HTAA in the NEWS

Costumes, food and Purim shpiels. Games, kids and the book of Esther.
Purim came in with an extra dose of joy in greater Washington last week, two years after the start of the pandemic.
Indoors and out, in person and online, area congregations made the most of the holiday that...Read more...

Sitting in the 96 year old’s warm, inviting home,...Read more...

(Special to Informed Comment) – Yesterday was the last day of a peculiar Passover, celebrated under the Coronavirus pandemic. It reminded me of a famous story. Two British salesmen went down to Africa in the 1900’s to find if there was any opportunity for selling shoes. They wrote telegrams back to Manchester. One of them wrote, “Situation hopeless. They don’t wear shoes.” And the other one wrote, “Glorious opportunity. They...Read more...

What could cause such hate in a person that would drive them to kill and injure innocent members of a minority group?

I was troubled by this distressing question once again, when on December 28, during the last candle lighting of Hanukkah, an intruder with a large knife burst into the home of a Hasidic rabbi in a New York...Read more...

The National Library of Israel maintains the Piyut and Tfila Website  אתר הפיוט והתפילה – a musical repository and a rich archive documenting and preserving authentic liturgical melodies from Jewish communities around the world. You will find melodies originating from such diverse countries as Turkey, Poland, Yemen, Romania, Iran, Belarus, etc.

Last week they uploaded a recording that I...Read more...

​​​​​​​In August 2014, my husband and I pulled our then 14-year-old daughter Chana, who is autistic and non-verbal, out of the school system. We weren’t sure what we were going to do as homeschoolers, but we knew Chana was making absolutely no headway in public school. She even seemed to be...Read more...

At a recent Shabbat lecture in Silver Spring, Maryland, Joshua Muravchik, distinguished fellow at the DC-based World Affairs Institute and adjunct professor at the Institute of World Politics, shared his concerns about a growing divide between Democrats and Republicans on...Read more...

Did you know the U.S. government’s first official counterterrorism office was created in response to an attack on Israelis? In fact, many of the components of the U.S. responses to terrorism were prompted by developments affecting Israel.

During his Shabbat morning guest lecture on Jan. 27, Michael Kraft, a 19-year veteran of the U.S. State Department’s counterterrorism office, shared these and many other insights about about...Read more...

Silver Spring historian Professor David Rotenstein was the latest lecturer in Congregation Har Tzeon-Agudath Achim’s adult education series.

Today we think of Silver Spring, Maryland, as a very Jewish area, but this wasn’t always the case. In reality, Jews were banned from living in Silver Spring for decades as a result of restrictive residency covenants and land-use laws explicitly prohibiting the sale of property to specific...Read more...

Jews may be “People of the Book,” but Congressman Jamie Raskin (D – Md.) believes in putting words into action to help make the world a better place. That was one of the messages the new representative for Maryland’s 8th District had for the packed audience at Har Tzeon-Agudath Achim in Silver Spring, Maryland, on Sept. 23, Shabbat Shuva.

The former American University law professor and veteran Maryland state legislator said...Read more...

This story begins while I was siting in Shul during Shmeni Atzeret of this year.  The congregation was getting ready to begin Yizkor.  I was sitting with my parents thinking about my brother Ami.  Abbé was there to say Kaddish for, among others, her brother...Read more...