With Passover just around the corner, beginning on March 27, Jews around the world are preparing to participate in a ritual retelling both of our suffering as an oppressed people and of our miraculous redemption from the suffering of Mitzrayim, Hebrew for ancient Egypt. Each year, we relate to this past experience through the prism…
Read More
Jewish Life
Torah
Sinai should've been all ecstasy. Then the Golden Calf happened.
The Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon. Ki Tisa Exodus 30:11−34:35 This week’s Torah…
Parenting
Is my birthday boy getting too used to being isolated?
My youngest son is turning 5 next month, and he’s never had a birthday party. For a long time, this was sort of a running joke about neglected second…
Passover
New haggadahs: serene and poetic, earthy and playful
It’s been a rough couple of years to publish new haggadahs. Last year, around the time people might have ordered new ones, it became clear that the…
Israel
Israeli Orthodox politicians are again attacking Reform Jews
Israel’s two largest Orthodox political parties both released ads this week attacking Reform Jews. One video featured pictures of dogs in kippahs with a…
Food
Star chef helps Holocaust survivor recreate recipes from his youth
Visiting Yad Vashem a decade ago, Alon Shaya got to see some of the Jerusalem Holocaust museum’s culinary artifacts that aren’t always on display to the…
Talking With ...
Q&A: This punk rock chiropractor is here to tell you you’re sitting wrong
Before becoming a chiropractor in San Francisco, Ricky Fishman followed a lot of twists and turns in his career. First he was a public school teacher.…
Bay Area
A varsity letter, 63 years late: Cantor rectifies S.F. pol’s high school snub
All it took was an email for a 63-year-old wound to start to heal. In December, Cantor Stephen Saxon tuned into KQED’s “Political Breakdown” and heard an…
Bay Area
Sinai makes livestreaming standard at graveside services
Sinai Memorial Chapel, the only Jewish funeral home between Los Angeles and Seattle, will start livestreaming most of its graveside funeral services by…