Jewish in a Gentile World

This morning, a shooter entered a synagogue in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and killed many people attending a service, then shot several police officers there to stop him. The story is still evolving and I am sure there are plenty of news sources better qualified to provide the details of the event. I can tell you that I do not personally know anyone who attends that synagogue, but a friend of friends is currently (8PM Saturday) unaccounted for and may have been one of the victims. In the news stories I have heard, I have noticed a lot of confusion about the service where the shooting occurred. Was it a baby naming service? Why weren't there any children there? Why did someone say that there would have been more victims if the shooter came later? I would like to clarify these issues. What kind of service was this? The service where the shooting occurred was a normal Shabbat (sabbath) service, the same kind of service that most synagogues have every Saturday morning (some synag...

Last Thursday, April 12, 2018, was Yom Ha-Shoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. But wait: Didn't we already have a Holocaust Memorial Day back in January? In 2005, the United Nations in Resolution 60/7 designated January 27  to be International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a day to remember the genocide that caused deaths of 6 million Jews, 5 million Slavs, 3 million ethnic Poles, 200,000 Romani ("Gypsy") people, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men. This day was chosen because it was the anniversary of the Allies liberating the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration and death camp. Before that time, many nations had their own Holocaust Memorial Day, many of them on January 27 but many on other days. This is, as a friend of mine jokingly called it, Holocaust Memorial Day for the Goyim (gentiles). The Holocaust Memorial Day observed in Israel and by Jews around the world, is called Yom Ha-Shoah (The Day of the Dest...

After nine years of creating vegetarian and vegan recipes for Passover, I've reached the point where there are too many recipes to keep track of! I have collected all 20 of the recipes I have posted in  this PDF . I put in as many pictures as I have, but I don't have pictures for many of these recipes! There will be an improved version by the end of Passover with pictures from this year's cooking, too late for this year's use but available for year-round or for next Passover! The PDF has bookmarks to take you to each of the recipes, and also has sections in the bookmarks to take you to the recipes that are specifically vegan or gluten-free, if that is your need. There is also a section in the bookmarks for the junk food recipes. (grin). The individuals will also say V at the top if they are vegan and GF at the top if they are gluten-free (and both if they are both -- some of them are!).

Next week, I hope to post a PDF that collects all of my veggie Passover recipes in one place for your convenience, but I wanted to add one more new recipe for this year to bring the total number of recipes in the PDF to 20! I've seen a number of recipes for vegetarian "meatballs," but a lot of them don't really have a source of protein, always a key consideration for me when creating vegetarian meals for Passover. A few of them used ground almonds to provide the protein. I experimented with a few variations, and this is the one that worked. I served my first successful batch with marinara sauce, but I think during Passover I'm going to try it with the sweet and sour sauce I used to use back in the day when I used to eat real meatballs (it's similar to the sauce for my stuffed cabbage ). This recipe is gluten-free and non-gebrochts (contains no matzah products), but is not vegan (contains eggs and cheese). The cheese probably could be skipped, but I think t...

Chanukah starts at sunset tonight! ... so you may be facing the same problem that many people do at this time of year: how do you get all of the gunk out of your menorah (or chanukiah , as some prefer to call it)? If leave your Chanukah candles lit until they burn themselves out every night, as most people do, you are likely to have wax debris and wicks in the cups that hold your candles, and that makes it harder to get this year's candles into the menorah. Many years ago, a friend (thanks, Wally!) taught me a trick that makes it quite easy to get the gunk out! All you need is a cookie sheet, some aluminum foil, and a lot of Q-Tip swabs! Oh, and one more thing: you need an oven. This is safe for the basic metal menorahs that most people have, but use caution with anything that has wood, plastic or painted on designs. They should be able to hold up to a low oven temperature -- they're designed to be used with fire, after all! -- but I wouldn't want anybody to risk d...

On Monday, August 21, 2017, a solar eclipse will be visible to one degree or another across the entire continental United States. During a total solar eclipse, the moon passes between the Earth and the Sun, blocking our view of it. The Sun is 400 times the size of the moon, but the tiny moon is able to block our view of the much larger sun because the moon is much closer to us. Those who are in the path of totality and see the sun completely blocked by the moon are overwhelmed by the experience. Life is like that too. Sometimes, dark things come up in our lives, and we are overwhelmed by them. The bad things seem enormous, insurmountable, but this is only an illusion caused by the fact that the bad things are so close to us. We must remember that the good things are still out there, perhaps at a distance for now but much bigger and more important than any of the small bad things temporarily block our view. If we look carefully, we can see the good things still out there, peeking out ...

Today is National DNA Day. DNA testing has become increasingly popular for genealogy purposes, and the Jewish community is no exception to this trend. This is clear from this year's IAJGS conference on Jewish Genealogy , which is boasting in-depth DNA workshops and has more than 20 lectures related to DNA on its schedule. But DNA testing for genealogy purposes poses a special problem for Jews, often called the Ashkenazi Problem: Jews tend to marry Jews, and Jews who do not marry Jews tend to drop out of the Jewish community, and we have been doing that for so long in such a small population that we all tend to have a lot of DNA in common. The technical term for this is "endogamy," or in other words, inbreeding.  As a result, one study found that the average Jewish DNA tester matched 54% of all testers with any Jewish heritage! Compare this with gentile testers, who matched less than 1% of all testers with gentile ancestry. But if you are Jewish and interested ...