The holiday season in December is full of opportunities to celebrate standing traditions and establish new traditions. A few years ago, our family decided to incorporate Kwanzaa in our holiday traditions. Kwanzaa is a holiday primarily celebrated in the United States annually from December 26-January...
Karen Donahue, a practicing Buddhist, had been deceased for many years but her absence was palpable. As the rabbi at their wedding on the seventh night of Hanukkah, I wove together teachings from Zen and Hasidic masters, all of whom understood the power of grief and suffering and also the ...
for which we'll usually either split for the day and meet in the evening or spend half the day with one side and the other half at the other. Other than that, we do Hanukkah with his family and Christmas with mine. Everyone is happy every year!"...
Kwanzaa is aPan-African holiday, meaning that it is meant to unite people of African descent, wherever in the world they live. It runs fromDecember 26 through January 1. Unlike Christmas and Hanukkah, which are religious holidays, Kwanzaa is acultural holiday(in fact, many people celebrate bot...
“This is what I do for a living and I still struggle to have these conversations with my own child.” She notes that, while it’s normal to feel awkward and nervous, it’s important to focus on being honest. “There’s more risk with not telling them enough than telling them too ...
A good rule of thumb is to skip one and then attend the next one; that way, you’re not always MIA and people still know you’re alive. For example, if you went to the Hanukkah dinner, feel free to skip the New Year’s party. ...
From Hanukkah to Christmas to Kwanzaa, candles are a big part of many holiday celebrations. Always supervise your cat near an open flame, and blow candles out when you're not in the room. In addition to the risk of burned noses, toes and whiskers, some curious kitties can knock candles ...
In the white suburbs of the ’60’s and 70’s where I grew up, everyone obeyed the Christian calendar. The only weeklong breaks we had during the school year were for Christmas and Easter. Jewish kids were an anomaly with their Hanukkah and Passover. And since there were no Hindus, Mus...
they were essential to depicting Judaism as it is actually experienced. “We want it to feel like it’s actually Jewish,” she said. “I’ve seen television shows where they’re going to dance the hora because that’s a Jewish dance, on Hanukkah - even though those things are not neces...
It is customary to place the Menorah in the window to proudly and publicly celebrate the miracle of Hanukkah. There is an interesting discussion in the Talmud about displaying the lit Menorah just as the people are finished shopping in the marketplace (Shabbat 21b) in order to publicize the ...