How Saving a Haggadah Saved a Life

One of the most famous Haggadahs in the word, is the Sarajevo Haggadah.  It is believed to have been taken out of Spain by Jews who were expelled in 1492. It was sold to the National Museum in Sarajevo in 1894.  During the Second World War, the Haggadah was hidden from the Nazis by the Museum's chief librarian, Derviš Korkut, who at risk to his own life, smuggled the Haggadah out of ...

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Jews are from the Moon, Egyptians are from the Sun

The first commandment that God gave to the Jewish people in Egypt before the Exodus was to establish the calendar.  In order to understand the importance attached to this commandment, we must understand the type of society that the Jews lived in during their exile in Egypt.  The Egyptians, along with the rest of the world at that time, worshipped many different gods, each believed to have its own sphere ...

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The Sun, the Moon and the Seasons – Tzav 5775

We just celebrated the beginning of the month of Nissan, the Hebrew month in which Passover occurs and we also read a special Torah reading about the creation of the Jewish calendar. Measuring and marking the passage of time is a universal human preoccupation. At least forty different calendars are in use around the world today.  The most widely used systems are the solar calendar, based on the cycle of ...

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