Tenth of Tevet

This fast commemorates the beginning of the end of the First Temple.

By Dr. Guy Miron for MyJewishLearning.com    

The fast day of the 10th of the Hebrew month of Tevet symbolizes the first of a series of events which led to the destruction of the First Temple: the beginning of the siege of the Babylonians on Jerusalem, the capital city of Judea, as the Book of Kings relates:

“Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. And in the ninth year of his reign, on the 10th day of the 10th month Nebuchadnezzar moved against Jerusalem with his whole army. He besieged it; and they built towers against it all around. The city continued in a state of siege until the 11th year of King Zedekiah”  (Kings II, 25 verse 1-2).

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Gad Elbaz’s Heartfelt Plea to Our Father in Heaven

From IsraelVideoNetwork

Living at a time when bad news comes all too often from Israel and senseless deaths have left so many traumatized and grieving, Jews worldwide have been shaken to the core and struggle to comprehend the unthinkable violence and bloodshed that have snuffed out so many promising lives. Yet even during difficult times we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that our Father in heaven loves us and await our cries for his compassion.

In this all new music video titled Avinu, Gad Elbaz eloquently and poignantly gives voice to the plea that is in all of our hearts, as we ask for divine protection and the peace that continues to elude us. Avinu is a moving musical prayer whose words echo our innermost thoughts as we yearn for an end to the horrific turbulence whose icy grip has made fear and worry our constant companions.

Technion breaks ground on first Israeli university in China

By LIDAR GRAVÉ-LAZI for JPost.com

New university represents an historic collaboration between the Israel Institute of Technology and Shantou University in China.

The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology laid a cornerstone on Wednesday for the first Israeli University in China - The Guangdong Technion-Israel Institute of Technology (GTIIT) in Shantou, in the Guangdong province in southeastern China.

The new university represents an historic collaboration between the Technion and Shantou University in China, and was made possible with the support of the Governor of Guangdong Province, Shantou Municipality and the Li Ka Shing Foundation, which promotes education and healthcare initiatives.

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The Secret Jewish History of 'Star Wars'

Seth Rogovoy for The Jewish Daily Forward   
In a 2012 interview, “Star Wars” creator George Lucas made the feeble claim that the release of another episode in his now-38-year-old sci-fi franchise is “not a religious event. I hate to tell people that. It’s a movie, just a movie.” Needless to say, such a remark merely fans the flames of devotion accorded to one of Hollywood’s all-time most popular series, whose every new release sparks a fanatical response of such zealotry that any self-respecting sociologist could only describe it as “religious” in nature.

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Itzhak Perlman named winner of 2016 Genesis Prize

From JTA

The 70-year-old violin virtuoso joins Michael Bloomberg and Michael Douglas as recipients of the annual $1 million prize that has been dubbed the “Jewish Nobel."

Mazal tov!

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From fencing champ to beauty queen: Meet the reigning Miss Israel

 JPost.com

19-year-old Avigail Alfatov from Acre will represent Israel in this year's Miss Universe Pageant.

Avigail Alfatov eats her pizza upside down and has funny hiccups. Her favorite food is falafel and she makes her face shine by wiping it with green tea bags.

How do we know this and, perhaps more important, why do we care?

Well, Alfatov is the reigning Miss Israel and is the country’s entry in the Miss Universe Pageant, which airs December 20 on Fox. These are just a few of the fun facts listed on her contestant profile.

She is also a national fencing champion, would love to meet Michael Jordan and has volunteered with Akim, an organization that works with people suffering from intellectual disabilities.

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It Is Time for a Rededication

Rev. Dan Schatz, HuffPost

There is something sacred in the act of lighting a flame. This time of year brings many
such rituals -- the Yule log, the Christmas candle and the Chanukah menorah, among others. Each, in its own way, reminds us that our lives need never be engulfed by darkness so long as we remember to kindle a light.

The Chanukah menorah dates to an ancient civil war, when after generations of strife within Judaism, the Maccabees went into the Temple, cleaned and purified its space, and lit the sacred lamp. There was only a small amount of fuel, but it lasted for eight days, remembered today in the Jewish Festival of Lights.

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The Secret History of “I Have a Little Dreidel”

By Jacob Kaplan for Jewniverse

You’ve probably never heard of the late Samuel E. Goldfarb, but chances are good that you’ve heard the music he’s written. In fact, you probably know one of his songs by heart: the Hannukah-season staple “I Have a Little Dreidel.”

Goldfarb came of age at the turn of the century in a Lower East Side tenement, in a large, music-oriented family, and cut his teeth performing Jewish liturgical songs at synagogues throughout Manhattan. He compiled two Jewish songbooks with his brother, Israel. Influenced by Tin Pan Alley, Goldfarb went on to write more secular ditties—enter the Dreidel Song, which was published in 1927.

