Passover, Legumes & Web Sites

First of all, I’m really excited to be launching torahblog today.

Second, I hope all of you had a great Seder experience last night filled with all the things that make Pesach so inspiring and beautiful.

There are plenty of web sites of Jewish interest out there and like everything on the web, the quality varies wildly. Lately, though, I’ve been stumbling upon some very fine and useful locations on the Jewish Web and I plan to share them with you in posts to come.

For now, I hope you’ll spend some time over at the web site of the Jewish Daily Forward, forward.com. It’s the English language, Internet incarnation of the old Jewish Daily Forward, a Yiddish (and originally socialist) Jewish newspaper founded in New York City in the late 1800’s. (As a small boy during the Depression in Philadelphia, my dad sold and delivered the Forverts [as it was pronounced in Yiddish] and a number of other Yiddish newspapers.)

Today’s forward is a very hip, smart source for Jewish news and opinion (with a decidedly left-of-center political slant, but don’t let that put you off if you’re otherwise ensconced on the political spectrum). You can also sign up for their daily email with links to all the latest stuff. Opening my Forward.com email is always a highlight of my day.

So in today’s Forward.com, there’s a fabulous article by “Philologos” (the pseudonym of Hillel Halkin) who covers Jewish languages for the Forward. And he’s got a doozy of a piece on the whole issue of why Ashekazi (Central and Western European Jews) don’t eat rice, beans and other legumes (called kitniyot in Jewish legal terminology) on Passover but Sephardi (Spanish/ Middle Eastern/North African) Jews do.

Do take a few minutes to check it out. It’s an enlightening, fascinating read.
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