Passover Survival Tips for Vegans

By Mayim Bialik for Kveller

Imagine if you will that in addition to the five Biblically prohibited grains (rye, wheat, barley, spelt, oats) and the Eastern European custom of refraining from eating kitniyot (including beans, peas, corn, and rice), you add on the excitement of choosing not to consume any byproducts of animals (no beef, fish, chicken, dairy, eggs, or honey!). That’s Pesach in our house, including for our 2 ½- and 5-year-old boys.

Eight days and eight nights, baby. All vegan. All kosher for Pesach. And no eating out at non-Passover certified restaurants. Ready to call Child Protective Services on me yet?

Well, don’t. I find it fulfilling, meaningful, and spiritually satisfying to raise my sons the way Jews have fought to live for thousands of years, despite persecution and threat. Every holiday is an opportunity to impart some lesson, some tidbit of meaning, and some dose of enjoyment and pride in our heritage.

Continue reading.

Follow us on   

What Does A Return To The ’67 Borders Mean To Israel?

Donny Reich, Op-Ed, The Times of Israel

In the aftermath of the recent elections, pressure has increased on Israel to return to the ’67 borders, also known as the 1949 armistice lines. This is the basis of the ‘2 State Solution’ that most of the world would like to impose on Israel.

But on a practical level, what does a return to the ’67 borders mean?

Here is just a taste of what would happen:

1. Jewish access to all significant Jewish holy sites would be, at best, severely limited. We know this from both past and present experiences. Before 1967 Jews were banned from Jewish holy sites In Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Jews could not visit the Kotel, or the Temple Mount. Jews were not only banned from the ancient Mt. of Olives cemetery, but helplessly watched as the Jordanians defiled graves. Access to Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem and Cave of the Machpela was completely banned.

Continue reading.

Ice Cream Pyramids for Jon Stewart (and You)

This article has been reprinted with permission from InterfaithFamily 

by Sarah Ruderman Wilensky

Jon Stewart, born Jonathan Leibowitz, is one of America’s best known Jews, and also in an inter-faith marriage. In 2012, as Passover and Easter were approaching Stewart encouraged Jews to up the ante on Passover as it wasn’t competing very well against Easter, especially for kids. In the “Faith Off” clip below, from The Daily Show, he says where Easter has chocolate, Passover has Matzah. Where Easter has Peeps, Passover has hard boiled eggs. You get the idea.

“Oh wait, I’ll see you over at the Red Sea ride when I’m done building ice cream pyramids.”

What about spicing things up, Jon asks? What about ice cream pyramids? Well Jon, in honor of your last Passover behind that Comedy Central desk where we’ve come to depend on you to deliver us news we can actually digest, we’re giving you just what you asked for: Ice Cream Pyramids.

Continue reading.

For more great Jewish cooking ideas, check out our    page.

Meet Google Israel’s Yossi Matias, The Genius Behind Many Of Google’s Most Stunning Achievements

By Maya Yarowsky, NoCamels

You know that function on Google Search that finishes your sentences for you? Or what about the helpful information boxes that you often see at the top of a search inquiry? These central features of Google’s most valuable offering have helped the Internet giant beat out other worthy competitors, like Yahoo and Bing, and continuously do their share to make information more accessible.

What you may not know is that autocomplete, Google Trends, Knowledge Graph and a number of other features on Google were developed in Israel under the supervision of global Google VP of Search Yossi Matias. Tasked with establishing one of Google’s first research and development centers outside of the United States in 2006, Matias has been responsible for directing the Israeli R&D center towards stunning achievements and technological breakthroughs in the realms of search, big data, and internet privacy, as well as initiating impressive cultural entrepreneurship programs that too have “gone global”. In an exclusive interview with NoCamels, Matias paints a picture of just how important a member Google Israel has become in the company’s global family, and offers up his assessments on where the future of Israeli entrepreneurship is heading.

Continue reading.

