The First and Lesser-Known Holocaust Remembrance Day was Declared on December 14, 1948
Three years before the advent of Yom Hashoah, another day was designated to recite Kaddish for the victims of the Holocaust.
Three years before the advent of Yom Hashoah, another day was designated to recite Kaddish for the victims of the Holocaust.
As a man of letters, Agnon showed deep appreciation for America’s marketplace of ideas and viewpoints.
It was a Rosh Hashanah like no other. It was the Rosh Hashanah when I felt as if I held a “Book of Life” in my hands. On that day, for the very first time, I opened S.Y. Agnon’s beautiful High Holy Days book “Yamim Noraim — Days of Awe.”
When we sat down for that cup of coffee (or two, or three…), he asked me to recount our previous meetings. For me, those meetings were almost a mirror image of the various issues that came to define his life as a brilliant literary figure and outspoken public intellectual.
The illustrious world of Kabbalah and Mysticism as we know it was born on Shavuot in Salonika in 1533, courtesy of two outstanding Sephardic scholars.
Walking all alone in the museum of the shadow of death, I heard more than the voices from the films and interviews. I heard haunting voices from our past
Mimouna is the post-Passover celebration when neighbors, family and friends stop by your house, kiss each other on both cheeks, greet each other with festive blessings of Tirbah U’Tissad (may you prosper and succeed), and enjoy delicious sweets from a beautifully decorated sweet table.
What would a Seder with Judaism’s modern-day master storyteller be like? How did Agnon explain the Haggadah to his family?
In asking this question, he reached out to all Jews – religious, secular, Sephardi and Ashkenazi, old and young, in Israel and in the diaspora – urging us to use the Seder as a symposium exploring the meaning of Jewish identity.
Benny Lau holds no national “chief rabbi” official position in Israel, but is no less of a public figure.