A magazine for Jewish teens and an online Jewish teen community

I had already made it nearly eight months without seeing my parents, siblings or dogs and had yet to feel much homesickness. That feeling changed when Passover 2009 came around. My maternal aunt, uncle and three cousins from San Diego own an apartment in Jerusalem, not too far from the Young Judaea Youth Hostel that I lived in at the time. I was a participant in Young Judaea’s Year Course in Israel program. I was fortunate enough to enjoy part of my Passover break, as well as the seder, with them.

Miryam, from Madison, Wis., sat at the seder table surrounded by her family and two unfamiliar guests. Every year her aunt invites strangers to the family seder, a common Passover tradition and mitzvah, but this year the guests—a Russian woman and her son—were particularly comical. The woman had facial hair and wore a wig. With each of the four glasses of wine, Miryam watched the woman’s wig fall more and more off-kilter as she grew louder and louder.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Passover Cookies

*Note: If you keep strict observance of the Ashkenazi Passover dietary regulations, I suggest purchasing chocolate chips that are kosher for Passover and eliminating the peanut butter chips from the recipe. It will still be delicious!

Ingredients:

1 bag of Milk Chocolate Chips
½ bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Chips (or any brand of choice)
1 box of Manischewitz Unsalted Matzos (or any brand of choice)

Materials:

In America, we have Christmas. Walk down any commercial street in the month of December, and you’ll see lights, Christmas trees and a wash of red, green and gold. Shopkeepers will greet you with a “Merry Christmas!” and special items will be on sale. But come December in Israel, and you’d barely even know it was the Christmas season. Instead, if you’re looking for a comparable level of holiday festivities in the Holy Land, you’ll have to wait a few more months—for Purim!

Israel has so many definitions and meanings in today’s world.

Israel: The name that Jacob was given after wrestling with an Angel of God, according to the Torah.
Israel: A country in the Middle East founded in 1948.
Israel: The homeland of the Jewish people.
Israel: A child born in disaster-ravaged Haiti.

Seventy-year-old Danny Chanoch has lived through five concentration camps and three heart attacks. He has never cried about his experiences during the Holocaust. Instead he jokes about it often, claiming to have a B.A. in Auschwitz. Unlike many of us, who might watch a Holocaust documentary once a year on Yom HaShoah and shed a tear at Yad Vashem, Danny’s children grew up with the Holocaust as an everyday presence in their lives.

Many strong women in history have fallen into obscurity. Several such women exist in the Bible. (How many of you have heard of Jehosheba? Serah?

I have no idea why “MazelTov Cocktail” is classified as a comedy. Don’t get me wrong—the show was hilarious. Every few minutes my friend would nudge me, laughing, and say, “It’s true! That always happens!” But the emotion that Jamie M. Fox expressed through her character moved me more than anything else. The distinct sniffles throughout the room got really loud toward the end of the off-Broadway show, and my eyes would not stay dry as Fox, playing the protagonist Lissy, said goodbye to “the brother she always wished he was.”