 19th, two days before Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was scheduled to have dinner with 15 members of the Columbia International Relations Council and Association (CIRCA), the Iranian mission to the United Nations revoked the invitation due to the “media firestorm” surrounding the event, according to the […]
On Saturday night, I went to our Hillel’s welcoming ceremony for the new rabbi. I guess they decided it would be a good idea to start out with a Havdala ceremony, but no amount of gentle singing could compensate for the lighting of yet another candle – under the luminous rays of the bright 7:00 […]
The destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E. was a watershed moment in Jewish history. With Roman control of Judea making the idea of rebuilding a third temple impossible, the question became not so much as where to meet God but as how to meet God, for the Temple’s destruction eliminated Jews’ ability to […]
A new Hillel International program (a little explanation from JTA here) called Talk Israel placed tents on 20 campuses yesterday and Tuesday. The tents were open to all for “conversation and not debate,” according to Columbia-Barnard Hillel Assistant Director Carrie Fischbein. “Dialogue is a key component of the day,” she said. Fischbein was also careful […]