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May 29, 2023, 5:45 AM

Speaking of Language

In the flood of congratulatory articles celebrating Israel’s 75th birthday, it's been odd and surprising to encounter one side of the language debate that filled my childhood home -- Yiddish (my leftist father) vs Hebrew (my right-wing Zionist mother)...

Nov 29, 2021, 11:20 AM

The Expulsion Synagogue

"Every day one should work so that Judaism should thrive. And it will." "Every day one should work so that Judaism should thrive - and it will" says in a mixture of Ladino and Turkish languages by Mr. Leon Elnekave,...

Óscar Reyes-Matute

Nov 11, 2021, 5:00 PM

Exile and Redemption

I live in a country with a dire humanitarian crisis. Around me I see hunger, death, fear, and we are ruled by a failed state. But as a philosopher, political scientist, and above all a student of Kabbalah, I cannot...

Jaime Kardontchik

Aug 13, 2021, 11:15 AM

A Brief History of the Jewish People

How to compress 3,500 years of “History of the Jewish People” in a few pages, for students in a compulsory “Ethnic Studies” course in California’s K12 schools? First things first: do not let an ignorant, posing as an “educator”, confuse...

Jaime Kardontchik

Jun 22, 2021, 7:12 AM

Ethnic Studies: Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews

Do not let an ignorant, posing as an “educator”, confuse you: Jews are not divided between the “oppressed” American Jews of Sephardi or Middle Eastern origin (whose status in the latest approved “California Ethnic Studies Curriculum” was upgraded to...

William Echikson

May 4, 2021, 11:37 AM

Saving Jewish Languages: Yiddish to Judeo-Tat

Wherever Jews have settled, they have adopted local languages and added a Jewish twist – from Yiddish and Ladino to the lesser-known varieties such as Judeo-Tat (Azerbaijan and Dagestan) and Judeo-Malayalam (Southern India). Over the past two centuries, migration...

Batya Brownstein

Nov 10, 2020, 8:42 PM

Opinion: Austrian citizenship for returning Jews is unintentionally anti- Semitic

Willing victims of a wanderlust culture (a categorization in which I include myself), Israelis have begun in recent years to accumulate international citizenships in order to avoid the bureaucracy of visas and the like, as well as to provide...

May 27, 2020, 1:52 PM

Torah, Raki, and Yogurt: Shavuot on the Aegean Sea

Jewish dancers and musicians in Saloniki, early 20th century (Publisher: Albert Nissim). From the Folklore Research Center at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, available through the National Library’s Digital Collection

"Saloniki's Jews… eagerly awaited the arrival of the Shavuot holiday… They especially loved and cherished it as the holiday of spring, of the verdant fields, of the flowers and of the ripe fruits, and anyone who got to enjoy...

Apr 4, 2019, 7:35 AM

The year I was the stranger at the seder

Hannah in Florence for Passover.

Being Jewish means I trusted the people who took me in as if I was their own, stuffed me with good food, singing, laughing, and making memories together

Nov 26, 2018, 11:05 PM

Hidden, part 2: Remembering who we are

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” says Monty Python…unless, of course, you have tickets for the final performance of the outstanding show ‘Hidden: A Musical’ this coming Thursday. If you don’t, and you didn’t get in to see any of...

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