Shavuot is the day the Torah was given — celebrating the supernatural encounter between God and the Israelites at Mount Sinai, an event which changed mankind forever. Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people at Mount Sinai and is also the Festival of the First Fruits or the Feast of the Weeks. Every Jewish holiday falls on a specific day of the month, with one...
Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom Ha-Shoah)
It has been over 60 years since the Holocaust and on Yom Hashoah we remember the 6 million Jews who were systematically murdered simply for being Jewish. This year, the Yom Hashoah will be on May 1, 2008. Excerpted from JewishVirtualLibrary: The full name of the day commemorating the victims of the Holocaust is “Yom Hashoah Ve-Hagevurah”— literally the “Day of (remembrance of) the Holocaust...
The Month of Elul
“I have set before you life and death . . Therefore, choose life, that both you and your seed may live.” –Deuteronomy 30:8 I want to live more than anything, I want to know life and a life full of love and prayer and obedience to HaShem. I suppose you can say that I live an emotional life, not always predicated by my intellect, but a life in which I respond to things with a...
And Thou Shall Tell Thy Son
Written by Rabbi Meir Kahane ZT”L HY”D The essence of Passover is the commandment of the Hagadda, of telling and retelling, of passing on to our children, the story of Passover, its concepts and lessons and commandments. Passover is the beginning of Judaism, its very birth, hence its direction and directive to pass on to our sons and daughters, its fundamentals and teachings. However...
L’shana Tova — Ketivah vi-chatima Tova
Rosh Hashana begins today at sundown. Rosh Hashana is the Jewish New Year. The Jewish New Year is celebrated by reflecting upon the past, correcting one’s mistakes, planning for the future, praying for a healthy and sweet year and celebrating with holiday meals. Rabbi Nachum Braverman teaches us that “On Rosh Hashana we make an accounting of our year and we pray repeatedly for life...
Join us here at Smooth Stone along with other people of good conscience and put an end to the brutal terror of the Palestinian Authority complicit in the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Jews from their homeland of Israel.