Everyone knows that Ashkenazim don’t eat rice or beans–kitniyot–on Pesach, but many people don’t know why. Interestingly, kitniyot are not and cannot become chametz. So why don’t Ashkenazim eat them… 0

How is it that an elder statesman of the Jewish community, a man with wide-ranging responsibility in a massive organization he helped build, can find the time to write a beautifully flowing commentary… 0

Each family has its favorite “tried and true” recipes that it absolutely has to include as part of the Seder menu. Tradition, tradition! But preparing family-style meals during Pesach often becomes a… 0

In the days leading up to Pesach, as Rabbi David Polsky, the man behind the OU Kosher Consumer Hotline, enters his office, the phones are already ringing. 0

Their name was pronounced Peshevorsky. I have no idea how it was spelled. Neither do I know their first names. I addressed them as “Mr. and Mrs. Peshevorsky.” It was such a mouthful; I had to practice… 0

“Why learn Gemara?” is a question most ba’alei teshuvah will ask themselves in the course of their Torah study. It is rather unlikely that Gemara inspired the ba’al teshuvah to take his initial step… 0

As North American Jews living in the twenty-first century, we take the widespread availability of kosher food for granted. We are accustomed to walking into a typical supermarket and finding that more… 0

I grew up in New England. Seasons in New England are the stuff of legend: Raging thunderstorms and scorching heat in summer, bursts of color in fall, snow measured by yardsticks in winter and a… 0

Preparing for a seder in Balad, Iraq, 2004. Courtesy of the Unit Ministry Team PESACH IN IRAQ One week after US forces toppled Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical regime in April 2003, Jews everywhere… 0

With the brilliance of a comet Ruth streaked through our lives for fourteen years minus one week, gone now two weeks short of twenty-eight years, twice the length of her effervescent life. “With a… 0