Elul Started Yesterday: Hello eScapegoat!
from bimbam.com
A web app to help you atone. Like in Bible Times, only nerdier.
The eScapegoat roams the Internet collecting sins before Yom Kippur. This web app is inspired by the Yom Kippur rituals from the time of the Temple in which a goat is symbolically burdened with the sins of the Jewish people. In the app, this action is symbolized by a whimsical animated goat receiving the sins that users share with it.
Shehechiyanu: A Meditation on this Moment
BY RABBI SHEFA GOLD for myjewishlearning.com
This blessing, traditionally recited for firsts, can be said anytime -- since every moment is new and unprecedented.
The Shehechiyanu blessing is said whenever we realize the miracle of the present moment. Traditionally, it is recited when we do something for the first time that year — such as lighting Hanukkah candles, hearing the shofar, or shaking a lulav and etrog — as well as at the start of most Jewish holidays. The blessing honors and expresses the wonder of having arrived.
What's With The Cheese
From Jewish Treats
There are few types of food with as many variations as cheese. Like all dairy products, only cheese that has been made with the milk of a kosher animal can be kosher. (For those celebrating August’s National Goat Cheese Month, that’s good news, since goats are kosher animals.)
Unlike milk or butter, however, the qualifications for kashrut are a bit more complicated than simply the source of the dairy. In fact, there is a specific prohibition in the Talmud against the consumption of gvinat akum, literally the cheese of heathens.
Can You Be Jewish Without God?
BY PAUL GOLIN for myjewishlearning.com
What Is Secular Humanistic Judaism?
This "fifth denomination," founded in the 1960s by a Reform-ordained rabbi, describes itself as humanistic rather than atheistic.
Secular Humanistic Judaism is a movement that believes Judaism was created by people to meet human needs and that it is most meaningfully expressed by celebrating human knowledge, power and responsibility.
End Of Life
From myjewishlearning.com
What does Judaism have to say about end-of-life care? How to make decisions for the terminally ill? What lessons can we learn from our Patriarchs and Matriarchs in the Torah? How does Judaism view hospice and palliative care?
Read about all these issues and more in myjewishlearning.com
