H Tasting Lounge at the Westin Bayshore has a new tea service. (photo from westinbayshore.com/htasting-lounge) Mother’s Day might be celebrated only once a year, but being a mother is an everyday, every minute occupation. Rashi, the brilliant 11th-century sage, offered…
On Feb. 20, students at Vancouver Hebrew Academy packaged more than 200 mishloach manot bags full of non-perishable food items donated by the Marine Drive and Grandview Superstore locations. (photo from VHA) The atmosphere at the Jewish Food Bank on…
“Israel in Egypt” by Edward Poynter, 1867. (photo from Wikimedia Commons) There is a certain inherent ambivalence when we think of the meaning of freedom and its association with the holiday of Pesach. One of the essential features of the…
Israel’s Escape from Egypt, illustration from a Bible card published in 1907 by the Providence Lithograph Company. (photo from Wikimedia Commons) We begin Passover – which starts this year on the night of March 30 – with two seders, and…
An illustration by Russian artist El Lissitzky in the book Had Gadya, 1919. (photo from getty.edu) We sing them every year, but from where did Passover songs such as “Chad Gadya” originate? “Chad Gadya” or “One Little Goat” is a…
“The Four Sons,” Arthur Szyk, 1934. According to Wikimedia, Szyk “originally intended his Passover story of persecution and deliverance (told through the traditional text of the Haggadah) to be a strong statement against the Nazis, but no publisher in his…
In preparation for Purim, students of White Rock South Surrey JCC Religious School baked hamantashen to take home and share with their families. (photos from WRSS JCC)
I might have been a Jewish Martha Stewart if fate had been kinder to me. I used to watch with envy as she placed her rose-scented candles on the needlepoint tablecloth in the centre of which were the exquisite paper…
In my North American Ashkenazi house growing up, my mother always cooked arbis at Purim time. The dish is associated with Queen Esther, for whom this was supposedly a mainstay. Why? Because, some Jewish sources say, Queen Esther kept kosher…
