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Lyrics Writer of my symphony Play with me Look into my eyes and see People walk away but never say goodbye Someone stole the moon tonight Took my light Everything is black and white Who’s the fool who told you boys don’t cry? Hours and hours, empowers Life is no game, but it’s ours While […]

As with any work of verse, Chad Gadya is open to interpretation. According to some modern Jewish commentators, what appears to be a light-hearted song may be symbolic. One interpretation is that Chad Gadya is about the different nations that have conquered the Land of Israel: The kid symbolizes the Jewish people; the cat, Assyria; […]

The Torah itself dictates the counting of the seven weeks following Passover: “You shall count from the eve of the second day of Pesach, when an omer of grain is to be brought as an offering, seven complete weeks. The day after the seventh week of your counting will make fifty days, and you shall […]

What does the Hebrew word Pekudei mean? Pekudei, Pekude, Pekudey, P’kude, or P’qude (פְקוּדֵי‎—Hebrew for “amounts of,” the second word, and the first distinctive word, in the parashah) is the 23rd weekly Torah portion ( פָּרָשָׁה‎, parashah) in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading. It is the 11th and last in the Book of […]

What Is the Mishnah? Published at the end of the second century CE, the Mishnah is an edited record of the complex body of material known as oral Torah that was transmitted in the aftermath of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, also known as Rabbi Judah the […]

URJ bring them home  

Page 97 mishkan T’Filah   The Diameter of the Bomb The diameter of the bomb was 30 centimeters and the diameter of its effective range about 7 meters, with four dead and 11 wounded. And around these, in a larger circle of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered and one graveyard. But the young […]

Haftorah 3 yr cycle (Avram Israel Reisner, 2014) How long must a haftarah be? Megillah 23a reports a baraita that requires 21 verses in the haftarah, parallel to the minimum of seven aliyot of three verses in the Torah reading. That ruling is represented as the halakhah by Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chayim 284:1. But a […]

The Book of Psalms is an ancient anthology of poetic prayers originally written in Hebrew. It is the first book of the third and final section of the Hebrew Bible, known as Ketuvim (Writings). The English term title derives from the Greek psalmos, meaning “song accompanied by a stringed instrument.” In Hebrew, the book is […]