After years of anticipation and speculation, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is now officially in effect. The health insurance marketplace has experienced a dramatic metamorphosis and will continuously evolve as the effects of Obamacare are sorted out. There are many components of the new laws that are still murky to most people, and I will do my best to shed light on some of those issues and concerns.

At the end of 2013, most people were faced with three options:

Walk into any supermarket today, and you will find a dazzling array of fruits from around the world, regardless of what grows in our own region and is in season. Back in the shtetl, things were not quite that way. Yet even when Eretz Yisrael was still a distant dream for most of Jewry, many of our grandparents and great-grandparents would eat bokser (Yiddish for carob) on Tu B’Shevat, along with other fruits when they were available. Fruits from among the special Seven Species of Eretz Yisrael – grapes, dates, figs, pomegranates, and olives – were especially prized. This 15th

The deeper spiritual meaning of the holiday notwithstanding, Purim is a day when we indulge the body with food and drink. Good nutrition may be the last thing on your mind as you prepare your shalach manos and Yom Tov seuda. Well, I’m here to tell you that Purim observance and healthy eating needn’t be mutually exclusive. You can “have your cake and eat it too” – literally! In fact, one of the unsung heroes of the day – no, not one of the characters in the Megilla – is a humble fruit commonly used in hamantaschen that is a

For many centuries, Jews have partaken of pomegranate seeds on Rosh Hashanah night, as one of the significant omens. “May our merits increase like the seeds of the pomegranate,” we say prior to enjoying the tart, crimson-colored seeds. (Just watch those white shirts and tablecloths – have you ever tried to get out a stain from pomegranate juice?)

  The question on everyone’s mind, of course, is, are there really 613 seeds in a pomegranate? It’s an intriguing folkloric notion, which stems perhaps from the well-known Talmudic statement that “even the empty ones among the Jews are full of mitzvos

Can I offer you a glezele tey (Yiddish for a little glass of tea)? In days gone by, tea was a way of life among Eastern European Jews. As Jewish food historian Rabbi Gil Marks writes in his Encyclopedia of Jewish Food, families would laugh and chat over glasses of tea, and rabbinic scholars would discuss points of law. Tea was so ingrained into the fabric of life that Eastern Europeans typically drank five to six cups per day, and frequently more.

  In the past few decades, nutritional science has been catching up to the innate wisdom of yesteryear’s

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