Kriyat Habonim Blog

Shalom Chaverim,   Today I’m writing about something that I’m sure you wouldn’t regularly contemplate on or discuss whether it is good or bad - NOSTALGIA.   Now you see, here is the dilemma. Some people will look at this word with a sense of happiness. They...

Today is Sigd, a significant religious holiday for Ethiopian Jews based upon the idea of repentance. To many Jews, Sigd is most comparable to Yom Kippur, due to it being a day of reflection, penitence and criticism. Despite these similarities, the major distinction...

Growing up I was always aware of a family story that sounded frankly bizarre: our ancestors, when fleeing Eastern Europe at the end of the 19thcentury, had supposedly got on a ship thinking it was headed for New York, but when the ship later docked in Dublin they...

The festival of sukkot can be interpreted in different ways depending on which branch of Judaism we identify with. Traditionally, sukkot commemorates the years that Jews spent in the desert on their way to the Promised Land, and celebrates the way in which God...

This week concludes the 10 days of atonement in the Jewish calendar, culminating in Yom Kippur. Whether one practices cultural, reform, or orthodox Judaism, Yom Kippur is the holiest day in the Jewish calendar and most of us conform in some way to its laws and...

A Boger of Habonim Dror, went to the vigil for the victims of the Pittsburgh Massacre. You can read below his inspiring speech.

The events of the Holocaust clearly exposes dehumanisation on both sides in its purest sense, that of the Nazis and of the Jews. Whether it is subconscious or not, today we as humans dehumanise the Nazis as if they weren't themselves part of the same human race. We...

This coming week’s parsha is VaYikra (“and He called”) and is the first parsha of Leviticus. The parsha lays out the reasons one must make a sacrifice (i.e. for peace and sins) but the one most interesting to me the laws of “guilt offerings”. These are offerings that...

The past week’s parsha is Pekudei and is the final parsha of the Book of Exodus. This week’s parsha spends a lot of time acting as a manual. It is not a manual for how we should live our lives but rather how we should go about building the Tabernacle and the Tent of...

This week’s parsha is Mishpatim and consists of 53 mitzvot, the promise of the Land of Israel to the Israelites and Moses ascending Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights. The parsha details God laying down the law to his children many of them specific, archaic and...