Two of the most important concepts in Judaism are derived from this week’s Torah portion, Emor. They are: kiddush hashem, the mitzvah of sanctifying God’s name, and chillul hashem, profaning God’s ...

I grew up seeing wine as a symbol of joy, holiness and a tool for elevating the mundane. From the weekly Kiddush (a blessing said over a wine cup) on Shabbat to holidays like Purim, Passover and ...

A kiddush cup that may have been passed around the Friday night dinner table during the reign of Ghengis Khan will be available for auction this fall. The rare remnant of the Silk Road, the ancient ...

Several years ago, I read an article in a frum publication (which I have since stopped reading because they won’t use photos of women) describing the challenges faced by Torah-observant Jews attending ...

Recently deceased actor and director Sidney Poitier was groundbreaking in his time. He was the first African-American man to win an Academy Award for best actor. But his life wasn’t always dreamlike.

Israel, as the Jewish nation-state, is bound by its Jewish dimension to honor the highest principles of the Jewish tradition. “Kiddush Hashem” means sanctifying the name of the Creator by publicizing ...

Israelis, it seems, have recently accustomed themselves to two types of behavior more than they did in the past: they put a lot of energy into unnecessary gestures and they invest a lot of unnecessary ...

Tears blurred my own eyes as I looked at the person who had endured for so long, and now chanted these holy words with such feeling, in our sukkah, so many years later. I wrote this reflective piece ...

When you hear the term activist, what comes to mind? If you’re like me, you probably think of a person super-passionate about immigration reform, saving the whales or something like that. Yet, in the ...

When Cantor Ilana Plutzer was serving as a chaplain at Rikers Island a few years ago, she went to the kitchen to get grape juice for Jews in the jail who said they were not getting it with Shabbat ...

The medieval artefact, which is inscribed with both Hebrew and Arabic, will be on display for a limited time before heading to auction The Cup of Joy, a medieval Kiddush cup inscribed with both Hebrew ...