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Published Works of Aaron
Howard
Aaron's Archives
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Search Results - - Traditions |
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Click on the Name of the property to see pictures and more details. |
A Secret Society Steps Into the Spotlight
| Death is democratic. It comes to us all. It’s how we face death that distinguishes us.
Since the first century CE, it’s been Jewish tradition that tahara-- the ritual of washing, purifying and dressing the deceased-- is the inclusive r |
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Why Is This Night Different? - A Passover Quiz
| The traditional Pesach story begins with four questions. Our Passover quiz contains forty questions. The maggid asks questions in order to arouse curiosity and participation in the Seder. We hope that our Passover quiz will arouse your interest in Pa |
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Covering Passover Fully
| Rabban Gamliel used to say “Whoever does not mention these three things-- Pesach, matzoh and maror (bitter herbs)—on Passover has not fulfilled his obligation (Mishnah Pesachim 10:5)”.
That’s because we find the underlying mean |
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Brit Millah: Mixed Feelings About An Old Rite
| Elizabeth Wyner Mark is a 70-something, nice Jewish grandmother. She's not the author you'd expect of a critical, scholarly, feminist book on circumcision.
Mark's book "The Covenant of Circumcision" is part of a Brandeis Univer |
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Celebrating Shavuot
| Some 3314 years ago, the Jewish people stood at Mount Sinai and something happened.
The holiday of Shavuot celebrates that “something” as a covenant (brit) between God and the Jewish people. Although Near Eastern kings of the B |
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Messianic Jews: Three Perspectives
| "You mean you don't believe in Jesus"?
Asked of Jews countless times by Christians, this simple question would appear to clearly define the difference between the two religious belief systems.
Christians |
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Counting the Dead In Iraq
| When do we officially know that Iraqis are engaged in a civil war?
The answer can be partially found in the Pentagon report, “Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq,” a 66-page document issued to Congress issued the last week |
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Preparing For the High Holidays 1 - How To Gear Up
| If Rosh HaShannah is a time of judgment in Judaism, then the month of Elul on the Jewish calendar is a time of conscious preparation leading up to the High Holidays.
“Our tradition understands this time of the year as a period |
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Judaism Without God? Of Course, Say Secular Jews
| When asked about their Jewish identity in an academic survey, only 53% of US Jews identified themselves as Jewish with respect to religion.
According to Jewish demographer Egon Mayer in his 2001 “American Religious Identification Survey”, that |
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Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: Three Ways to Get There in Prayer
| Jewish prayer is an “I-you” relationship with God. Nothing can be simpler. Nothing can be more difficult.
“If I’m going to talk with God, this kind of talk begins with the basic notion of saying: ‘Hello, I’m here to ask somethi |
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The Journey and Legacy of German Jews To America
| Prior to the arrival of more than two million Eastern European Jews beginning in the 1880s, the American Jewish community numbered about a quarter million mostly German-speaking people. But those German Jews who came here between 1820-1880 laid down |
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Israeli Folk Dance: More Than the Hora
| The definition of “folk dance”, according to Wikipedia, is dance developed spontaneously without a choreographer, originating in the 19th century or earlier, not currently copyrighted, dominated by an inherited tradition rather than by innovation and |
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Stay All Night and Just A Little Longer
| For Passover, it’s matzoh. Hanukah has candles. But the holiday of Shavuot is unique in that it has no specific mitzvah associated with it.
That’s why it’s called “the humble holiday” says TORCH Rabbi Yossi Grossman |
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"A Mighty Heart": A Daniel Pearl Story
| Daniel Pearl’s death was one of those moments of clarity.
