Feature

Sara Wolf was running around a water park in an oversized T-shirt when she became acutely aware of the need for a “less frumpy” yet covered-up swimwear option. So she and Daniella Teutsch, a former fashion industry colleague, launched HydroChic, a swimwear company for women who want to enjoy the water and stay modest at the same time.

On the second night of Passover, we commence the longest-running mitzvah of the Torah: Sefirat HaOmer (Counting the Omer). During this time, we tally the 49 days, starting with Passover and culminating in the holiday of Shavuot. That is when we celebrate the greatest event in history, the revelation of G-d’s Torah at Sinai.

Can the essence of Passover fit into a box? Fans of Manischewitz and Streit’s will undoubtedly answer, “Yes, in a matzah box.”

Groggers, candy and music. A story that involves royalty, a beauty pageant and the antagonist getting hung on a tree. And let’s not forget the costumes. Purim is a joyful holiday that children of all ages can enjoy and appreciate.

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PARK CITY, Utah — It may be the most elevated Shabbat service in the country, and not just because of the spirited singing.

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NEW YORK — In the summer of 2011, Lizzi Heydemann returned to her native Chicago to establish a Jewish community loosely modeled on Ikar, the Los Angeles congregation where she had spent two years as a rabbinic intern.

2015 was a year of change for me, facilitated largely by the birth of my lovely dumpling of a daughter in February. Among the normal challenges of being a first-time parent (learning to cobble together a working brain when it has been addled by lack of sleep, perfecting the art of acting casually when your child decides to poop on you in a public place, and so on), I had the additional challenge of being a non-Jewish woman raising a Jewish daughter.

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NEW YORK — When Rabbi Lila Kagedan spends her first Shabbat at the Mount Freedom Jewish Center in Randolph, New Jersey, later this month, she will be making history.

I’ve always been a big believer in the family Shabbat experience. In our family, we light Shabbat candles together every Friday night in our dining room – a room our boys so rarely eat or play in that they actually call it the “Shabbat room,” since that’s what we do there. We sing “Shabbat Shalom” and give high fives and kisses to everyone.

Three years ago, Rabbi Ariel Shoshan of Ahavas Torah in Scottsdale, in partnership with Neal Brooks, who owns a farm in Geronimo, Arizona, purchased three young female donkeys. The reason behind this purchase was the potential to fulfill the mitzvah of seeing a pidyon peter chamor, the redemption of a firstborn male donkey.

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NEW YORK — Christmas is a day like any other in most Chasidic neighborhoods in New York: Children go to school, shops are open, and tinsel and holly are nowhere to be seen.

Until the late Rabbi Albert Plotkin of Congregation Beth Israel celebrated his second bar mitzvah in 2004 at 83, Martin Rosenthal never knew about the custom. So Rosenthal promised himself that if he made it to age 83, he would also like to have a second bar mitzvah. “Well, here I am,” he says. “I have made it.”

When David and Lisa Segal’s son, Oliver, was born, the Conservative mohel that they had scheduled to do their son’s bris canceled at the last minute and they had to scramble to find a replacement. Although they were seeking a Conservative mohel, they found a Reform mohel who was a urologist that agreed to do it. They had their Conservative rabbi officiate at the service and it all worked out, but David Segal says, “This was all done in a panic.” After a discussion after the bris, he and his wife decided that there must be a better option, and the idea for a new business was born.

“‘And Hashem G-d took Adam and He placed him in the Garden of Eden’ (Genesis 2:15). This statement indicates that G-d gave Adam the mitzvah of Shabbat.”                   

The illusion that the Orthodox Jewish standard of Sabbath observance is kept by the majority of Israelis is fading away. This status quo that once existed has died. The time has come instead to move forward with a national-social Sabbath observance, giving up on the age-old dream of a full public Sabbath observance in Israel.

I used to have the right idea for Yom Kippur. I liked the notion of an entire month to clean up my messes from the past year, and I worked hard to deliver carefully worded apologies. The promise of a clean slate appealed to my resolution-making personality. And I appreciated the fact that the obligation to make life improvements deeper than, say, eating better, differentiated the Jewish New Year from the secular one. I was a High Holidays superfan.

Amidst the Tot Shabbats, preschool Purim plays, and family-friendly movie nights, it’s difficult for many single, empty-nester or childless Jews who want to attend shul to feel 100 percent comfortable doing so.

It’s been nearly two millennia since the Second Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, bringing to an end the priestly period of Jewish history and commencing the Diaspora.

In layman’s terms, “concierge” essentially means a personal assistant. So what exactly does a “concierge rabbi” do?

During the summer, we commemorate many tragic moments in the history of the Jewish people. I am referring, in particular to Tisha B’Av, literally meaning the ninth day of the month of Av. The date is significant primarily because that day seems to have been singled out as a reminder of the fragility of human existence.

“The Torah is going to the moon.” It sounds like a phrase straight out of a Jewish fairy tale or children’s book, but the real-life Torah on the Moon initiative is not as pie in the sky as one might think.

On this holiday weekend, due to a confluence of special days – Independence Day, the 17th of Tammuz and Shabbat – American Jews will have the opportunity to both celebrate our religious freedom and retrace what we did when it was threatened.

When Rabbi Yossi and Naomi Winner first moved to Tucson to start Chabad at the University of Arizona in 2005, they hosted Shabbat dinners in their two-bedroom house. By the end of the first year, they had nearly 100 students joining them, so they purchased a large tent for the backyard, outfitted it with an air-conditioning unit and converted it into a makeshift Chabad house. “We work with what we have,” says Rabbi Winner.

Beth Joseph Congregation dedicated a new Torah on May 17, which was donated by Alan and Randi Jablin in memory of Leonard and Phyllis Friedel, on behalf of the Friedel Family Foundation.