The last time I checked this month’s secular calendar, I saw that May 6th was listed as “National Nurses Day,” and May 7th was listed

It was William Shakespeare who rhetorically asked, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Back in the day, Mah Nishtanah was not necessarily the opening line of the four questions in the Pesach Haggadah. In many an Eastern European

How are “months” different from all other demarcations of time when it comes to Yiddish? All other demarcations of time have acceptable Yiddish equivalents for

A poker player, I’m not. But even I know that “four of a kind” beats “three of a kind.” And that is the story of

If the lives of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln—whose birthdays we observe this Monday—have for the longest time failed to evoke much interest, then, perhaps,

In his conversation with God, the prophet Jeremiah is granted a vision of a mahkayl shahkeyd or a staff of a shkeydiah or an almond

By no means does the English language have a monopoly on expressions employing body parts. “She has been walking around with a heavy heart, ever

Although three months have passed since we have inaugurated Rosh Hashanah, we are reminded that there is another new year that plays a role in

Believe it or not, it was never a foregone conclusion that Hebrew would be the lingua franca of modern-day Israel. A century and a half

One of the realities of Thanksgiving is that everybody talks turkey, in the most literal sense. Recipes abound for turkey and side dishes, as well

With the weekly Torah cycle about to begin anew, it ought to come as no surprise that the Yiddish language is far from speechless. While