As we head into the holiday season, I am acutely aware of how much different this year is going to be than previous ones. I will be celebrating without my mom for the first time. My mother died in January 2021, and I'm still dealing with the unexpected waves of grief that wash over me, sometimes out of nowhere. As I head into this first winter holiday season without her, I'm not quite sure I know what to expect, other than everything is going to be very different.

As the weather begins to get chillier, many home cooks pull out their trusty slow cookers to create easy yet warm dishes. Slow cooking is nothing new. It hasn't had staying power with Jewish communities just because the resulting food is delicious; it also allowed observant Jews to keep Shabbat by kindling a fire before sundown on Friday and keeping food warm until Saturday afternoon.

When I was a child growing up in the 1980s, the story I learned about Thanksgiving followed the classic script: it highlighted amity between the Pilgrims and their Indigenous neighbors. Due to this connection, the hunger of the European settlers was met with squash and turkey.

URJ leaders have had thousands of conversations about antisemitism over the past years, especially after October 7th. The following list summarizes the ideas that arise most often in these discussions.