The Little-Known Story Behind the Latke
According to food historian Gil Marks, the first latkes, called kartoffelpfannkuchen, were fashioned from coarse potatoes fried in schmaltz (chicken fat).
A Dairy Delicious Chanukah/Hannukah
Whether you spell it Chanukah or Hannukah, this festive winter holiday is associated with all sorts of latkes, sufganiyot and fried foods to celebrate the miracle of a small amount of oil miraculously lasting for eight days. The tradition of eating dairy dishes, particularly cheese, did not become popular until the Middle Ages. The story […]
Community Day Schools: Are They an Option?
The pros and cons of sending frum kids to diverse community day schools
Motown’s Orthodox Revival
You would never know Detroit went bankrupt by the looks of two thriving frum communities close to the city. Oak Park and Southfield keep drawing scores of frum families to the area—and it seems like there’s no letting up. Growth from Within Shuls and communities must grow organically; in other words, the local Orthodox population […]
Cutting Costs in Kansas City—The Hyman Brand Model
Hyman Brand, in Kansas City, is the first community day school to successfully integrate a fully Orthodox track, according to Rabbi Judah Isaacs, director of the OU
Rebuilding Oceanside In the Aftermath of Sandy
Hurricane Sandy left the Oceanside, New York community, on the southern shore of Long Island, with many of its homes devastated and the Young Israel of Oceanside in shambles. The other shuls in Oceanside, Congregation Shaar Hashamayim, Darchei Noam and the Chabad of Oceanside, also suffered extensive damages. This past Rosh Hashanah, the 200-member […]
Rabbi Dr. Isaiah Wohlgemuth: A Beloved Teacher of Tefillah
In the American Modern Orthodox community, the widely acknowledged master of teaching tefillah was a Holocaust refugee from Germany who made a new home in Boston. Rabbi Isaiah Wohlgemuth, who had semichah from Berlin’s Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary and a doctorate in education from Boston’s now-defunct Calvin Coolidge College, is remembered by generations of students from […]
Confessions of a Shomer Shabbos Hollywood Screenwriter
It’s Shabbos morning. I’m in shul, davening with the hashkamah minyan, where an undertone of chatter is definitely not the norm. For me, a frum-from-birth
From the Ground Up: Growing Torah in the Garden State
A trio of resourceful rabbis discovered the winning recipe to creating a frum community from scratch. They identified regions where Jews were plentiful but Judaism was scarce, and employed the motto “Give them Torah and they will come.” It worked. South Jersey’s spiritual transformation began with three modern-day pioneers who set out to teach Torah […]
Conversing with Chief Rabbi Dr. Warren Goldstein
From Johannesburg Shall Go Forth Torah South Africa’s first native chief rabbi, who is successfully strengthening Yiddishkeit on the home front, has gone global with a worldwide learning program. Despite its relatively small size—an estimated population of 70,000—the South African Jewish community is thriving religiously. While the community is mostly traditional, it boasts a burgeoning […]