Jewish prayer shawls are called tallit. The elaborately braided fringes, the tzitzit, on the four corners of the shawls, represent God’s 613 commandments to the Jews. We discovered a synagogue with a class in which boys and girls preparing for their coming of age ceremonies, bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs, make their own tallit. More →

February 8, 2008 | Comments

Heschel is widely considered to be one of the greatest American religious figures of the last century — a rabbi, theologian, social activist and mystic admired by Christians as well as Jews. More →

January 18, 2008 | Comments

Read more of Kim Lawton’s interview about the Star of Bethlehem with Frederica Mathewes-Green. More →

December 21, 2007 | Comments

There has been a new development in the Reform movement of Judaism, the largest and most liberal branch of Judaism in the U.S. There’s a new prayer book out, and it has been designed to be useful to everyone, with more Hebrew for those who want that, and also more sensitivity to women and to contemporary values. More →

November 16, 2007 | Comments

Whether they are Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist or Reform, whether they gather on a California beach or in a New York City synagogue, Jews share at least one common element at their Rosh Hashanah observances: the shofar.

September 14, 2007 | Comments

Around the world, there are hundreds of classes to which children come to learn how shofars are made. We joined a group in Brooklyn, New York at a class called the Shofar Factory. More →

September 7, 2007 | Comments

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, guest anchor: Now, a special report about a woman named Eva Kor. She’s a real estate broker in Terre Haute, Indiana, but her story is one of unthinkable loss and suffering as a child at the … More →

July 13, 2007 | Comments

New York’s Yeshiva University Museum has opened an exhibit called “And I Still See Their Faces.” It’s made up primarily of family photographs of members of pre-war Poland’s once thriving Jewish community. Most of those remembered in the photographs did not survive the Holocaust. More →

April 13, 2007 | Comments

Observant Jews prepare for Passover by getting rid of everything in the house that is chametz, or leavened. We visited the Orthodox Jewish family of Ari and Shoshana Lerner to see how they were preparing. More →

March 30, 2007 | Comments

The question of whether to ordain gay clergy has challenged and divided many denominations, including Conservative Jews. The Orthodox strongly oppose gay ordination, but reform Jews accept it. Now, the Conservative movement's Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has recommended that Conservative seminaries should be allowed to admit gays.

February 2, 2007 | Comments