Simcha Minhagim
There’s a well known Jewish joke, that the last time a husband will have a chance to put his foot down will be at his Chupah, when he steps on […]
Lag Baomer Pilgrimage to the grave of Harav Ephraim Encaoua
For several centuries after the passing of the tzaddik Harav Ephraim Encaoua (Elnkaoua, or Elnekave), thousands of Jews from Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria and France gathered every Lag BaOmer at his […]
Four Exiled Families
Four Jewish aristocratic families of Jerusalem were exiled to Rome when Titus conquered that city in 70 C.E and took the vessels of the Bais HaMikdash with him. Although there […]
The Kol Nidrei Promise
The following story is believed to have taken place in Prague in the year 1577. It was repeated orally for several centuries until the prominent Jewish writer Salomon Kohen (1825-1904) […]
Purim of the Curtains
Nine years after the death of the Maharal, and a year after the last volume of Rabbi Heller’s Tosfos Yom Tov commentary on the Mishna was initially published in Prague, […]
Seder Night: The Birth of the Maharal-A Portent of Future Salvations
The Maharal of Prague, Harav Yehudah Lowe, entered this world on the night of the first Seder in 5272/1512 in Posen (Poznan in Polish), today Poland’s fifth-largest city. His early […]
David de Pomis, Italian Rabbi, Physician Philosopher and Philologist
The Four Aristocratic Italian Jewish Families According to an ancient tradition of the Jews of Italy, when Titus conquered Yerushalayim and destroyed the Beis HaMikdash he took with him in […]
Iggeres Alkabetz, the First Historically Recorded Tikkun Leil Shavuos
Years before composing the popular Friday night piyut, Lechah Dodi, the Kabbalist, Rabbi Shlomo HaLevi Alkabetz, (1505-1584) wrote a letter entitled Iggeres Alkabetz, about a wonderful Shavuos night he experienced […]
The Nadvorner Rebbe Keeps His Sukkah
The first day of Sukkos is the Yahrzeit of the Nadvorna Rebbe, Rabbi Mordechai Leifer ZT”L who passed away in 1894 (5655). Thousands of Jews from Galicia, Hungary, Poland and […]
The Sukkos Festival Celebration That Sparked a Jewish Civil War
More than two thousand years ago, our ancestors celebrated a Sukkos in Jerusalem in a most heartbreaking and painful manner. The four species which they were supposed to hold together […]