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The connection between the festival of Pesaḥ-Maṣṣot and the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt is a cornerstone of Jewish identity and religious practice which has its roots in the festival calendars of the Pentateuch (Exod. 12–13; Exod. 23; Lev. 23; Deut. 16). However, a closer investigation shows that the texts in question differ considerably both with respect to the characteristics of the festival and its etiological connection with the exodus. The present paper focuses particularly on the complex, and in parts contradictory, festival ordinances in Exod. 12:1–13:16 and argues that the present form of the passage results from a multi-step process of supplementation and revision. In this process, the once separate festivals of Pesaḥ and Maṣṣot were gradually merged to a single celebration which, in turn, led to various adjustments of their etiological connection to the events of the exodus.

From the 1950s until his death in 1994, Menachem Mendel Schneerson--revered by his followers worldwide simply as the Rebbe--built the Lubavitcher movement from a relatively small sect within Hasidic Judaism into the powerful force in Jewish life that it is today. Swept away by his expectation that the Messiah was coming, he came to believe that he could deny death and change history.

This article presents a new hypothesis regarding the social and ideological functions of the otherwise unknown festival to commemorate Jephthah’s daughter and the meaning of its symbols and occasions. A unique event in the biblical world, this festival is the only time known to us in which Israelite women were expected to appear together in public assembly. Jud 11:39–40 enjoin “the daughters of Israel” to celebrate it annually. The story of Jephthah’s daughter, summarized in Jud 11:34–39, evokes and develops many themes that intersect with the depiction of and the prescriptions for observing two well-known festivals that share a season: the holiday of Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread, Maṣṣot. A synthesis of the correlations among the holidays will suggest that the festival dedicated to honoring Jephthah’s daughter was an early, long-lasting folk version of Maṣṣot in which the daughter represented the festival’s ritual staple, unleavened bread.

Call It English identifies the distinctive voice of Jewish American literature by recovering the multilingual Jewish culture that Jews brought to the United States in their creative encounter with English. In transnational readings of works from the late-nineteenth century to the present by both immigrant and postimmigrant generations, Hana Wirth-Nesher traces the evolution of Yiddish and Hebrew in modern Jewish American prose writing through dialect and accent, cross-cultural translations, and bilingual wordplay.

This segment of Sunday Morning is about Streit's, a major baker of matzo in the United States, and its long-running Manhattan factory.

Fry responds to criticisms concerning his article on regionalism's influence on US foreign policy formation and the domestic roots of America's involvement abroad. As regions change over time, so too do their perspectives and influence on US foreign relations.

By examining different cases of blood libels that occurred from the 1920s through the decade following Stalin's death, this study suggests that the ritual murder accusation in the Soviet Union dwindled at first, then intensified, and eventually underwent an idiosyncratic and secular metamorphosis that culminated with the 1953 \"Doctors' Plot\" accusation: the denunciation of a group of prominent and predominantly Jewish doctors for allegedly conspiring to murder Soviet leaders. While the blood libel was generally prosecuted in the interwar period, in the postwar years it was usually ignored, though perhaps indirectly encouraged. Jews—as well as local authorities—reacted in a variety of ways to allegations of ritual murder. But overall, it was the status, power, and influence that Jews held in a given city or town at the time of a concocted accusation that determined their responses to the blood libel and that shaped the legal provisions and enforcement steps taken by the party, police, and civil authorities.