Jewish Life
The all-segregated, three-month training course for the religious sector is the sixth one held this year.
Damascus’s Eliyahu Hanavi synagogue—or what’s left of it—is now safe to visit again after more than a decade in the midst of a war zone.
Forty rabbis sign letter denouncing “disrespect” amid backlash to a Standing Together event at Baltimore Hebrew Congregation that accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “war crimes.”
“If we understand why the Jews have been hated obsessively for so many millennia, then we understand our greatness,” says Rabbi Raphael Shore.
Five Chabad rabbis erected the first public menorah in Philadelphia in 1974. Now, 50 years later, roughly 15,000 giant menorahs are lit annually in public squares from Washington, D.C., to Melbourne, Australia.
“You’re giving people the opportunity to just focus on their finals, and it’s really helpful,” a Yeshiva University student said.
“The Maccabees were also exhausted, but they didn’t give up,” Rabbi Levi Shemtov, who organizes the event, told JNS.
The display at Schneider Children’s Medical Center also features a gigantic yellow ribbon for the hostages in Gaza.
The holiday is commemorated by the lighting of the menorah, symbolizing the rededication of the Second Temple.
As Jewish families worldwide prepare to welcome the holiday, here are some basics about the eight-day “Festival of Lights.”
The findings, the result of a six-year investigation by Justice for Jews from Arab Countries, are part of a broader research initiative, with data on 10 additional Arab countries to be released in the coming months.
The “Lighting up the North” project, which will see the menorah lit up across northern Israel over the holiday, “shows our strength and power as a nation for good,” said Israel Police bomb-disposal specialist Yossi Hod.
