Category: February 2017

Steven Hill showed the world that keeping Shabbos in Hollywood is not a Mission: Impossible   By: Ilan Preskovsky With the avalanche of celebrity deaths that occurred throughout 2016, it became all too easy for some of the less instantly recognisable writers, musicians, and actors to get buried under the sheer magnitude of the loss of the likes of David Bowie, Carrie Fisher, Prince, or Alan Rickman. For practising Jews of all stripes, though, one perhaps lesser-known name (but quite recognisable face if you ever managed to catch one of…

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Using a simcha as an opportunity to think of others By Chandrea Serebro In the search for people who used their simcha as an opportunity to give back, there was no shortage of people with whom to speak. The good being done out there is positively overwhelming! And there is no better time or opportunity for good than using this time of joy and personal growth, a milestone and life achievement, to do for others. Here are a few stories we found… A group of girls used their simchas to…

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Tips on what you can do yourself and what you should leave to the professionals   By Chandrea Serebro Making a simcha is becoming increasingly expensive and harder to do, but there are ways to save if you do it yourself, or even at home, and it can still be amazing! Just make sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew – the pitfalls of a DIY simcha are many, and sometimes it can end up costing a whole lot more in time, money, and irritation. Here are…

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Achieving unity in the face of adversity By Robert Sussman Each festival and its associated mitzvos are not only a remembrance of the events that took place in our history, but serve to strengthen and renew, in our days, the special spiritual influences which we merited at those times. Our Sages enacted four mitzvos for us on Purim: (1) reading the megilla, (2) celebrating with a festive meal, aka a seudah, (3) sending gifts of food to a friend, aka mishloach manos, and (4) giving to the poor, aka matanos l’evyanim. Why did they…

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The lesson of a great King, that truth and logic are also servants of Hashem By: Dovid Samuels “Remember what the people of Amalek did to you on the path as you left Egypt”[1]: They were the first tribe brazen enough to attack the Jewish people after their miraculous and spectacular exodus from Egypt. For this reason, we are commanded to obliterate the memory of this nation from the world. We read about Amalek on Shabbos Zachor, the Shabbos next to Purim, because on Purim we were given another taste…

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