Recorded on a three minute, 36 second video, titled “The Slaughter of the Spy Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl”, the visual opens with Daniel, naked from the waist up. |
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Tisha B'Av: Out of Destruction, A New Beginning
| Judaism was finished. Roman legions smashed into the Holy Temple on the ninth day of the month of Av (Tisha B’Av) in 70 CE. Romans burned the Temple to the ground. In the Jewish war for independence, more than a million Jews died (out of a total popu |
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Reconstructionist Havurah Stresses Renewal and Evolution
| Modern life shattered the authority of the otherworldly Jewish tradition, wrote Mordecai Kaplan. In order to strengthen the communal will to live and deal with the radically different conditions of world Jewry, a reconstruction of Judaism as a religi |
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How Do We Know What the Bible Says?
| There’s more than one way to read the Hebrew Bible. You could read it literally. Very Lutheran, but what happens when the text conflicts with our modern sense? You could read it in the light of modern biblical scholarship: what the Bible meant in its |
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What? Nobody Wants A Byline?
| These days, everyone claims to be an author. From speechwriters to the guy who created the “axis of evil” slogan, from artistic works to images, trade names and slogans--it’s all intellectual property. In contrast, there are no authors in rabbinic li |
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Tu B’Shevat: How Perspectives On the Holiday Have Changed
| The holiday of Tu B’Shevat is like the ugly duckling that grew into a swan. Never mentioned in Tanach, Tu B'Shevat (the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Shevat) was once simply the yearly date for reckoning the age of trees. In modern times, the holid |
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Women's Torah Commentary Marks A Historic First
| Torah has never been strictly limited to the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Torah also includes the interpretations—in particular, the classical rabbinic texts-- that grew up around Torah. Both written Torah and oral Torah (which encompasses u |
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Houston Mayor Impressed By Ancient and Modern in Israel
| Now that Houston Mayor Bill White has been to Israel, he chides his Jewish friends who say they’ve been meaning to go but just haven’t made the trip. The mayor visited the Jewish state for the first time March 15-20 as part of a fact-finding mission |
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The Fast of Tammuz
| Sunday marks the Fast of Tammuz. No food or drink after dawn. No music, haircuts or pleasure trips either.
“The 17th day of the month of Tammuz on the Jewish calendar (which falls on July 20 this year) is one of four fasts that |
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Deepening the Prayer Experience by Deepening the Prayerbook
| Long ago, the rabbis recognized the need to institute regular prayer service. Without a set time for routine prayer, most people would not do it. But as with anything that is done routinely, the human tendency is to make prayer a habit, something don |
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A Delivery of Prepared Kosher Meals Lightens Post-Ike Houston
| No electricity. No ice. No kosher food. Considering Houston’s reality three days after Hurricane Ike and three days before Shabbat, it appeared as if the upcoming Sabbath on September 19 would be something less than “a vision of the world in its perf |
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Best of the Jewish Book Fair Line Up
| Alan Zweibel
Clothing Optional
(Villard)
Writing television comedy is serious business. Alan Zweibel broke into the Comedy A-list by writing sketch comedy for Saturday Night Live. But he’s also succeeded in writin |
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Conserving A Unique Scroll
| Five megillot (scrolls) are traditionally read in synagogues throughout the year. Who knows six? Seth Irwin does.
Irwin is about to complete the Masters Program in Art Conservation at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. It’s the |
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Is A Fear of Heaven Possible In Our Day?
| I’ve belonged to my Conservative shul for 20 years and I do not remember yirat shamayim ever being a topic of discussion. Yirat shamayim is the fear or awe of G-d. We frequently discuss love for G-d and closeness to him. But never fear.
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- First Came the Enlightenment, Then Came Assimiliation
| Throw out the Jewish religion. Jettison Zionism. Lose fluency in Hebrew or Yiddish. Empty one’s life of all Jewish content.
Does an “implicit Jewish sensibility” remain to one who has broken with all things Jewish? Does anything Jewis |
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When One Reads Suffering Back Into the Bible
| People sometimes suffer bitterly in the Hebrew Bible. In the Haftarah for Rosh HaShannah, second day, Rachel cries out for her absent children (Jeremiah 31:15). She weeps. She wails. She refuses to be comforted.
A passage like Rachel i |
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Bitter Lemons On the Border
| As Israeli director Eran Riklis’ feature film “Lemon Tree” (Etz Limon) opens, we catch a glimpse of Israeli Defense minister Israel Navon (Doron Tavory) giving a speech on television. “Goals are achieved only if you draw boundaries,” he says. Cut to |
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The Ottoman Empire: When Diversity Was Accepted
| How did Jews and other minorities historically fare under Moslem rule? Were minorities treated with equality, tolerance or persecution?