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More Hanukkah Resources

Another fun video on this third day of Haukkah

 


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Knesset to Host First-ever Hanukkah Event With Reform, Conservative Jews

Other alternative candle lightings in Israel include Jewish-Muslim celebration in Tel Aviv and interfaith event at old Jerusalem train station.

By Judy Maltz  for Haaretz

A first-of-its-kind Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony that will include representatives of the Conservative and Reform movements in Israel will be held at the Knesset this week.

The ceremony, to be held Tuesday afternoon in one of the main halls of the parliament, is the initiative of MK Michal Rozin (Meretz), head of the Knesset lobby for pluralism and civil equality. Among the candle-lighters will be men, women, religious and secular activists, as well as Ethiopian Jewish clergy. The event is meant to coincide with International Human Rights day, which falls this week.

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Jake Owen’s Chanukah Album

With Hanukkah here, there's no more countdown, so we're bringing you fun things during Hanukkah.

For today, the first day of Hanukkah, and that other holiday two weeks away, we're getting tired of hearing 'holiday' music in every store too.  So if you love parodies, you'll really enjoy this.




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On Hanukkah, the Latke Road Less Traveled

Part of our Countdown to Hanukkah series.

By Joan Nathan for The New York Times

Each year before Hanukkah, which begins this year at sunset on Sunday, I wonder why I labor so over potato latkes. I grate the potatoes and onions by hand, often skinning my knuckles. I squeeze out the water so the potatoes fry crisper and won’t discolor — but sometimes they still do.

I tasted a mashed potato latke recently and knew I had found my ideal: no grating, no squeezing, no discoloring. So easy that I wondered why cooks take the more difficult path.

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The Little Girl Who Wanted a Dog for Hanukkah

Part of our Countdown to Hanukkah series.

Her parents didn’t want her to have a dog. Or maybe they just didn’t want her to want something they didn’t want themselves.

By Simon Yisrael Feuerman for Tablet Magazine

Miriam wanted a dog for Hanukkah.

Her Hasidic-leaning family was up in arms. The father, a learned man in his 40s, asked: A hoont? A dog? What kind of 12 year-old girl wants a dog? For her pregnant mother, this request came from the very dark side of the moon. A dog! She said it as though the very word were a curse. In the Brooklyn courtyard where they lived, neighbors put in their two cents: A dog!? Who knows what comes from the mouths of children?

A rabbi was consulted.

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The Maccabeats - Latke Recipe - Hanukkah

Part of our Countdown to Hanukkah series.

 


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Honey-Rosemary Angel Food Cake

Part of our Countdown to Hanukkah series

From Better Homes and Gardens

A tradition on Hanukkah is to eat dairy (see yesterday's entry as to why). We think you'll enjoy this very different Hanukkah cake.  Let us know what you think

Ingredients

1/2 cup honey
8 ounces mascarpone cheese
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon snipped fresh rosemary
1 7 inch angel food cake

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On Hanukkah, Women As Role Models

Part of our Countdown to Hanukkah series

MyJewishLearning.com Staff Writer

Although Judah Maccabee and his father Matathias are the most famous characters in the Hanukkah story, the holiday also commemorates two Jewish women: Judith and Hannah.

The First Book of Maccabees and Second Book of Maccabees, which chronicle the story of the rebellion that inspired Hanukkah, were not included in the Bible, and are instead part of a body of texts known as the Apocrypha. Also in the Apocrypha is the Book of Judith, which tells how this heroine stopped the siege of Jerusalem by decapitating Holofernes, a major military leader for the enemy.

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Citing boycott, Jewish academic refuses to help Israeli child

Asked for info on horses, Dr. Marsha Levine tells schoolgirl she’ll answer ‘when there is justice for Palestinians’

By Times of Israel Staff

An  expert in the history of horses has rebuffed a request for information from an Israeli girl, citing as the reason for her refusal Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

Shachar Rabinovitch, 13, wrote recently to the British-American researcher Marsha Levine, who is Jewish, that she was doing a school project about horses and requested details about the domestication and breeding of early horse species.

According to a Facebook post by her mother, Shamir, on Monday, Levine replied: “I’ll answer your questions when there is peace and justice for Palestinians in Palestine.”

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Holiday Heartache – Helping Divorced Kids Get Through

Part of our Countdown to Hanukkah, this article deals with families of divorce and how to navigate the holidays.

Barbara Aiello for The Times of Israel

In  a few days Chanukah begins and then it’s time for Christmas. But for many children whose parents are divorced, the holiday season can be at best difficult and at worst traumatic.

