Sticky Fingers

My daughter's first week of first grade ended with honey in her hair and a wedding canopy over her head.

Let me explain.

We moved to Israel before my oldest child turned six, so Kita Aleph, first grade in Israel is the only version of this milestone I know. And in Israel, it is a very big deal. Celebrations in Israeli schools have a distinct flavor. Every milestone becomes a tekes, a ceremony: coordinated shirts, songs rehearsed for weeks, families gathered to mark the moment. The distinctly Israeli flavor is almost as if the rhythms of school itself are teaching children how a community marks its milestones together, and Kita Aleph is where that training begins.

There were balloon arches. There were special first grade shirts. There was fanfare built entirely around one message: you are beginning school, and this moment is enormous.

European Commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare Olivér Várhelyi told a room of rabbis in Brussels this week that Europe cannot claim to welcome Jewish communities while making Jewish life impossible to practice.

The Regavim Movement has filed an administrative petition with the Jerusalem District Court demanding immediate enforcement action against two permanent illegal structures built on declared state land in Area C, adjacent to the newly established community of Bar Kochva in the Gush Etzion Regional Council.

Most English Bibles translate teshuvah as "repentance." That single word conjures guilt, shame, groveling, a courtroom where you are the accused. But teshuvah is built on the three-letter Hebrew root shin-vav-bet — shuv — and shuv does not mean repent. It means return.