Category: Judaism

The Society of Biblical Literature has made available a beta version of their SBL Hebrew Font. It’s a very clean, versatile Unicode font: It’s distributed in OpenType TTF format, designed primarily for Win2000 and later, but you can also use it on MacOS X. However, since MacOS X (even version 10.3) does not yet support […]

I just received a rather amusing MP3 in my email today: (I’m Spending) Hanukkah in Santa Monica (1.7 MB) Turns out it’s a Tom Lehrer song from 1990. Check out the lyrics. The Yom Kippah rhyme is a bit of a stretch, but I guess that’s what they call poetic license. 🙂 Related: check out […]

A new anthology entitled Joining the Sisterhood: Young Jewish Women Write Their Lives went on sale this week. One of the co-editors, Julie Pelc, is a friend of ours. She has been working on this book for several years. It’s great news that it’s finally available for sale! Looks like it’s initially availabe in hardcover, […]

Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, begins tonight at sundown. I wish you and your family a year filled with sweetness, joy, success and good health. And make sure you eat lots of apples and honey!

Mazel Tov! The wedding was amazing. The bubble tea was quite good, too!

Tomorrow morning we’re heading off to Minneapolis for the wedding of my dear friends Gabriel and Rachel. I have been given the great kavod (honor) of being the mesader kiddushin, the person who performs the wedding ceremony. I’ve never done this before, but I’ve been reading up on it quite a bit the past couple […]

Today is Tisha B’Av, a Jewish holy day. I choose to call it a “holy day” and not a “holiday” because it’s a rather somber one. Last night at shul we read from the book of Eicha (known in English as Lamentations) by candelight. Both the words and the melody are melancholy and sad. The […]

US Airways has stopped serving Kosher meals in-flight. No veggie meals, either. Instead of alienating the Jewish community (hey, we’re probably a full 2% of their customer base!) maybe they should go with the Southwest model and stop serving in-flight meals altogether. [via the yada, yada, yada blog]

Seven Day Vacation Protesting the Los Angeles Times: July 7 – July 14. Please join the boycott by calling the LA Times at 1-800-252-9141. Tell them that you are participating in a protest and would like to cancel your subscription for 7 days. [via valley luach]

With only 52 hours left in this year’s Passover holiday, I just got an email referencing Rabbi Golinkin’s teshuvah about Eating Kitniyot (Legumes) on Pesach. It was written almost 15 years ago, yet people here in the Diaspora (outside of Israel) continue to discuss it year after year as if it’s breaking news. Unfortunately for […]