Before I became a rabbi, I served on the board of a counseling service for divorced families. Later, when I became a rabbi, I became a support group leader for families and children who suffer through all the issues surrounding the breakup of a marriage. I’ve seen a lot.  From my own experience as a divorced parent to my work as a counselor, I’ve come to the conclusion that the most difficult divorces involve children and the areas that are most contentious surround child support, custody and visitation.  And each of these is exacerbated when the holidays roll around

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Ramen Latkes with Sriracha Mayo

By Whitney Fisch in The Nosher for MyJewishLearning.com

Living in LA is like a foodie Wonderland. On almost every corner in almost every neighborhood, there is something delicious to eat.

And the foodies here in LA do a lot of things right, but by far the top three are tacos, sushi, and ramen. In fact, ramen is so good here it inspired me to make my own just recently. Being the typical Jewish mother that I am I made far too many noodles. The next morning it occurred to me, “why not fry up some leftover ramen noodles,  slap some sriracha mayo on top and have ourselves a nice ramen-inspired latke?!”

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Compromise for Now, the End of Israel for Later

David Pollock for Mosaic

That’s what Palestinians say they want. What does this bifurcated attitude mean for policymakers?

Against the bloody background of stabbings and other deadly violence in Israel and the West Bank, Daniel Polisar’s thorough analysis of Palestinian polling data, “What Do Palestinians Want?,” makes essential reading for anyone interested in more than just the grim daily headlines. His central point—that the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have long supported “armed struggle” against Israelis—is not only accurate but a fact regularly distorted by media focus on the seemingly “individual” nature of today’s terrorist incidents. Polisar’s conclusions, moreover, are well grounded in exhaustive research into the mounds of survey data that have piled up ever since the first Oslo accords of 1993—which is when I myself started to work with Palestinian colleagues in launching the first scientific polls of the Palestinian population.

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The Bataclan Was Named For This Jewish Operetta

By Ilana Sichel for Jewniverse

Haaretz writer Vivian Eden just unearthed an amazing historical factoid: the Bataclan, the stately Paris theater that is now synonymous with bloodshed and horror, takes its name from an operetta written and composed by two 19th-century Jews.

Composer Jacques Offenbach was born to a German cantor, and came to Paris to study music. The libretto he set to music, “Ba-Ta-Clan,” was written by Ludovic Halévy, the son of a Parisian Jew who converted to Christianity for marriage. (Though with a name like Halévy we can’t imagine he made a very convincing Christian.)

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Thousands of Holocaust papers found in Budapest apartment

Documents cataloging residents of Hungarian capital in 1944, just before Jews were packed into a ghetto and shipped to death camps, found inside wall

By Times of Israel Staff

Renovations at an apartment in Budapest uncovered thousands of documents from 1944 cataloging the Jewish population of the Hungarian capital, according to a recent report in the Austrian newspaper Kronen Zeitung.

The 6,300 documents were found in a wall of an apartment in Budapest that had recently cracked. When the landlord started fixing the wall, the bundles of paper were found stashed inside.

The papers date from just before the confinement of Hungarian Jews to the Budapest ghetto in 1944. In May of that year, city officials drafted a list of the city’s population, differentiating between Christians and Jews, detailing addresses, identities and cost of rent. The newfound documents detail residents from just four of the city’s districts.

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Sigd / סיגד

From HebCal.com

Sigd begins at sundown on Tue, 10 November 2015 (29th of Cheshvan, 5776)

Sigd is an Amharic word meaning "prostration" or "worship" and is the commonly used name for a holiday celebrated by the Ethiopian Jewish community on the 29th of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan. This date is exactly 50 days after Yom Kippur, usually falling out in late October or November, and according to Ethiopian Jewish tradition is also the date that G-d first revealed himself to Moses.

Read more about it at The Times of Israel

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Helen Mirren and Dumbledore say don't boycott Israel

In a matter of days, both famous British women have come out strongly against the boycott movement.

Rowling cites Dumbledor in arguing against Israel boycott, see the article in The Times of Israel.

J. K.  Rowling defended her opposition to a cultural boycott of Israel with an analogy from her “Harry Potter” book series.

The author has faced backlash since joining 150 prominent British figures in signing an open letter, published in The Guardian last week, that endorsed cultural engagement with Israel rather than a cultural boycott, as a way to promote peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

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Helen Mirren on Israel boycott: ‘It’s the craziest idea’ as told to Raoul Wootliff for The Times of Israel

British actress Helen Mirren spoke out against the cultural boycott of Israel on Wednesday upon being honored at the 29th Israel Film Festival in Los Angeles, California.
Talking to press before the ceremony, the Academy Award winner described the campaign to boycott Israeli through cutting off cultural ties as “a really bad idea.”



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If you love Israel, don’t boycott it

By Elliott Abrams, Opinion, for the Washington Post

We love Israel. We love it more than we love other nations. That’s why we must do all we can to destroy its economy.

