April Happy HourJoin NextGen, OC H.Y,P.E., and Moishe House Orange County for a night out with beer and enough pizza to get you through the week of Passover. This casual experience is an opportunity to reconnect with old friends and meet new ones! Contact :Shoshana Levine 949.524.5016 slevine@jfedoc.org April 18, 2024 Brewery X 3191 E La Palma Ave Anaheim, 92806 | 6 – 8:00 PM For more information please visit  http://jewishorangecounty.org PJ Our Way Book Club Join fellow PJ Our Way kids ages 9-12 for PJ Our Way book club! The PJ Our Way book club will be a recurring monthly event on th ..read more

Weissman Arts- Be the ChangeJewish Community Foundation Orange County Weissman Arts will have all eight boxes on site at the JCC for one day only. Be the Change OC artists will host hands-on workshops, we will have panel discussions, music, food, and more. Be the Change is an “artivism” initiative inspired by the Jewish tenet of justice as expressed through our ritual of giving tzedakah. This exhibit is about making space to talk about injustice and providing the necessary action steps to be agents of change in our local and global communities. April 7, 2024 Merag ..read more

What you need to know about the festival of freedom. Passover, or Pesach in Hebrew, is one of the three major pilgrimage festivals of ancient Israel and commemorates the Exodus from Egypt. Its name comes from the miracle in which G-d “passed over” the houses of the Israelites during the tenth plague. Centered on the family or communal celebration of the seder (ritual meal), Passover is one of the most beloved of all Jewish holidays. Passover History     The origins of Passover lie in pre-Israelite spring celebrations of the first grain harvest and the births of the first lambs of the ..read more

Online resources for Passover recordings, lyrics, sheet music and more. Singing is traditionally a major part of the Passover seder, and it certainly makes for a more festive and participatory celebration. But what if your repertoire of Passover songs is lacking or you can’t remember the lyrics or melodies even for classics like “Dayenu” or “Chad Gadya”? Or what if you have an urge to accompany the singing on guitar (or some other instrument) this year?     Whatever the situation, we can help. Below (and in no particular order) are the best online resources we could find. Are we miss ..read more

Hametz, kitniyot and the holiday’s dietary restrictions Keeping kosher for Passover means abstaining from hametz, the fermented products of five principal grains: wheat, rye, spelt, barley and oats. Though matzah, the unleavened bread eaten on Passover, is made from grain, it is produced under highly controlled conditions to ensure that it does not ferment.     Ashkenazi Jews who keep kosher for Passover have also traditionally avoided eating kitniyot, a category of foods that includes corn, rice, beans and lentils, though the Conservative movement’s rabbinic authorities overturned t ..read more

        Cambria Gordon, author of the young adult historical fiction novel, Trajectory (Scholastic Press, April 2, 2024) is a third generation Los Angeleno born into an assimilated Jewish family who had a Christmas tree every year. At age eleven, she told her parents she wanted to have a Bat Mitzvah like her other Jewish schoolmates. Cambria fell in love with Hebrew school—the songs, the prayers, the camping trips, the boys—got rid of the tree, and became a loud and proud Jew. Today, she writes stories about plucky Jewish girls who have the moxie to fight for what they beli ..read more

    Cuba’s 600 or so Jews are mostly elderly and hungry. Getting adequate food in Cuba is challenging, especially when you live on a monthly pension of $15.     The US government allows Jewish Cuba Connection to send food packages. When it has the money, it uses a company in Miami.     Packages start at about $100 which is a month’s supply for a family and usually includes hard-to-get items like chicken or ground meat as well as oil,  flour, hygiene products, etc. It also ships packages to the Senior Center for distribution to seniors.   However, it ne ..read more

(From R-L) Denise Bar-Aharon, Noa Kirel and Sylvan Adams (Credit – Shauli Lendler).jpg     Tel Aviv – April 1, 2024 – Israeli-Canadian businessman and philanthropist Sylvan Adams hosted the unveiling ceremony for Make-A-Wish Israel’s newest ambassadors at his private residence in Tel Aviv last night. The new ambassadors will work to fulfil the wishes of children with critical illnesses in Israel, including those physically wounded with multi-system trauma by the attacks on October 7th.     Make-A-Wish Israel is an integral part of the international organization th ..read more

“The Jews in America have helped this government … and now the time has come when the American people should reciprocate by contributing funds for the relief of the millions of Jews overseas,” said Earle C. Hodges, Western Director for the campaign and a non-Jew who took it upon himself to help a people he greatly respected. The drive by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (J.D.C.) was a nationwide effort to help the 11 million Jews devastated by the Great War. Two things are unique about this particular effort: one is the fact that the American Jewish community was so concerned a ..read more

Cypress College holds Yom HaShoah event     With the theme of survival, gratitude, hope, and inclusiveness, Cypress College holds a Yom HaShoah Day of Remembrance event “Out of the Darkness…We Can All Create Light,”  each year in April. This year, Cypress College’s 9th Annual Holocaust Day of Remembrance will be held on April 25 at 7 PM.     Cliff Lester, former photography professor at Cypress and the son of Holocaust survivors, created the program, which is now supplemented by a gallery of photography, a variety of classes and community outreach. As he explained, “Th ..read more