The question is more than academic. The present conflict between “the West” and “the Islamic world |
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A Classic Revisited for the High Holidays
| What work will you be doing on Yom Kippur?
For some who attend synagogue, the task of the day sounds like: “Something’s happening here/What it is ain’t exactly clear/There’s a man on the bimah over there/Telling me that I got to beware |
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Who's Your Daddy: A Viral Ad Campaign Gone Wild
| In a September You Tube video, Karen, a young attractive blond Danish woman, holds August, “my baby boy”, who is peacefully drinking his bottle. Karen is seated and speaking into a camera. “I’m doing this video,” she says, “because I’m trying to find |
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Liberal Is Not A Four-Letter Word
| Jews are politically stupid. If we weren’t, we’d all be Conservative. That, in essence, is what Norman Podhoretz argues in his new book “Why Are Jews Liberals?” (Doubleday).
“There is no more vigorous thinker or skilled polemicist in A |
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D'var Torah: Lekh Lecha
| This morning, I’m going to focus on just two words from today’s Torah portion: lekh lecha.
Literally, it means, “go forth”. Some Biblical commentators have maintained that “lekh lecha” is a stylistic expression, a fairly common express |
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Moving Past Nostalgia In Yiddish Culture
| Nostalgia is a longing or dwelling on the past, usually in an idealized form. Normally, I find nostalgia distasteful, this longing for better days, which is largely mythical. And when you combine nostalgia with Yiddish, I usually find it to be a regr |
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The Completely Integrated Rambam
| Although Moses Maimonides (the Rambam) lived in the 12th century, he remains a fascinating figure for contemporary Jews. Maimonides lived by Torah, wrote legal responsa and was intellectually involved with Halakhah. Yet he also fully embraced Aristot |
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Grieving After Loss: Going Beyond the Five Stages
| Even though death is inevitable and grief confronts everyone, most people know little about how to react to loss. Grief tends to be portrayed as a paralyzing sadness. Many are familiar with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ “five stages of grief” model.
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Not Allowed At the Kotel
| Zionists once argued one of the most important reasons to create a Jewish state was to return Jews to the stage of history. Compared to living in Diaspora, Israel would give Jews the capacity to take the ideas they nurtured in theory and apply them t |
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Sunday Get Ready to Fast
| Sunday marks the Fast of Tammuz. No food or drink after dawn. No music, haircuts or pleasure trips either.
“The 17th day of the month of Tammuz on the Jewish calendar (which falls on July 20, 2008 this year) is one of four fast |
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When Throwing A Party Could Mean Life or Death
| Purim is a slightly transgressive holiday.
Historically, Purim has been a holiday for merry-making and mockery--so much so that it has become almost a general rule that "on Purim everything is allowed", even transgressions of a Biblical law su |
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Texas Jews: A History On Two Frontiers
| Texas Jews have always imagined themselves as conspicuously different from “normal Jews”. Having always felt at home in Texas, Lone Star Jews point out that we have been a part of Texas history even as far back as 1579 when the Spanish crown granted |
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One Prayer That Manages To Reach the Most Casual
| “Who will live and who will die,” asks the deeply disturbing Un’taneh Tokef prayer in the Ashkenazi High Holiday machzor. The text, a piyyut (liturgical poem), appears in the deepest part of both the Rosh HaShannah and Yom Kippur services, during Mus |
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The New Face of American Aliyah
| They used to come by ship or over land. Historically, Jews who wanted to reach Israel to make aliyah had to overcome many hardships to reach their homeland.
Today, it’s simple: You board an airplane and arrive 11 hours later.
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When Academics Look At Religious Rituals
| Rituals work. I recently rediscovered how the doing of rituals affect one’s well being when my father died. Knowing the order required from the moment of death to the funeral service and the burial to observing shivah to reciting kaddish--more import |
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A Musical Return To Poland, Birthplace of the Cantor's Art
| If the Cantor’s Assembly, represented by 72 American cantors, had simply held their 2009 convention in Poland, uniting hazzanut to its birthplace for the first time since World War II, dyeinu.
If the entire series of cantors concerts i |
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