Sukkah 36

Today’s daf continues to explore one of the themes of this chapter of Tractate Sukkah: What constitutes beauty?  As we saw on Sukkah 34, the Torah commands that one of the four species — the one we know today as the etrog — should come from the “fruit of a beautiful tree” (Leviticus 23:40). Though there were different opinions […]

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The History of Tzimmes

Tzimmes (sometimes tsimmes) is a slow-cooked root vegetable stew with fruit, schmaltz and often meat. Bestselling author Michael Wex calls it a cousin to cholent. For Ashkenazi Jews from the shtetl days of the Middle Ages up to the 21st century, it’s most closely associated with Rosh Hashanah. The sweetness from the fruit (and sometimes […]

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Who Are the Bukharan Jews?

At the far edges of the Jewish world, Bukharan Jews (also sometimes referred to as Bukharian or Bokharan Jews) have made their homes in Central Asia’s vibrant cities — now located in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan — for well over a millenia. One of the world’s oldest diaspora groups, they came to resemble the Muslim Tajiks […]

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