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Maimonides urged us to care for our bodies so that we would be free to concentrate our energies on God. In the modern world, one of the greatest threats to our physical health is mental stress. Stress causes insomnia, digestive problems, heart disease, autoimmune disorders, depression, memory impairment and countless other complications. As women, we are particularly vulnerable to the stress caused by multiple and exhausting commitments to our families, friends, jobs and communities. This year, let us learn how to...

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On Passover, the Jewish community asks ourselves, friends, family and neighbors, What makes this night different from all other nights?   Four Jewish racial justice leaders shared their answers.  "As Jews, we remember and we cannot let injustice happen again in this country. This is our moment to bend the moral arc and to move racial justice work forward through advocacy, activism, and engagement." -- Tiffany Harris "Our relative safety in American has allowed many of us to consider the fight for...

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Passover is a holiday of community and remembrance. As we reflect on the Jewish Exodus, we hold space for those fleeing persecution, violence, and unstable living conditions today. We acknowledge the ground beneath our feet as occupied Native territory, and mourn the construction of walls built to separate families from one another. This meal is held in memory of not only the Jewish people who were freed from enslavement, but all those who have been marginalized and made to feel unsafe...

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The Well of Tradition and Miriam's Well One of our people's greatest strengths is using our tradition as a wellspring to renew our heritage as we pass it down from generation to generation. As Jews we have a living relationship with our past. Jewish history, Jewish traditions, and Jewish memories are not placed in museums and libraries for scholars to research. They are part of our people's daily lives. When we study our sacred texts, retell our stories, celebrate our successes...

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We begin our Seder by calling to mind the efforts of those everywhere who celebrate the Passover by searching for its meaning in their lives. In our house, we're marrying multiple traditions, genetic lines, and ways of being. It's through rituals like this that we hope to form the strands of our life into a family that's woven together for all the time we can know. We're ecstatic you can join us for Octavio Moses's first Passover, and hope we can...

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Tonight with the traditional candles we also light a Veladora with the Virgen De Guadalupe, who is the protector of all Mexican People and all of Latino America. Similar to a Yarzeit candle, a candle of remembrance, people all over Mexico light veladora's in their home with prayers for those in struggle, those lost, and those in need of protection. Tonight we also light a veladora for all those who still are in the bondages of modern slavery and are yet...

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By Rabbi Gavriel Goldfeder  alternadox.netLater on we will do ' rachtzah '─the washing over the matzah . Now we are doing ' urchatz ', which amounts to washing before eating a vegetable.  This is not something we do every day.To explain, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, first chief Rabbi of the State of Israel, writes of dividing life into two categories: the goal, and everything else.  We set goals for ourselves and set out to reach them.  Everything we do that helps...

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When we have been to a cemetery, it is customary to wash our hands before entering a building. It is a remnant of the Biblical idea that contact with the dead puts an individual into a different state. Purification by water is necessary prior to re-entering the community. What rituals have been helpful to you in making the transition from focusing completely on your loved one, and being able to be more fully a part of your own, albeit changed, life?

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One of the central mitzvot of Passover is telling the story of oppression and the journey to liberation. It is interesting to note that the Haggadah offers us at least four versions of the Passover story. There is telling symbols, historical recounting, moral expositions, and facts with expanded interpretations. What are some of the different ways in which you tell the stories of your loved one and the journey you took together?

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By Rabbi Simkha Y. Weintraub, CSW The number seven, which has so many associations in the Bible and Rabbinic tradition is primarily associated with the Creation of the world. It is a number of both generativity and of completion – the week being the basic unit of our lives, culminating in the “perfect rest” of Shabbat. Multiples of seven, similarly, are related to life, as the Psalmist says: “The span of our life is seventy years.” We may experience in the...