Love Israel? We do too. Follow our Israel board on    page.

Australian theater rejects Jewish act, cites ‘Zionism’

Sydney’s Red ­Rattler Theatre refuses Hillel request to book venue for stage play because of ‘occupation of Palestine’

By Times of Israel staff

An Australian theater rejected a booking from a Jewish cultural group for a series of performances, saying it did not not host groups supportive of “the colonization and occu­pation of Palestine.”

The Red ­Rattler Theatre in Marrickville in Sydney responded to a request by Hillel, a Jewish organization for students and young adults, to hire the venue for a series of performances, reportedly about the Holocaust, with an email reading: “Our policy does not support ­colonialism/Zionism. Therefore we do not host groups that support the colonization and occu­pation of Palestine.”

The incident has angered the local Jewish community.

“It’s sad to see an artistic group practise outright discrimination and, worse, impor­ting divisiveness based on conflicts taking place far from Australia. We ought to be able to get along and work with each respectfully, despite political views or differences of opinion, ” said NSW Jewish Board of Deput­ies chief executive Vic Alhadeff, according to The Australian.

Attempts to contact the theater to explain that Hillel was apolitical were unsuccessful, said Alhadeff.

Love Israel? We do too. Follow our Israel board on    page.

Madeleine Kunin Never Felt Anti-Semitism in Vermont — but Switzerland Was Different Story

By Madeleine May Kunin for The Jewish Daily Forward

Trailblazing Governor Felt Hatred in Europe

The only whiff of anti-Semitism that I experienced during my campaign for governor of Vermont took the form of a reporter’s question. He asked my campaign manager Liz Bankowski: “How are you going to deal with Madeleine Kunin’s liabilities?”

“What liabilities?” Liz asked.

“Well, she’s a woman, a democrat and she’s Jewish.”

Liz thought for a moment before posing him a question: “Has anyone said that being Jewish was a liability?

“Err, no,” the reporter weakly replied.

“Then it isn’t a story,” Liz said. With that retort, she quashed the story.

The main reason I didn’t experience anti-Semitism during my three terms as governor was that people couldn’t figure out the derivation of my name, or how to pronounce it. I sometimes speculate whether my life would have been different if I had married a Cohen or a Goldberg. I’d like to think not.

As it turned out, my name often morphed into something else — McCuen, McKeon, McKay, Cunin, or some other variation of Kunin, which gave me Irish or Scottish forbearers.

When, in 1984, I was elected as the fourth woman governor (in her own right) in the United States, several groups took credit. The American Medical Society ran this headline: “Doctor’s Wife Is Elected Governor.”

The Aufbau had a different angle: “Jewish Woman Elected Governor.”

Continue reading.

Follow us on   

After electoral trouncing, what future for the Israeli left?

A lot of lessons can be gleaned from Tuesday’s results. Some of them might be uncomfortable

By Haviv Rettig Gur, The Times of Israel

A lot of groups are licking their wounds after Likud’s trouncing of the Labor-led Zionist Union on Tuesday.

The Israeli left, to be sure, did better than it has done in almost a generation. It rallied around the Labor party, energized the base, sent thousands of volunteers to “get out the vote.”

And it lost. Spectacularly.

In the process, politicians, pundits, pollsters and analysts learned some important lessons – not just in humility, but also in the changing face of the Israeli electorate.

The right learned that Likud is its great indispensable party, the big tent to which it rallies in times of danger. That ethos of underlying unity among the usually bickering factions of the right headed off on Tuesday the left’s most potent challenge in almost two decades. It won’t be forgotten anytime soon.

We all learned that the right knows how to get out the vote. Or, at least, that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does. His method was simple: talk incessantly about the turnout of the enemy – the left, the Arabs, the shadowy foreign funding behind it all. It wasn’t exactly a noble or honest final few days in Likud’s campaign, but it worked.

Continue reading.

Follow us on