Portal:Judaism

Shemini Atzeret is a Jewish holiday. It is celebrated on the 22nd day of the Hebrew month of Tishrei in the land of Israel, and on the 22nd and 23rd outside the land. In the Tanakh and Talmud, Shemini Atzeret is somewhat connected to the festival of Sukkot, which it directly follows. At the same time, it is considered to be a separate festival in its own right. Outside the land of Israel, this is further complicated by the additional day of Biblical holidays. The first day of Shemini Atzeret therefore coincides with the eighth day of Sukkot outside of Israel.

The celebration of Simchat Torah is the most distinctive feature of the holiday, but it is a later rabbinical innovation. In Israel, the celebrations of Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah are combined on a single day. In the Diaspora, the celebration of Simchat Torah is deferred to the second day of the holiday. Commonly, only the first day is referred to as Shemini Atzeret, while the second is called Simchat Torah. The holiday also features the prayers Yizkor and Geshem. (Read more...)

Did you know...

• ... that an attempt to sell the aging Stanton Street Synagogue (pictured) on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to a Jesuit priest led to its resurgence as a Jewish house of worship?
• ... that it is theorized that Jews' Gate Cemetery in Gibraltar was founded on Windmill Hill due to the expulsion of Jews mandated under the Treaty of Utrecht?
• ... that when Rabbi Avraham Kalmanowitz cried, "even the State Department listened"?
• ... that "Miky", a bomb-sniffing police dog that only responds to commands in Hebrew, helped to revitalize the Jewish community in Helena, Montana, that built Temple Emanu-El?
• ... that the Jewish Military Museum was founded partly to counter the idea that British Jews have avoided serving in the armed forces?

Simon Wiesenthal (1908–2005) was a Jewish-Austrian Holocaust survivor who became famous after World War II for his work as a Nazi hunter. He studied architecture and was living in Lviv at the outbreak of World War II. After being forced to work as a slave labourer in various Nazi concentration camps during the war, Wiesenthal dedicated most of his life to tracking down fugitive Nazi war criminals. In 1947 he co-founded the Jewish Historical Documentation Center in Linz, Austria, where he and others gathered information for war crime trials and helped refugees find lost relatives. He opened the Jewish Documentation Center in Vienna in 1961. He helped in locating Adolf Eichmann and preparing a dossier on Franz Stangl.

In April 1970, when Bruno Kreisky became the Austrian chancellor, Wiesenthal told the press that four cabinet appointees had been members of the Nazi Party. Kreisky called Wiesenthal a "Jewish Nazi" and likened his organisation to the Mafia. He later accused him of collaborating with the Nazis. In 1986, Wiesenthal was involved in the case of Kurt Waldheim, whose Nazi past was revealed in the lead-up to the 1986 Austrian presidential elections, although Wiesenthal had previously cleared him of any wrongdoing.

With a reputation as a storyteller, Wiesenthal wrote several memoirs that contain tales that are only loosely based on actual events. He died in Vienna on 20 September 2005, and was buried in Herzliya. The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles is named in his honor. (Read more...)

• Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth and member of the House of Lords, dies (7 November 2020)
• The Pittsburgher Rebbe, Mordechai Yissachar Ber Leifer dies of COVID-19
• A peace agreement is reached between Israel and the UAE (13 August 2020)
• Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz dies, editor of the Steinsaltz Talmud (7 August 2020)

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