The High Holidays begin next week and with them comes the annual question: Where will we go for High Holiday services? Even Jews who rarely attend synagogue services are often interested in attending them for Rosh HaShanah or Yom Kippur - yet this is the one time of year when they encounter the most barriers. In many synagogues, a seat at High Holiday services requires paid membership or the purchase of expensive one-off tickets. Ushers stand at the doors to ensure that everyone who shows up has purchased their seat, and even then participants are often asked to make donations to the synagogue during services.

The above model is the norm in North America, which is what made a recent article in the Forward so intriguing. Titled "High Holy Days Are Free at Some Shuls, And Worshipers Flock," the article explores a new model that some synagogues are experimenting with - one in which High Holiday services are free and, in some cases, membership is never required.  Washington-based synagogue Sixth and I is one example. It has a no-dues and free-high-holidays policy that has resulted in congregational growth so profound that they had to book the Chinese Community Church across the street to handle the expected overflow for their High Holiday services this year.

Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, is quoted in the article as saying that this new model will never be the standard in America. Synagogues could only offer free services by cutting back on staffing and programming costs, or by relying on major donors as Sixth and I does. "Eventually, you get what you pay for and Jewish institutions in America can never be free," said Sarna.

Still, many synagogues have experimented with some form of free "teasers" - offering free tickets to young families, young professionals or newcomers in the hopes of enticing them to join the synagogue and pay yearly dues.

You can read the entire article on the Forward's website by clicking here. What do you think: Should High Holiday services be free?

Traditionally honey is one of the quintessential Rosh HaShanah foods. That being the case, I thought it would be fun to post a few honey "factoids" that can be shared around the Rosh HaShanah table (or in the classroom, for the teachers among us!).

These bits of honey trivia are courtesy of the National Honey Board:

• How many flowers must honey bees tap to make one pound of honey? About two million flowers, give or take.
• How far does a hive of bees fly to bring you one pound of honey? More than 55,000 miles.
• How much honey does the average worker honey bee make in her lifetime? About 1/12 of a teaspoon.
• How fast does a honey bee fly? About 15 miles per hour.
• How much honey would it take to fuel a bee's flight around the world? About one ounce (or two Tablespoons); no carry-on luggage is allowed!

Click here to read the National Honey Board's complete list of honey factoids and also to learn more about bees and varieties of honey.

Photo credit: Getty Images / Lauren Burke

DNA tests on the saliva of Hitler's living relatives recently revealed that he was "biologically linked to the 'sub-human' races he sought to exterminate."

The DNA samples were taken from 39 of Hitler's family members, among them an Austrian farmer identified only as Norbert H. Researchers discovered the presence of a chromosome called Haplopgroup E1b1b (Y-DNA) in the samples, which is a rare chromosome commonly found among Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. It is also found in the DNA of Berbers in Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Tunisia.

As the Daily Mail notes, this is not the first time it has been suggested that Hitler had Jewish ancestry. His father, Alois, might have been the illegitimate child of a maid named Maria Schickelgruber and a Jewish man with the last name of Frankenberger. If true, Hitler would have been one quarter Jewish.

DNA tests reveal 'Hitler was descended from the Jews and Africans he hated' [Daily Mail]
Hitler Likely Had Jewish and African Roots [Forward]

An Israeli documentary titled "A Film Unfinished" opens in the U.S. this week and promises to shed new light on an unfinished Nazi propaganda film titled "Das Ghetto." Meant to show the differences between how rich and poor Jews lived in the ghetto, for years the Nazi film was viewed as a record of ghetto life. However, as "A Film Unfinished" reveals, many scenes in "Das Ghetto" were choreographed by Nazi officers.

"A Film Unfinished" was directed by Yael Hersonski who, together with producer Noemi Schory, decided to piece together the true story behind "Das Ghetto" using outtake footage discovered in 1998. The footage showed officers directing passers-by to ignore corpses and telling well-dressed Jews to enter a butcher shop with children begging for food outside. There are other scenes as well, all with one purpose: to show how well-off Jews routinely ignored the suffering of their Jewish brothers and sisters. Remarkably, Hersonki decided to invite five survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto to view the footage and then taped their reactions for the documentary. "When did you ever see a flower? We would have eaten a flower!" remarked one survivor upon seeing images of flowers in the Nazi film.

"A Film Unfinished" premiered at the Sundance Film festival this year and has since been distributed to movie theaters in New York and Los Angeles. You can see a trailer for the documentary here.

A Film Unfinished [NYT]
Movie Review: A Film Unfinished [LA Times]
Israeli documentary on rare Holocaust footage airs in U.S. [Haaretz]