Around the Calendar

Eliezer Segal’s Newspaper Articles

Around the Calendar

Sabbath

  1. Tsholent
  2. Shabbat Candles: To See or Not to See
  3. Angels on My Shoulders
  4. You Have Mail
  5. Where to Draw the Line
  6. Sabbath: To Feast or to Fast?
  7. A Fine Kettle of Fish
  8. Sabbath under Siege
  9. Speed Demon
  10. A Day of Rest—or Resistance

Passover

  1. Nisan: the First Month
  2. The Seder as a Living Tradition
  3. The Exodus of the Spirit
  4. It Is the Season of Our Liberation
  5. That Remarkable Kid
  6. The Invisible Guest
  7. The Great Passover Raisin-Wine Controversy
  8. A Text Inscribed in Blood
  9. Important Women
  10. Staging the Exodus
  11. Those Magnificent Men and Their Matzah Machines
  12. Back to Egypt
  13. “In Every Generation…”: The Strange Omission in Rabbi Kalischer’s Haggadah
  14. The Eggs and the Exodus
  15. Dressing for Success
  16. Hillel’s Perplexing Passover Predicament
  17. Drip before You Sip
  18. Thicker than Water
  19. Freshly Baked: A Matzah Mystery
  20. Why Was This Haggadah Different?
  21. Children’s Questions at Heart of Passover
  22. Thanks for the Mnemonics
  23. An Arrant Aramean
  24. A Kinder, Gentler Pharaoh?
  25. An Embarrassment of Riches
  26. A Seder with Solomon
  27. A Heavenly Herald (… and Some Housework)
  28. Seder Swordplay
  29. Who Knows “Who Knows One?”
  30. Pop Goes Passover
  31. Seventy-something
  32. Apples or Asphalt?: In Search of the Perfect Haroset Recipe
  33. Lazy Ladies?
  34. Don’t Go Near the Water
  35. Fractions, Factions and Afflictions
  36. New, Newer…Newest Moon
  37. Low Sodium Diet
  38. Inscrutable Scrolls
  39. Crime of Passion
  40. Guess Who Isn’t Coming to Dinner
  41. Princess of Egypt
  42. Moses’s About-Face
  43. The “Get Out of Jail Free” Card
  44. Haggadah Hoppers
  45. Who Turned Out the Lights?
  46. Solo Performance
  47. Where the Wild Things Were
  48. Hurray for the Hyksos
  49. Red Sea, Reed Sea…and the Persian Gulf

The Omer Season

  1. New Light on an Ancient Ritual
  2. The Tragic History of the “Omer” Season
  3. Counting the Days
  4. Notes from the Underground
  5. Just a Little Bit Off the Top Please
  6. The Case of the Missing Omer
  7. Pyre, Pyre, Pants on Fire
  8. Fire from Water at Meron
  9. Thirty-Three and Counting

Yom Ha-Atzma’ut and Yom Yerushalayim

  1. The Founding of Jerusalem: A Palestinian Midrash?
  2. Two Thousand Years
  3. Gathering the Dispersed of Israel
  4. That Old Blue Box
  5. Israel Rocks
  6. Hertz the Poet
  7. On Solid Ground
  8. Three Cheers for the White and Blue
  9. Borderline Cases
  10. A Blessed State
  11. Hebraic Headlines
  12. A Passage to Israel
  13. Light to the Nations
  14. A Day of Celebration
  15. A Golden City
  16. A Spiritual Skyline
  17. Access Denied: Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg’s Unsuccessful Aliyyah
  18. The Fiscal Physicist
  19. Make Mine a Grande Fig Latte
  20. Show Me the Money
  21. Making the Desert Bloom
  22. On Native Soil

Shavu‘ot

  1. Obadiah the Proselyte
  2. Tradition or Compassion: A Shavu’ot Controversy
  3. The Greening of Shavu’ot
  4. Akdamut, Aramaic, and Ashkenazic Origins
  5. Honey from the Tablets
  6. Crowning Achievement
  7. When Mount Sinai Was Lifted Up
  8. Covenant Renewal Day
  9. The High Road and the Low Road to Sinai
  10. Pulling an All-Nighter
  11. The Rainbow Anniversary
  12. First Fruits and Forefathers
  13. Two-Tiered Torah
  14. Poetry in Motion
  15. Extended Warranty
  16. Moses’s Big Day
  17. Moses vs. the Angels
  18. …Perchance to Dream 
  19. Laying Down the Law
  20. Off to See the Wizard
  21. Standing [or is that: Sitting?] Room Only
  22. The Twofold Feast
  23. A Feast of Firsts
  24. A Grain of Truth
  25. Sinai with Subtitles
  26. The Letters of the Law

The Ninth of Av

  1. Rabbi Judah, King Hezekiah… and a Cancelled Fast
  2. De-Bugging Titus

Rosh Hashanah

  1. The Day of Judgement
  2. Into the Depths of the Sea: Tashlikh in Jewish Law and Lore
  3. Piyyut: The Poetry of Worship
  4. A Minyan for the Holidays
  5. What Year Is It Today?
  6. Dancing with the Demons
  7. Roman Holiday
  8. Vanity, Emptiness and the Throne of Glory
  9. A Binding Disagreement
  10. Mosaic Musings
  11. Horn of Plenty
  12. Assault on the Angels
  13. Legend and Liturgy: The Elusive Tale of the Untanneh Tokef
  14. Joy or Judgment
  15. The Sounds of Sinai
  16. New Year, New Moon
  17. Singing from the Same Hymn Book
  18. Paths to Moriah
  19. Holy Day Hunger
  20. Balanced Budgets
  21. Flocks, Fighters—and Forgiveness
  22. Holiness by the Numbers

