Today’s post is more “show and tell” than an educational experience. Most families have special decorations that are a big part of their holiday experience, and although I have admitted several times to being a holiday decorating scrooge in general, I do have a few Hanukkah pieces that I totally adore. You saw the first one a couple of weeks ago, when the thirteen-year-old drew an excellent replica of it on the blackboard at Religious School. My grandmother made this ceramic menorah. The front of it says “lehadlik ner shel hanukkah”, which is the last line in one of the Hanukkah candle lighting blessings. The entire blessing: Transliterated Hebrew: Baruch…

Growing up, whenever one of my friends found out that I’m Jewish, I heard alot of this kind of thing: “Whoa! You get EIGHT NIGHTS of gifts at Hanukkah! That’s so cool!” I have always been slightly annoyed by this, for a couple of reasons that changed as I got older. First, from my point of view as a young Jewish girl, the idea of Christmas gifts was just totally better than Hanukkah gifts, hands down. Who could think that eight nights of gifts in a row could top the excitement of running down the stairs in your footie pajamas, seeing the motherlode sitting under a gorgeous tree festooned with…

Today’s post is all about the “controversy” about the spelling of the word Hanukkah. Or Chanukah. Or Hanuka. Or…well, you get the idea. Everyone wonders what the “correct” spelling is, and there’s a pretty simple answer. In Hebrew, there is only one:חנוכה In English, there are no “correct” or “incorrect” ways to spell it, because it’s all up to the person transliterating it. Because a couple of the Hebrew letters have a few different options (the main one being that the beginning of the word Hanukah can have the “h” sound, or the “ch” sound, as in the last part of the word “Blech!”), the different spellings come oozing out…

Today is Yom Kippur*, which is the most holy Jewish holiday of the entire year. To make a long explanation short, it is also known as the “Day of Atonement”, where we basically atone for the sins of the past year. We don’t work or go to school and we spend alot of time in services, just like on Rosh Hashanah, but this holiday is totally solemn. Another distinctive feature of Yom Kippur is the fasting. From sundown the night before for 25 hours, Jews do not eat or drink anything (even water). The reason for the fast is to be able to completely focus on repentance. Children under 13…

Today’s post marks the return of Jew Stuff! I wasn’t leaving it out, really; it’s just that bulk of the Jewish holidays are crushed together between mid-fall and early spring. Rosh Hashanah is the Jewish New Year. It literally means “Head of the Year”. Why do we celebrate our New Year on what seems like a random day each year in September/October? I’ll tell ya why: because Rosh Hashanah actually occurs on the FIRST day of the FIRST month…of the Hebrew Calendar. Where the Gregorian calendar (January, February, March, et al) is related to the sun and how the earth moves around it, the Hebrew calendar is related to the…