Simchat Torah draws a crowd in Russia
Russian Jews who now can worship freely recall how, in Soviet times, Simchat Torah was the one holiday they felt bold enough to celebrate openly. More ▸
simchat torah
-
-
Sukkot, Simchat Torah and the cycle of life
NEWTON, Mass., Oct. 16 (JTA) – As we move out of the High Holiday season, we move into another series of holidays that is at once both cyclical and linear. At the beginning of the New Jewish Year we celebrate Sukkot, thereby completing the third in a series of pilgrimage festivals. Sukkot marks the final… More ▸
-
Simchat Torah Feature: Make Torah Study a Regular Family Habit
Experts say it takes 21 days to make a habit. Do something — run, write in a journal, make a to-do list — repeatedly and consistently every day for three weeks and that action will become yours. We are what we repeatedly do, Aristotle taught us. Speak of Torah to your children in your home… More ▸
-
Simchat Torah Feature: Come Join the Parade of Sukkot, Simchat Torah and the Cycle of Life
As we move out of the High Holiday season, we move into another series of holidays that is at once both cyclical and linear. At the beginning of the New Jewish Year we celebrate Sukkot, thereby completing the third in a series of pilgrimage festivals. Sukkot marks the final harvest before the onset of winter…. More ▸
-
Simchat Torah Feature: Reading Genesis with a New Appreciation for Creating Life
The Torah is filled with hundreds of commandments — 613 to be precise. But the very first commandment, to be fruitful and multiply, is arguably the most important. For without this basic and primordial act, which we read in Genesis on Simchat Torah and on the following Shabbat as we begin anew the annual cycle… More ▸
-
SIMCHAT TORAH FEATURE Reading Genesis with a new appreciation for creating life
PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 2 (JTA) — The Torah is filled with hundreds of commandments — 613 to be precise. But the very first commandment, to be fruitful and multiply, is arguably the most important. For without this basic and primordial act, which we read in Genesis on Simchat Torah and on the following Shabbat as we… More ▸
-
Behind the Headlines: Ransacked Nablus Yeshiva Off-limits for Simchat Torah
For the first time in 15 years, there were no Simchat Torah celebrations here. The celebrations were but one of the casualties of the three days of violence that erupted late last month in the West Bank and Gaza Strip after Israel opened a new entrance to a tunnel located near the Temple Mount. On… More ▸
-
Simchat Torah Feature: Illuminating a Timeless Text; New Releases Delve into Torah
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and all the creatures within them. Before long, some of those inhabitants wrote down the way they understood their beginnings, and soon other people were explaining what the stories really meant. Biblical interpretation was born, and it was good. People have been analyzing the meanings… More ▸
-
Israelis End Up Celebrating Simchat Torah Holiday Twice
The fact that Israelis celebrated both Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah on Monday left many Jewishly observant tourists here in limbo. While Israelis wound up the holiday season at sundown Monday, it was still “yom tov” Tuesday for tens of thousands of visiting Jews from abroad. According to most Orthodox rabbis, Diaspora Jews on a… More ▸
-
Simchat Torah in Moscow – then and Now
He remembered their eyes — on Simchat Torah, at the Choral Synagogue on Archipova Street in Moscow, a quarter of a century ago. Elie Weisel had been seared by that experience. I was determined to look into those eyes myself, and, on Saturday night, October 16, 1976, on the beginning of the Jewish festival of… More ▸
