I wimped out on the single malt scotch. My Orthodox friends told me single malt is the drink of choice on Simchat Torah –- which celebrates finishing and restarting the Torah cycle –- but I could only stomach a gulp (I favor margaritas). Then I was off to dance with the Torah for the first…
Washington’s Kesher Israel is emerging today from a long four-day stretch of holiday and Shabbat, back to dealing with the reality of news about the synagogue’s rabbi, Barry Freundel, who was arrested on voyeurism charges after allegedly peeping on women at the mikveh. For Orthodox members of the synagogue, it has been a forced, but…
N.Y. Jews kick off the ‘Simchat Torah Across Brooklyn’ celebration / Dove Barbanel In the Grand Army Plaza, at the entrance to Prospect Park in Brooklyn, the circle dance threatened to close me in. I had avoided it for some time, but the energy was contagious. I gave in and danced in one of the…
A young woman jogging down O Street Thursday night slowed down as she passed by Kesher Israel synagogue, in the heart of Georgetown. “My father used to go here,” she told a group of congregants standing outside, before entering services on the eve of Simchat Torah. “I just wanted to tell you to be strong.”…
(Haaretz) — Just how progressive is your local Orthodox synagogue? Probably the best way to find out is to pay a visit during Simchat Torah, the holiday that starts at sundown on Wednesday, and take note: Are women sitting behind the mechitza – the partition that separates them from the men – looking bored and…
Getty Images Just a few months before he was killed in a 1996 bus bombing, my JTS classmate Matt Eisenfeld held a party in his Jerusalem apartment. It was a Saturday night, but it was hardly a typical Saturday night event. It was a siyyum, a conclusion of study, celebrating his completion of Masechet Kiddushin,…
Women are permitted to dance with a Torah scroll on the Simchat Torah holiday, a national-religious rabbinical organization has ruled. The Beit Hillel organization posted the religious ruling on its website. The ruling also encourages synagogues to be more inclusive of the elderly, the youth and people with disabilities during the holiday celebration, which includes…
It was a Simchat Torah celebration that surely most of the Hasidim walking past had never before witnessed: hundreds of liberal Jews, men and women, young children and the middle-aged, dancing together with Torah scrolls held aloft. Revelers twirled round and round in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza, just outside the entrance to Prospect Park. “Simchat…
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