Shabbat Sukkot Adapted from a story by Debra Gordon Zaslow Once, long ago, there was a young couple who were truly in love. They decided to be married in the autumn under the canopy of the sukkah in the presence of their friends and relatives. When the time came, they invited the ushpizin , the spirits of the ancestors who are traditionally invited into the sukkah during the holiday. They said their vows with the full moon peeking through the s’chach  that lined the sukkah ro

On January 14, 1963, George Wallace was sworn in as the governor of Alabama. In his inaugural address, he declared, “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

John Milton describes Samson, the Israelite leader from the Book of Judges, in his epic poem Samson Agonistes. You probably know at least part of the story. Samson is raised as a Nazirite, a person specially consecrated to God, whose consecration is demonstrated by never cutting his hair.

Two old Jews are sitting on a park bench in Nazi Germany. One is reading a Yiddish newspaper, and the other is reading Der Sturmer. When the second man starts chuckling to himself, the first man cries, “It isn’t enough that you’re reading that Nazi rag, but now you actually find it funny?!” The second man answers, “Look, if I read your paper, what do I see? Jews deported, Jews assaulted…but in this one, I finally get some good news! It turns out, we run the banks the governme

One day, Rebbe Baruch found his grandson crying. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “My friend and I were playing hide-and-seek,” he answered. “I stayed hidden for a long time, but I got tired of waiting. When I came out, I saw that my friend had gone home. He didn’t even come looking for me!”

It is the season of t’shuvah. As you probably know, t’shuvah, often translated as “repentance,” literally means “return,”

This week’s Torah portion, Ki Teitzei, has the distinction of being the parashah with the most mitzvot in it – 74 laws, in fact.

“You are what you eat.” Some say a French politician and author named Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin coined a version of the phrase in 1826,

Graham Nash was not, as far as I know, inspired by the Book of Deuteronomy when he wrote this song in 1968. So we’ll consider it just a happ