My Jewish Journey
Deborah Abecassis Warshawsky, Director of Jewish Life and Learning, shares insights on lessons from the Torah, Jewish customs and traditions and inspirational thoughts for personal growth.
Treat for Parshat Beha-alotcha
In this week’s Torah reading, the “stiff necked people” in B’nai Yisrael complain about their lack of nourishment. They cry out for meat and fish and even reminisce about the watermelon they had back in Egypt. Our Torah Treat this week features all those foods: gummy...
Recipe for Shavuot
For our recipe this week, I found something both fun and educational for the holiday of Shavuot. It is a Libyan custom that's certainly not cookie cutter but literally uses cookies to illustrate the essence of Shavuot. Libyan Jews create a child's cookie necklace by...
The Holiday of Shavuot! – For the Love of Cheese and All Other Things Dairy….
Next Tuesday evening we will be celebrating the festival of the Jewish calendar known as Shavuot or the Feast of Weeks. The Torah asks us to count 49 days from Pesach to Shavuot, known as the period of the Omer. During this time we have the practice to refrain from...
Parshat Bamidbar – Everyone Counts
Next week we will be commemorating the holiday known as Yom Yerushalayim, celebrating the reunification of Jerusalem after the 1967 war. After the UN partition plan and resulting Arab-Israeli war, the old city of Jerusalem remained under Jordanian rule. Many...
Recipe for Parshat Bamidbar
Wandering through the “dessert” (from challahcrumbs.com) This week’s parsha, Parshat Bamidbar, is the opening to a new book of the Torah called Bamidbar or Numbers. This parsha introduces us to the 12 tribes of Israel and their encampment in the desert. Each tribe had...
Parshat Bechukotai – An “A” for Effort!
The end of the year comes with many types of evaluations. We have tests, exams, essays, and papers, all of which we use to look at how much our students have learned during the present school year. The school at which I have worked for the past 11 years has three...
Lag Ba-Omer Recipe Treat!
This Sunday we will celebrate the holiday of Lag Ba-Omer, marking the 33rd day of the period of counting between Passover and Shavuot. In Israel, there is a tradition of having barbecues and bonfires. For our recipe this week, we invite you to make your favorite...
Parsha recipe – Parshat Behar
This week’s parsha details the laws of the Shmitta year – the seventh year in a cycle during which time no planting was allowed. This was to give the land a sabbatical year. For this week we are making cupcakes with green sprinkles to symbolize the growth of the land...
Parsha Emor
In the first verse in this week's Parsha, God says to Moshe "Emor El Hakohanim Bnei Aharon Viamarta Aleihem," "Say to the Kohanim the sons of Aharon and tell them." Rashi asks the question as to why there is a double language of "Emor (say) /Viamarta (and tell)"? He...
Recipe for Parsha Emor
Parsha Recipe for Emor – Parsha Pie! (Adapted from pragmaticattic.wordpress.com) Parsha Emor discusses the cycle of holidays: the weekly Shabbat, Passover, Shavuoth, Rosh HaShana, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Shemini Atzeret. Immediately following this is a discussion of...
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Parashat Toldot – Nurturing the individual
Our guest blogger this week is school president Patrick Essiminy who offered the following Dvar Torah at Akiva’s Annual General Meeting on Tuesday morning. Parashat Toldot – Nurturing the individual. This week’s parasha is Toldot, which means the descendants....
Parashat Chayei Sarah – The highest form of wisdom is kindness – The Talmud.
I have a memory from when I was a child of playing outside my house when a woman came by. I do not remember anything about this woman – what she looked like, what she may have said, or how she acted. What I do remember is that my father brought this stranger, with...
Parsha Vayera
This week we are fortunate to have as our guest blogger, Jessica Yaffe Balinsky, Akiva parent and board member. Shabbat Shalom. In October of 2016, Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature. One of his best-loved songs, Highway 61 Revisited,...
Parashat Lekh Lekha – Your Shabbat Journey
The simple definition of the word journey is the act of travelling from one place to another, but I believe the word conveys a lot more than driving to the grocery store. A journey implies a process in which you are changed or in which you learn something. If going...
Faces of Akiva
Vanessa Nezri Ohayon Akiva Parent of 1 Akiva Alumni, 2 current Akiva students and 1 future Akiva student “… I feel like my family has a real connection with Akiva School. I’m so comfortable whenever I come here and I know my kids are happy and thriving. Every morning,...
Parashat Noah – Unified words
My youngest daughter was discussing with her sisters possibilities for the catchphrase of kindness she would try and use more often this month as part of Akiva School’s Derekh Eretz program. She had some good ideas – don’t give up, I’ll help, thank you – all phrases...
Parashat Bereishit – Loving siblings
Over the many days of holiday in the last few weeks, my family has been playing the game Apples to Apples. In each round, one player is the judge and must decide which among the cards the other players submit best represents the adjective revealed at the beginning of...
Sukkot
We packed a lot of Sukkot activities into our very short week. Many of our classes were able to visit our school sukkah before the rain started. They enjoyed a sweet treat of challah and honey, made the blessings on the lulav and etrog and had a little lesson...
Parashat Ha-Azinu – Even God takes a deep breath and counts to 10.
The four-year-old wasn’t listening. The husband was frustrated. He removed the child’s TV privileges for the rest of the week. And then he left for work. And the wife was left home with a four-year-old to entertain for the rest of the week without television. Who...
Parashat Va-Yelekh – To hear and to learn
This Rosh Hashanah I loved sitting in synagogue with my daughters. But I didn’t always. I always loved synagogue, but what I enjoyed was the quiet singular purpose of listening, following along in the prayer book, being alone with my thoughts while together with the...
