Truth has its own markers Lies fly like kites Wherever a wind blow People struggle with aspects of life more

Around six months ago, graduate student Gittela Welcher started “Crafters United for Charity,” an organization that sells handmade art and craft items to benefit various tzedaka causes. Welcher, together with a team of volunteers from Queens, Long Island, and the Bronx, chooses a different cause to support every other month. The crafter took some time from her art to speak with The Jewish Star. more

Howard Kopel is running for his second term as county legislator of the 7th Legislative District, which covers Cedarhurst, Inwood, Hewlett, Lawrence and Woodmere, South Valley Stream, Oceanside, Island Park and portions of East Rockaway and Bay Park. The Lawrence resident was elected in 2009 after defeating incumbent Jeff Toback. He is being challenged by Adam Moser, a Democrat from Hewlett. Moser is a former district court judge, who has a Rockville Centre legal practice. more

In the context of a discussion about what materials could be used for building a sukkah, the Gemara Sukkah (11b) raises a debate between Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Akiva regarding of what material the original sukkah G-d described in Vayikra 23:43 was made. The verse says “[You will sit in the sukkah because] I had the Israelites live in huts (sukkahs) when I brought them out of Egypt.” more

On the surface, the mitzvah of dwelling in the succah appears to be quite straightforward. The Rambam formulates the mitzvah in the following fashion: What is the mitzvah of dwelling in the succah? One should eat and drink and dwell in the succah for the entire seven-day period both at night and during the day in exactly the same manner that he dwells in his house during the other days of the year. Throughout the entire seven-day period a person should treat his house as a temporary dwelling and his succah as his permanent dwelling. more

Calendar for the week of Oct. 12, 2011 more

A number of years ago, I struck up a friendship over Pesach week with a Holocaust survivor, a former inmate of the Janowska work camp and Auschwitz. Towards the end of the week I summoned up the nerve to ask him if there was anything in particular that stood out in his mind as the reason he had survived. Without hesitation, he responded: “It was one mitzvah; the Sukkos I spent in Auschwitz. more

On Sukkot, we shop for a produce item that most of us have no intent in eating. I am always amused by the parallels between those that want an etrog that is mehadrin min mehadrin and a senior at the grocery store trying to find the best cantaloupe. more

The most vivid thing I remember about growing up Jewish was walking with my father for 26 blocks to shul on the High Holidays. Most of the congregants would park their cars two blocks away from the synagogue and walk the rest of the way. It was strange that my dad felt the need to walk. Maybe he knew that those walks would light an ember inside me, because as I got as I got older and drifted away from Judaism, the remembrances of those walks kept me from moving completely away. more

With the massive annual pilgrimage to the Breslov Rebbe’s grave in Uman, Ukraine, now behind us, the attraction for some Jews to return to the “alte heim” remains. Somehow, the option of having an independent Jewish homeland and the freedom of life in the First World do not compare to living in the ruins of your ancestral shtetl, davening in the empty synagogue of your great-grandparents, and communicating with the silent voices of the graveyard. more