Mar 31, 2016
April 1, 2016—PALO ALTO, Ca—The Oshman Family JCC is pleased to announce a major new installation in the Jessica Lynn Saal Town Square: a gefilte fish pond that is slated to become the new centerpiece of campus life. The pond will be stocked with free-range, cruelty-free organic gefilte fish from the nearby Sacramento River Delta. In...
Mar 29, 2016
Esteemed writer and novelist Joyce Carol Oates closed out Litquake Palo Alto in discussion with fellow author Keith Raffel. Among her many honors are the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the National Book Award. Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University,...
Mar 22, 2016
The rabbis of Jewish tradition liked a good pun. So when it came to Purim, the great Jewish holiday of jokes and merrymaking, they decided to play around with its name. Oddly enough though they claimed that the holiday is deeply connected to Yom Kippur. “Yom,” in Hebrew, means “Day,”...
Mar 17, 2016
What’s not to love about hamantaschen? The word conjures up images of buttery goodness wrapped around jam or poppy seeds or occasionally something more exotic like chocolate or nuts. But what happens when you really push the envelope? Here are eleven recipes that are too crazy not to try! What’s a...
Mar 11, 2016
What’s not to love about a drunken, raucous holiday with a built-in excuse to dress in drag? Here are seven reasons why even non-Jews should get on board with Purim: 1. A Juicy Story Full of Death and Deception Purim celebrates the salvation of the Jewish people in the 4th century BCE when...
Mar 4, 2016
Mah Nishtana HaVacation HaZeh? What makes the JCC-led Community Israel Trip different from all other tours? For us, figuring out the answer to that question was the key to unlocking our decision to not only join the trip, but to chair it as well. We’ve been to Israel...