ALBANY–Bethlehem Chabad will host a Garden Shabbat Social on Friday, Aug. 16, beginning at 7 p.m.  Those attending the dinner at the home of Rabbi Zalman and Chanie Simon, 493 Delaware Ave., Delmar, will be offered cocktails, hors d’oeuvres and artisan challah during “happy hour, holy hour.” A Shabbat dinner buffet under the stars will follow. Chanie Simon, Bethlehem Chabad […]

The Jewish World’s Oct. 3 issue will be moved, because of Rosh Hashanah, to Oct. 10. News and ads will be due by Sept. 27 and layout will be on Oct. 2-3-4, with printing and mailing on Oct. 7. All other dates will remain as scheduled. Jewish World dates for the rest of 2019: Aug. 22 Sept 5, 19   19  […]

By DEBORAH FINEBLUM (JNS) – Memory and imagination: The two keys that unlock the Jewish holiday of Tisha B’Av. In fact Tisha B’Av, a holiday many Jews seem unfamiliar with, is all about memory, the collective memory of the Jewish people, as much a family as it is a religion. But to tap into the Jewish collective memory bank, we […]

Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative” May 6, 2019, https://bit.ly/2Z91TNN More on Jewish holidays: http://bit.ly/137Er6J Shavou’ot and the roots of the special US attitude toward Israel: *The holiday of Shavou’ot (Pentecost) – which commemorates the receipt of the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) and the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai some 3,500 years ago – sheds […]

Maimonides Hebrew Day School’s art teacher Rivi Bahir recently worked with 36 of her students to create an Israeli flag made from 1,800 blue and white paper butterflies. The goal of the project was to note Yom Ha Shoah and Israel Independence Day. A poem written by a child in the Theresienstadt concentration camp  “I never saw another butterfly” was […]

Five local congregations joined together for this year’s Albany Mitzvah Day on Sunday, April 7. Two hundred and fifty volunteers worked on 24 projects throughout the region. Participants came from Congregations Beth Emeth, Beth Abraham-Jacob, B’nai Sholom, Ohav Shalom and Temple Israel.

SCHENECTADY–Yom Ha’Atzmaut will be celebrated at the Schenectady Jewish Community Center with an Israeli dinner and a screening of the film “Golda’s Balcony, The Film” to commemorate Israeli’s Declaration of Independence in 1948. In addition to the film, Israel’s 71st Independence Day will be noted at the Center with an Israeli dinner featuring live music and food such as shawarma, […]

“Last Letters From the Holocaust: 1944,” an online exhibit from Yad Vashem, has arrived on its website just in time for Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Memorial Day), which this year corresponds to May 2. By DEBORAH FINEBLUM (JNS) – Millions of Jews who were taken to their deaths during the Holocaust on cattle cars, and we will never know how many […]

(My Jewish Learning via JTA) Here are nine things that many likely wouldn’t know about the Festival of Freedom: 1. In Gibraltar, there’s dust in the charoset. The traditional charoset is a sweet Passover paste whose texture is meant as a reminder of the mortar the enslaved Jews used to build in ancient Egypt. The name itself is related to […]

By BRIAN D. JOHNSON MADISON, Wisconsin (JTA) – Somewhere, there’s a photograph: My future father-in-law is sitting at the head of the table. My future mother-in-law is sitting to his left and I’m sitting on his right, wearing a suit, tie and kippah. My stunningly beautiful fiancée is next to me, and the rest of the table consists of three […]