That is the message of the bizarre Oct. 25 Sunday Opinion column by professors Steven Levitsky and Glen Weyl. Their argument is simple: Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank and Gaza is now “permanent,” unless sufficient economic damage is done to force Israel to change course.

What’s missing here? Two things: history and Palestinians.

History reveals two recent attempts by Israeli leaders to negotiate a comprehensive peace with the Palestinians — by prime ministers Ehud Barak in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008 — which were rejected by Palestine Liberation Organization leaders Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. Of this, Levitsky and Weyl say nothing. They also do not mention Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, seeming to regard it as “occupied” even though not a single Israeli soldier or civilian lives there.

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Welcome to Haifa, the Israeli City That Refuses to Hate

Naomi Zeveloff for The Jewish Daily Forward   

At a bus station in downtown Haifa, handwritten signs in Hebrew, Arabic and Russian have been taped to the glass: “Arabs and Jews refuse to be enemies.”

It’s perhaps a simplistic slogan for these charged times, but at least some Haifa residents appear to agree with it. Dozens had signed their names on the posters, as if they were a public petition to maintain the city’s status quo.

While Israel and the Palestinian Territories are dragged into yet another bout of harrowing violence, Haifa has remained relatively calm.

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Israeli hummus cafe gives Jewish-Arab tables half off

From Aljazeera

Owner offers free refill to Jews and Palestinian guests dining together, to show that "we're all human beings".

A hummus cafe in Israel is giving a 50 percent discount to tables mixing Jewish and Arab diners, in a campaign the owner hopes will bring people together as dozens of people have been killed in Israeli-Palestinian violence this month.

Kobi Tzafrir, the owner of Humus Bar in the town of Kfar Vitkin, initially posted the offer on Facebook.

"With us we don't have Arabs! But we also don't have Jews... With us we've got human beings! Real excellent Arab hummus! Excellent Jewish falafel!", the post, which by Monday evening had been shared more than 1,000 times, read.

Tzafrir told Al Jazeera he wanted to show that there are a lot of Arabs and Jews who are not taking part in the violent events reported in the media.

"We want to show that we're all human beings, just like each other, not so different," he said over the phone.

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‘When we told them we were Jews from Israel, they kissed us’

Amid tragic circumstances, Israeli boaters save 11 Syrian and Iraqi refugees drifting off the coast of Turkey and trying to make their way to Europe

By Tamar Pileggi for The Times of Israel

An Israeli yacht crew rescued a group of Syrian and Iraqi refugees clinging to a capsized rubber dinghy adrift in the water in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea Sunday morning.

The group, sailing off the coast of Turkey, pulled 11 refugees from the water, in addition to a dead infant.

After hearing faint cries for help while boating between the Turkish town of Kas and the Greek island of Kastellorizo, members of the Ashdod-based Poseidon Sailing Club noticed an approximately 11-year-old Syrian boy floating in the water alone.

“We pulled him out of the water and he told us his brother was missing and probably dead,” the yacht’s captain, Shlomo Asaban, told the Ynet news website.

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Gourmet ice-cream cones are the new scoop

Israeli ingenuity is about to change the way the world eats its ice cream.

By Viva Sarah Press for Israel21c

Bisconi. Remember that name. And remember that it started in Israel.

The gourmet food startup quietly introduced its whole-grain, naturally flavored ice-cream cones to parlors in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem last October. The small-scale local sales are part of a proof-of-concept plan to verify that Bisconi is ready for the global market.

Two big ice-cream industry players – one a multinational corporation, the other a European bigwig – sought out Bisconi and are already in dialogue with the company, which has yet to launch a marketing campaign.

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SPECIAL REPORT: IsraAid helping Syrians off the boats in Greece

From JewishNewsOnline UK

Volunteers from Israeli aid agency IsraAid are helping Syrian refugees off the boats in Greece. But they need your help, hears Stephen Oryszczuk

The man supervising Israel’s rescue of Syrian refugees off the Greek coast is lost for words. He’s been asked to sum up the scale of the crisis. “You’re standing there on the beach, with all these little rubber boats bringing thousands of people every day,” he says finally. “Honestly? It’s like a tragic scene from a Hollywood epic.”

This is Yotam Polizer, regional director at IsraAID, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that relies on donations to offer emergency medical and psychological support to Syrian refugees arriving in Greece, Serbia, Croatia, Jordan and Iraq.

His social activism has taken him from the Negev to Nepal via Japanese tsunamis and typhoons in the Philippines, but only now is he speechless. It’s not surprising. He is on the front-line of a mass migration, the biggest movement of people in 70 years, with 70,000 arriving in Europe every week. And he has just 12 people to help him.

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