"Oh, I know all about Hanukkah," she said. "It's the Jewish Christmas." Not quite. Hard to believe in a materialistic age but Hanukkah's origins have absolutely nothing to do with gift-giving. Hanukkah, the Feast of Dedication and rededication, celebrates and commemorates one of the first recorded fights for religious freedom;...

No other month has as much sacred choreography as the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar, Tishrei: the month of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot, the Feast of Booths, ancient Israel's fall harvest festival.

Rosh Hashanah, perhaps the most universalist of the Jewish holidays, celebrates the creation of...

Because of the strict lunar calendar to which Islam adheres, the fast of Ramadan occasionally can fall in the summer months, as it does this year. In the solar-lunar Jewish calendar there is always a summer fast in the northern hemisphere. Tisha b'Av, the ninth day of the sixth Hebrew...