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Ah, those New York Jews.
Woody Allen, Philip Roth, Ed Koch, Alfred Kazin.
Katz’s Deli, Zabar’s, Pastrami Sandwiches, Lox and Bagels, Matzoh Ball Soup, Chopped Liver, Gefilte Fish.
The Lower East Side.
All one big Ashkenazi world.
I was once told a story by Mickey Kairey, one of the patron saints of the Brooklyn Syrian Jewish [...]

Ayala stood excited in front of more then one hundred people in a special poetry and music support event that was host and organized by the two poets and activists, Mati Shemoelof and Almog Behar.
(photo taken by Moti Kikyon. from right to left: Mati Shemoelof and Almog Behar) The event took place at the [...]

Yes, before we get to a round up of all the fabulous seder haggadot and supplements there are to behold, trust that there is a feasty delight about to happen.
The Leonard Lopate Show is hosting a recipe swap, this time on Matzo balls, and wants you, their faithful listeners and community members, to chime [...]

Parashat Terumah
The Gift of Safe Space
by Y. Gavriel A. Levi Ansara on Saturday February 24, 2007
6 Adar 5767
Exodus 25:1 - 27:19,Shabbat
Parashat Terumah opens with G-d speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai and commanding him in meticulous detail regarding the construction of the Mishkan, or “tabernacle,� the portable dwelling place of G-d’s presence that the Israelites [...]

At 5, he learned his primary colours. Red, blue, yellow. Except that the red wasn’t truly red, but a pinkish red that he later learned was called magenta, and the blue wasn’t really blue, but an electrical turquoise hue called cyan.
At 13, he learned the colour of longing when his family [...]

Gavriel Ansara is a polycultural polyglot from an observant Jewish background with ties to several continents. He is a board member of Keshet, Boston’s Jewish GLBTQI advocacy and education organization, and founder/coordinator of Tiferet, a Keshet project designed to meet the needs of Orthodox and traditionally observant Jews who self-identify as gender and/or sexual minorities. [...]

It is just after Rosh Hashanah, mere days after I chose to protest racist comments in my synagogue by praying at home on two of the holiest days of the Jewish year. Appalled by the bigotry of references to the genetic inferiority of African-Americans, aware that my rabbi shared my anti-racist views but was [...]

First published in the Jewish Independent.
East European tradition is religious hallmark.
LOOLWA KHAZZOOM
I entered the study hall of the Iraqi synagogue in Ramat Gan – the synagogue where I’d spent my childhood summers. Some of the women sat on the outskirts of the hall, literally outside, and others sat pressed against the right side wall, huddled [...]