May 4, 2016
Did you know tomorrow is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day? What will you do differently? Maybe you will wear white. Maybe you will go to a ceremony at your local JCC or synagogue. Maybe you will light a yahrtzeit candle. Or maybe you won’t do anything special at all tomorrow. But...
Apr 25, 2016
I look forward to Passover every year. I love getting together with family and friends. I’m a big fan of charoset, and I even have a special place in my stomach for gefilte fish. But around day three or four, I’ve had enough matzo! There are however a few recipes...
Apr 22, 2016
What was your favorite childhood Jewish experience? For me, it was our family Passover Seders. Every year, my family would schlep across the country to Maryland or New Jersey or Florida—depending on whose turn it was to host—to join my aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents, so we could retell...
Apr 19, 2016
Editor’s Note: This week, many of us will be getting the house ready for Passover and shopping for chametz-free ingredients for the holiday. Take a look at the suggestions below for items to add to your grocery list! There are lots of sederiffic Passover recipes online, but it’s not seder that’s...
Apr 7, 2016
Editors Note: We have several delightful Passover stories coming up. Today, we’ll start with a Passover memory. We hope you’ll share some of your Passover memories, too. Your comments are always welcome! Passover desserts are famously leaden. Without leavening, you are basically eating sweetened bricks. Or pasty (nasty) egg white...
Apr 7, 2016
New York Times columnist and best-selling author, Frank Bruni, discusses his life as a former food critic and addresses some topics from his recent book Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be on the college admissions mania. The conversation is moderated by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Kornblut, who currently serves...
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...