Jewish family education

For goodness’ sake
The Power of Stories Series Jewish Family Education with Candace R. Kwiatek, The Dayton Jewish Observer At this year’s Rosh Hashanah party, soldiers at one Israeli army base were excited to learn there would be a raffle. As hundreds of soldiers each contributed 50 shekels and put their names into

Marshmallows & muscles
The Power of Stories Series Jewish Family Education with Candace R. Kwiatek, The Dayton Jewish Observer A boy asked his mother for a third slice of cake. “No,” she answered. “Please, Mom, just one more piece.” Again, his mother said no. The boy didn’t give up: “Please? Just one, I

Not yet
The Power of Stories Series Jewish Family Education With Candace R. Kwiatek, The Dayton Jewish Observer A devoted husband and father of seven, Rabbi Isaac Hurwitz writes a weekly Torah commentary and runs a marriage advice blog. Every day, he welcomes friends and strangers into his home for study, prayer,

Being Zusya
The Power of Stories Series Jewish Family Education with Candace R. Kwiatek, The Dayton Jewish Observer A zoology professor assigned a paper on the topic of elephants to his graduate-level international students. The English student wrote Elephant Hunting. The French student wrote The Love Life of the Elephant. The German

Diamonds in the rough
The Power of Stories Series Jewish Family Education with Candace R. Kwiatek, The Dayton Jewish Observer One of the greatest Mishnaic sages, Rabbi Meir was widely admired for his exceptional scholarship, deep wisdom, and warm humanity. He lived by the value of tolerance for the views of others with whom

Calling to us
The Power of Stories series Jewish Family Education with Candace R. Kwiatek, The Dayton Jewish Observer The Summit. Just a thousand feet shy of Mt. Everest’s peak, Israel’s most accomplished mountain climber, Nadav Ben Yehuda, came across what appeared to be a dead body. Recognizing it as the inexperienced and

Becoming, not overcoming
The Power of Stories. A Series Jewish Family Education with Candace R. Kwiatek, The Dayton Jewish Observer Meir Zlotowitz grew up on the Lower East Side, a crowded, chaotic, poor immigrant neighborhood in the 1940s. There, he excelled in his yeshiva and rabbinic studies, although plagued by stuttering that made

The testing point
The Power of Stories. A Series. Jewish Family Education With Candace R. Kwiatek, The Dayton Jewish Observer “During the Second World War,” recounts Rabbi Menashe Feiger, “a Nazi officer came over to my mother and said that he was going to shoot her. ‘Turn around and look away!’ he cruelly

Not-so-random acts of kindness
The Power of Stories. A Series Jewish Family Education By Candace R. Kwiatek, The Dayton Jewish Observer Assisting with the Albanian Muslim refugees in the late 1990s, Israel’s field medical team in Kosovo noted that the adult-focused aid agencies were overlooking the traumatized children. In response to its request for

Attitude adjustment
Considering Creation Series Jewish Family Education with Candace R. Kwiatek, The Dayton Jewish Observer Each year, many Jews practice the custom of tashlich, a symbolic “casting away” of sins by tossing bread crumbs, cracked corn, or birdseed into the flowing water of streams or lakes. This tradition finds echoes in