Why is This Night Different?

  Pesach 5780 Why is this night different from all other nights? On all other nights guests wedge themselves around dining tables, seated thigh to thigh like rush-hour subway riders. On this night we Zoom.  On all other nights sideboards and tables muster muscles...

Looking ahead to Pesach, Passover

In This Jewish Life, I include brief overviews of our major holidays throughout the year as a way to introduce the heart of the book: real-life stories of men and women as they pass through these seasons. In 2018, Passover begins on the evening of Friday March 30 and...

Racing Against the Moon

“Jewish Time” is often code for being five, ten, even fifteen minutes late. Jewish time also has a deeper meaning, because the Jewish calendar is calibrated with the cycles of both the sun and the moon which means some holidays are in synch with a full or new...

Eleventh Plague at the Eleventh Hour

Awoke to a snowfall. One month into spring by the calendar and there was snow on the ground. Snow here. Snow there. Snow was falling everywhere. Passover begins this evening and it was SNOWING. This Hebrew month – Nissan – was decreed in the Torah as the first month...

A Clean Sweep

Been cleaning for Passover, a yearly ritual greeted with equal measures of excitement and dread. It’s such a pain! There are so many details! But if not for Pesach, would I ever take a toothbrush to the cabinet doorhinges or run a toothpick along the grooves of the...