The end of Sukkot (the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles) is upon us. In a few hours Israeli families will be taking down their family sukkah (or makeshift booth), pitching out the palm branches and storing away the linens for another year. Many thousands of Christian pilgrims who flew to Jerusalem from all the nations of […]
Category Archives: Feasts
The traditional Jewish New Year is upon us. It’s called Rosh Hashanah in Hebrew and Rosh Hashoneh in Yiddish. The sons and daughters of Jacob nibble apples and honey as they hope for a sweet year. Synagogues register their highest attendance as the High Holy Days or ‘Days of Awe’ approach. The Day of Atonement […]
At the onset of WWII Prime Minister Winston Churchill consolidated a number of secret intelligence operations groups into the SOE (Special Operations Executive) in the UK’s fight to defeat Nazi Germany. This new group was given various informal names, including ‘the Baker Street Irregulars’ (one of their offices was at 64 Baker Street), ‘Churchill’s Toyshop,’ […]
The Feast of Purim is about to roar into town! Those who love the Scriptures will meditate once again on the Jewish-Persian Scroll of Esther – remembering the agony and the ecstasy of how the Jewish people were nearly destroyed by an evil Iran-based plot. Jews across the globe will read the Megillah (the Scroll […]
I grew up in a Yiddish-speaking home in Montreal, Canada where I attended Yiddish and Hebrew day school, participated in Montreal’s Yiddish theater group and also performed in a Yiddish mandolin orchestra. My memories of the High Holidays (Rosh Hashoneh and Yom Kipper is how we pronounced them) included the traditional foods – apples dipped […]
Holy Spirit, ‘fake news’ and the heart of Ruth The Feast of Shavuot/Weeks is upon us (Deuteronomy 16:10). Fifty days have now passed between Pesach/Passover and Shavuot (Leviticus 23:16 – the counting of the Omer, a peck measurement and first-fruits prophetic promise of a coming full harvest). The crest of those calculations has been reached, […]