Holidays
The Jewish calendar is nothing short of obsessed with the marking the passage of time. With major holidays punctuating the entire year: from the sacred autumn days of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot, to Hanukkah’s bright lights in the midst of winter’s deep freeze, to Tu Bishvat’s promise of warmth, spring’s boistrous, drawn-out arrival during Purim, Passover and Shavuot, and summer’s sobering Tisha B’Av – there is hardly a moment of downtime. Instead, the year passes in one rhythmic cycle punctuated by celebration, spiritual reflection, community, and (of course) food.
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach once said that each of the Jewish holidays arrives to remind us of something that we should be doing all year round. Rosh Hashanah reminds us to always take the time to look inward; Passover reminds us to always work to rid our lives of superfluity (chametz) and be grateful for our freedoms, and so on. But what each of the holidays does – sometimes explicitly, sometimes less so – is connect to the importance of being engaged in repairing the world.
- Shavuot: The Holiday of New Beginnings Shavuot, the Jewish holiday that starts on Tuesday night, is a holiday of bellyaches. For a group of people known for our, ahem, "issues with lactose," it seems almost cruel that one of the Jewish calendar's major holidays would come along with the tradition of eating cheesecake, cheese-filled blintzes, gooey lasagna and other dairy-licious foods.…
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- Promote Good Health In Your Community for National Nutrition Month With First Lady Michelle Obama's Let's Move healthy living initiatives in full swing, New Yorkers contemplating smaller sodas, and healthy school food programs being piloted all over the country, conversations about good health and nutrition are relevant like never before. In other words, it's a particularly awesome time to celebrate National Nutrition Month - a…
