Reading can cause many different emotions. For some people, beginning a new book produces excitement about where the narrative will take them. Then there’s the pleasure of the plot itself, watching ...

The Torah reading this Shabbat, like a significant subset of Shabbatot throughout the year, contains two different facets. The first is the reading that is next in line within the ...

We are living through a period of plagues, floods, wildfires and other biblical events. In the Torah, such catastrophes often follow poor human behavior — times when we ignore the word of God. You can ...

Simchat Torah. It’s the Jewish holiday that comes after all the important Jewish holidays — Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot — this time of year. At the end of one Torah-reading cycle and the ...

When the reader reaches the final verse containing the words זֵכֶר עֲמָלֵק (“the memory of Amalek”) they repeat the word זֵכֶר with two different vowel sounds: once with a tzere — “zay-kher” — and ...

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(RNS) — A few years ago, the Conservative congregation of 900 families overlooking Lake Michigan took on a challenge. This past year 210 laypeople stepped up. HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. (RNS) — Growing up in ...

Several thousand pilgrims today participated in the first revival of the ancient custom of “Hakhel,” the public reading of the Torah during the Succoth holiday of the Sabbatical year. The custom, ...

(JTA) — When Alyza Lewin became a bat mitzvah in 1977, the fact that she had a ritual ceremony at all was still relatively revolutionary in Orthodox circles. But she took the rite of passage a step ...

Before she had language to understand herself as a transgender person, Joy Ladin did not feel represented or at ease in the physical world she inhabited. While reading the Torah as a child, Ladin ...

Simchat Torah is about more than beginning to read the Torah all over again. It’s about the need to reexamine what we think we know, over and over again. The Jewish holiday known as Simchat Torah, ...