Last month I argued that Israel’s long-range survival depends upon substantially strengthening the Jewish component of Israeli identity (“Jews and Staying Power,” Oct. 21, 2005). Only a reinvigorated Jewish identity can provide the internal...
Though the cost in lives and to the economy from the more than two weeks of urban riots in France does not rival that from the July 7 suicide bombs in London, the former...
Americans mark the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln every year on Presidents Day; Israelis mark the death of Prime Minister Rabin. The difference is telling. Presidents Day celebrates the lives of the...
The first thing that struck me on my first visit to the new exhibition hall at Yad Vashem, Israel’s major Holocaust museum, was the group of older people in front of me entering the...
Rabbi Aharon Kotler once told his friend Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Ruderman, Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Israel Rabbinical College, “I only envy you one thing: Rabbi Neuberger.” Reb Aharon was referring to Rabbi Naftoli Neuberger,...
The Great Lulav Scare of 5766 has passed. In the end, it appears that there were more or less lulavim for everyone. On Erev Succos, lulavim were in plentiful supply in Flatbush, and at...
Jack Wertheimer has issued another one of his periodic jeremiads on the state of mainstream American Jewry in the October Commentary (“Jews and the Jewish Birthrate). In recent years, Wertheimer has emerged as one...
The avodah [service] of the Aseres Yamei Teshuvah [the Ten Days of Repentance, the High Holy Day Period] is almost entirely internal. On Rosh Hashanah, for instance, the principle mitzvah of the day is...
[This article requires knowledge of Talmudic idioms and the yeshivos of Europe in order to be fully understood. Apologies in advance to those who do not understand many of the terms; it would have...
Beginning on Rosh Hashanah and continuing through Yom Kippur, we add at the beginning of every Shemoneh Esrai, “Remember us for life, O King, Who desires life? What precisely is this life for which...
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