Aviva Kanoff has been described as “the Indiana Jones of cooking,” and the subtitle of her latest book, Gluten Free Around the World (Brio Books, 2014), is “a journey of food, travel and extraordinary adventure.” She is a graduate of…
Many scholars believe that the menorah is a stylized version of a tree. The Knesset Menorah, pictured here, was built by Jewish sculptor Benno Elkan, and presented to Israel by the U.K. parliament in 1956. (photo from commons.wikimedia.org) For the…
How can we explain the mitzvah of the Chanukah light? What about two of its features? One, the lights are to be placed by the door of one’s house that is next to the street or public domain, and they…
Major League Dreidel attracts many competitors. (photo from facebook.com/majorleaguedreidel) The word dreidel is Yiddish, and comes from the German verb dreihen, meaning “to spin.” Dreidel literally means “little spinner.” The first dreidel players were Yiddish-speaking Jews in medieval Europe. In…
Reb Cantor discovers that some families, like Chelm’s Gold family, light eight candles on the first night of Chanukah. (photo by Dov Harrington from commons.wikimedia.org) “I’m sick of Chanukah,” Reb Cantor, the merchant of Chelm, muttered. His wife, Shoshanna, looked up…
Shlomo and Hagar Yekutieli’s tablecloths feature many different designs, including Chanukah and other holiday motifs. (photo from shlomohagar.com) As Chanukah appears on the horizon, our thoughts inevitably turn to two things: gifts, and fatty foods. If you’ve distributed all the…
The Shabbat Project brought hundreds out to bake challah, celebrate Shabbat and dance over three nights, Oct. 23-25. (photo by Alan Katowitz) Oct. 23 saw more than 400 people make Vancouver history by participating in its first community-wide challah bake. The event…
This year’s Rosh Hashanah cover featured a photographer by Saanich-based biologist Leah Ramsay (leaningoaks.ca). Domestic honeybees, like this one, were introduced to the east coast of North America from Europe in 1622. Aided by settlers, it took a couple hundred…
(photo from Deror avi via commons.wikimedia.org) It’s the children, at first, that inspire awe, the infants now walking, the toddlers talking, the grade schoolers freshly combed and pressed, the high schoolers immense, the college students all but unrecognizable in their…
Carrots represent the hope that Israel’s enemies will be “cut off,” or kept away. (photo by Stephen Ausmus / USARS via en.wikipedia.org) Most Jews, religious or not, celebrate Passover, opening the holiday with a seder – fewer know that a seder…
