Holidays

Springing into Passover

By:

Leah Koenig, JTA

One of the secrets about the Jewish calendar is that many of the holidays have agricultural subtexts, which over time have been muted or lost completely under the historical and religious themes that were layered on top of them. Two of these -- Sukkot and Shavuot -- have maintained a relatively transparent relationship to their earthy roots. But finding the...

Passover

What's App-enin for Pesach?

By:

Deborah Hirsch

Talk about a tech-minded culture: This Passover season, you can get rid of chametz with the help of your cell phone. Seriously. A free iPhone app just released by New York software development company RustyBrick provides guidance for seeking, selling and destroying the leavened goods. The app includes rabbinic explanations of the Jewish laws regarding the removal of chametz prior...

Passover

The Women Behind the Exodus Story

By:

Dasee Berkowitz, JTA

What woman has changed your life? My toddler intuited his answer when he said to me, "Thank you, ima , for making me." That's right, folks -- mothers, hands down, have probably had the single biggest impact on our lives. Giving birth to children is probably one of the most courageous -- not to mention painful -- things that women...

Passover

Does Less Equal More When It Comes to Seders?

By:

Bryan Schwartzman

Estelle Fleischer can't help but think of the Passover seder in terms of time -- a really long time, to be precise. Her childhood memories involved her stomach rumbling and her eyes glazing over as adults went on and on in incomprehensible Hebrew. "My father was a kosher butcher. We had to say every word of the seder," said Fleischer,...

Passover

A New Interfaith Haggadah

By:

Laura Goldman

When journalist Cokie Roberts, a devout Catholic, married Steve Roberts, whose secular family was fiercely protective of its cultural Jewish identity, they both agreed to respect and observe each other's religious and family traditions. It's now been 40 years that they have been celebrating seders, including what Roberts termed a cheesecake version in Greece and one with an "Egyptian guest...