Tag Archives: Jewish Holidays

New Resource: Judaism 101

A dear friend asked for a primer on the basics of Judaism, so I put together a list of the top ten things to know. Since Pesach is coming up and it is customary to sing Echad MiYode’a, I modelled it loosely after the song. My attempt was to condense all of the key concepts of Judaism, and the central beliefs (including mystical ones), plus introduce all the major texts of Judaism, the key historical figures, and the major holidays. It should be an interesting read even for a veteran talmid chakham.

I hope the following brief primer is helpful both as a useful resource to share with others, and to make the upcoming Pesach seder more meaningful. (You might even want to share it with guests at your Pesach seder that might be new to Judaism.) Wishing everyone a chag kasher v’sameach!

See the new ‘Judaism 101’ page here. 

Secrets of the Jewish Calendar

Today we welcome the new month of Kislev. It is well-known that the months of the Hebrew year parallel the Tribes of Israel and the zodiacal constellations. According to Sefer Yetzirah, each month also embodies one of twelve fundamental aspects of humanity and life: sight, sound, smell, speech, taste, touch, action, motion, temper, joy, thought, and sleep (ראיה, שמיעה, ריחה, שיחה, לעיטה, תשמיש, מעשה, הלוך, רוגז, שחוק, הרהור, שינה). Each of these further corresponds to twelve main parts and organs of the human body, and actually emerges at their core from the twelve “elemental” letters of the Hebrew alphabet, as well as the twelve permutations of God’s Ineffable Name. Recall that Sefer Yetzirah divides up the alphabet into three categories: “mother” letters, “doubled” letters, and “elemental” or “simple” letters (for more on these, see here). Continue reading →