Yom Kippur

  1. The Islamic “Yom Kippur”
  2. The Kol Nidre Controversy
  3. The Repentance of Nineveh
  4. Yom Kippur: Encounters with the Absolute
  5. Sins in the Balance
  6. Atoning for Esau
  7. The Ibn Ezra Code
  8. Pandemonium in the Pews
  9. Snap to Attention
  10. Running on Empty
  11. Babylonians Behaving Badly
  12. So You Think You Can Dance
  13. Smoke Gets in our Eyes
  14. An Order of Fast Food

Sukkot

  1. Hosanna
  2. Prince of Rain
  3. Come Gather ‘Round People
  4. Torch Songs
  5. Waving at the Winds
  6. Citric Asset
  7. Just Passing Through
  8. My Aching Back
  9. Four Species, Five Opinions?
  10. No Kidding 
  11. Tell It on the Mountain
  12. One for All and All for One
  13. Eve’s Other Fruit
  14. Hearkening unto Sarah’s Voice
  15. Abraham’s Daughter
  16. Of Vanity and Vehicles
  17. The Forgotten Festival
  18. I’m Bein’ Followed by a Moonshadow…
  19. Altar Ego
  20. Simhat Torah: The Rabbis and the Rabble
  21. The Mysterious Origins of Simhat Torah
  22. The Well-Groomed Torah Groom
  23. Was He Pushed?: A Simḥat Torah Mystery

Hanukkah

  1. The “Holy Maccabee Martyrs”
  2. By the Hanukkah Lights
  3. Hellenism Revisited
  4. “Because They Were Included in the Miracle”
  5. Heroes, Hammers and Hanukkah
  6. The Maccabees’ Menorah and Titus’ Menorah
  7. From Gelt to Gifts: A Hanukkah Journey
  8. The Tomb of the Last Hasmonean?
  9. The Menorah and the Magi
  10. Getting a Handel on Hanukkah
  11. Burning Issues
  12. The Wicked Hasomonean Priest
  13. A Megillah for Hanukkah
  14. Assideans for Everyone
  15. Hanukkah by Star-Light
  16. Yesterday’s Hero
  17. Eight Days a Week
  18. Natural Light
  19. Debatable Dates
  20. Eleazar Died for Our Sins
  21. Looking Forward to Hanukkah
  22. The Priestly Kings of Salem
  23. Valley Forgery
  24. Levi’s War
  25. Light from the Right 
  26. Soldiers, Solder and Solid Gold
  27. Of Candles and Casinos
  28. “A Joyful Mother of Children”
  29. For King and Country
  30. Miracles—Then and Now
  31. Fuel for a Festival
  32. Herod’s Day
  33. Lord Gordon’s Highland Ḥanukkah
  34. “When the Wicked Greek Empire Arose…”
  35. Mending Misdeeds, Maccabee Style

The Fifteenth of Sh’vat

  1. The Incredible Plant-Man
  2. The Love Apple
  3. Apples and Apocalypse
  4. It Grows on Trees
  5. Renewable Resource
  6. Reading Palms
  7. That Mysterious Fragrance
  8. Turning Over a New Leaf 
  9. Passion-Fruit or Brain-Food?
  10. Pardes Lost
  11. Whispering Palms
  12. A View to Die for
  13. Roots and Branches
  14. Isaiah’s Cedar: The Inside Story
  15. A Tree Grows in Eden
  16. A Date with Deborah
  17. Forbidding Fruit
  18. Botanical Blessings
  19. Forces of Nature
  20. Under the Apple Tree
  21. Tree Huggers

Purim

  1. Purim, Parody and Pilpul
  2. The War Against Purim
  3. Vashti: A Feminist Heroine?
  4. Esther the Marrano
  5. Aquarian Esther
  6. Passing Through Shushan
  7. Troubles at Court
  8. The Purim-Shpiel and the Passion Play
  9. The Wise King Ahasuerus
  10. Esther and the Essenes
  11. Remembering Harbona: for Good or for Bad?
  12. Old King, New King
  13. Hanging Out with Vaiezatha
  14. Wall-to-Wall Purim
  15. Haman for All Seasons
  16. Stepladders and Stable-Hands
  17. Verify Your References
  18. Snap, Gragger, Pop! 
  19. Poëma de la Reyna Ester
  20. The Show Must Go On
  21. A Dinner Fit for a Queen
  22. Mad about Mordecai 
  23. Haman among the Pyramids
  24. The Natives Are Restless
  25. A Match for a Misogynist
  26. Party Lights
  27. Fast or Fantasy
  28. What We Can Learn from Haman
  29. Mysterious Mordecai
  30. It Sounds Better in Tarsian
  31. Will the Real Ahasuerus Please Stand Up?
  32. Royal Flush

Miscellaneous

  1. January 1st
  2. On Matriarch Rachel and Mother’s Day
  3. Columbus’s Medinah?
  4. Calendar Conundrums
  5. Ladies’ Day