Between the holiday of Passover, which was just celebrated, and Shavuot, 50 days later, there is a Jewish ritual of counting the omer, or sheaves of barley that used to be brought to the temple in Jerusalem. The ritual is called sefirat haomer, or the counting of the omer. The biblical source for this ritual can be found in the book of Leviticus 23:15-21. Each night, after sundown, the omer is counted in the context of blessing, and on the 50^th day, we begin celebrating the holiday of Shavuot.

For obscure historical reasons, the omer period is one of mourning. Jews refrain from marrying, cutting hair, attending concerts, and some men do not shave. The most common explanation, derived from the Talmud, is that thousands of disciples of Rabbi Akiba died because they did not treat each other with respect and compassion. For many, the period of mourning essentially comes to an end on the 33^rd day of the omer (Lag BaOmer), which is a holiday celebrated by Jews worldwide.

In Israel, the primary Lag BaOmer custom observed by most Israelis, religious and secular, is to find an open spot of ground, light a large campfire and have a barbecue on the fire. When I was a rabbi in the suburbs of Washington D.C. (Herndon, Virginia), my kids loved when we would drive around the neighborhood on Christm

He should receive a Nobel Prize, a medal of honor, or perhaps more fitting, an Oscar! Who am I referring to? None other than the man or woman who created the grandest and most brilliant ritual in the Jewish religion...the Passover seder.

The key to the Passover seder, held in Israel on the first night of Passover and in the rest of the world on the first and second nights, is to reenact what our ancestors went through. The script for the seder, the haggada (literally, the ‘telling' of the exodus from Egypt) reminds us that "in every generation a person must see himself as if he personally came out of Egypt."

The Passover seder has a benchmark of success...if you reenact the exodus from Egypt in your living room (anywhere from Jerusalem to Chicago to Timbuktu) in such a way that you feel like you were enslaved and now you are free, then the seder has been successful. To do that, you need to step out

Not surprisingly, there is no biblical reference to the holiday of  Tu Bishvat. Rather, the sources that describe this calendrical observance are found in the Mishnaic tractate, Rosh Hashanah, (the New Year). More on that later... 

In order to understand Judaism and its holidays, sometimes one must go beyond the Hebrew Bible. While the bible contains the scriptural basis for many of our holidays, not all are biblical in origin. This may sound confusing to those who have always thought of the Jewish people as the ‘people of the book'. In fact, we are the people of the books. Which books? The written law and the oral law. The written law refers to Torah, Prophets and Writings, or the Hebrew Bible; the oral law is commonly understood to mean the Mishnah and the Gemara, which together equal the Talmud. Although the Bible is considered more important than the Talmud, we make sense of

Dear friends,

At a recent Bar Mitzvah celebration at Robinson's Arch, there was something special in the air. The family and close friends gathered at 8 am, and the Bar Mitzvah boy looked happy but nervous.  He carefully laid his tefillin for the first time, with some help from the Rabbi, and accurately and confidently read his Torah portion and chanted the blessings.  His grandparents beamed with pride, and his siblings marveled at their little brother who had reached the age of mitzvot.  We sang, we danced and praised God for having brought us to this joyous moment.  It was a special time in the life of this family, and a moment they will always cherish.  The Rabbi was me, and the boy was my youngest child, Matan.               &nb