a guide to the jewish holidays
A Guide to the Jewish Holidays was originally published in May 1997 by Michael Kay to the Tzafon listserv. Written as a series of e-mail messages to the Tzafon USY Listserv, the guide was intended as an educational primer for Jewish teenagers about each holiday and received a tremendously positive response.
We contacted John Davis, who was Tzafon Communications VP at that same time, and asked his and Mike's permission to reprint A Guide to the Jewish Holidays on the Tzafon website again, and they gave us the OK. If you are looking for it in its original form, go to http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/jdd16/guide/.
What follows is the introduction that John wrote for A Guide to the Jewish Holidays:
Michael Kay and I served together as regional officers of Tzafon USY from 1996 to 1997. Mike was the region's Religion and Education Vice President and I served as Communications Vice President. Though we had only met once before we were both elected to the regional executive board, we soon became close friends.
Mike awed me with his casual and humorous methods of teaching and leading others. He often interspersed passages of Torah with jokes and anecdotes from the life of a typical teenager in order to connect with his audience and relate Judaism to them. He inspired myself and others with his knowledge and love of Torah to care more about the religion that they did not choose for themselves and to learn about Judaism and become more observant of its mitzvot.
Once I realized what a special guy Mike is and how talented he is in the field of Jewish education, I eagerly began to work with him on many projects for Tzafon USY. One of those, the Tzafon On-Line Jewish Holiday Handbook, has evolved into the website before which you now stand. A Guide to the Jewish Holidays has been re-edited for the general public, slightly reorganized, and somewhat aesthetically enhanced.
Please use the table of contents on the left of this page to navigate through the Guide. Double-click on a folder to open or close it. Double-click on any folder or folder-item to load the corresponding page. Scroll the contents up or down by keeping the mouse-button depressed and dragging the mouse up or down. Single-click on the bulls-eye symbol to reset the table of contents to its original state.
I have added a number of resources including a calendar of the correct dates for this and future years and links to other valuable web sites. You may also download the entire text of this web site to be used for educational purposes. As time goes on, I hope to add more resources, with Michael's help, to add to and improve A Guide to the Jewish Holidays. Your feedback is encouraged.
Thank you for visiting. I hope you find Michael's knowledge as helpful, funny, and inspiring as I have.
- Holidays
- Other
This page was originally created by John Davis and Michael Kay, and can be found at http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/jdd16/guide/.
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