TO sit /stand/walk/be silent/ recite Psalms/ study? These are the choices you have to make if you are in Israel on Holocaust Remembrance Day which the government in 1951 established the week after Pesach,...
Each year we try to cut down on the number of mishloach manot/shalach manos we send, and either give more matanot l’evyonim to the needy, or find indigent Jews who really need mishloach manot...
29bShvat 5770 Laughter broke the tense atmosphere of the Israel Supreme Court session on Thursday Feb.4 (20bShvat) when both sides, those in favor of gender-separated seating on Mehadrin buses and those against, reacted with...
Blowing shofar – in striped prison uniform A controversy in cross-currents.com two years ago led to a remarkable interview I was privileged to record recently. Erev Rosh Hashana, Sept.10,2007 I posted my translation of...
“That’s a premier Israeli folksong,” claimed someone from the audience when my co-translator and I showed a video of a Sanz hassidim singing a piyut sung at Seudah Shlishit on Shabbat. I ruminated on...
I was at a study-seminar in Nahariya when I received a phone call 1 am Friday, erev Shabbat Hagadol from New York. “We have an emergency,” said one of the editors of Mishpacha Magazine....
Tu Bishvat,eve of Israeli elections. About seven years ago a journalist colleague confronted me during a coffee break. “Are you a Neanderthal? How could you support the Shas party?” I invited her to come...
5 b Kislev. Today the funerals were held for the kedoshim murdered in Mumbai. I happen to be staying at the Jerusalem home of my brother who is very active in Chabad. We came...
Ever change your mind after reading something? In the course of translating an essay I was stimulated to rethink a principle I once held dearly: suspicion and avoidance of large crowds. I believed that...
The place:Liberated Theresienstadt. Date: May 1945. Hanna, a survivor, recalls: “I thought to myself: ‘I am now free. I am actually free to do whatever I want.’ But I had nowhere to go. I...
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