Scrapbook Walls
First time visitors to the Shafran home quickly notice how odd it is. Its walls, that is. Well, what graces them, anyway. The dining room does sport a few normal things—a framed reproduction of...
Category: General
Praying for Contemporary Captives
It was over a decade ago, in the wake of a spate of terrible terrorist attacks on Jews in Eretz Yisrael, that the Moetzes Gedolei HaTorah called upon Jews to recite chapters of Tehillim...
Shark Feeding Frenzy
When my husband was a flight surgeon on the US Air Force base in Guam, he witnessed a feeding frenzy by sharks. Daily, a huge garbage truck would gingerly back up to the edge...
Reb Lazer Elya’s Eyes
Reb Lazer Elya Der Melamed (“the cheder teacher”) was born in the late 1850s, lived in Ostrolenka, Poland, and died shortly before the Germans invaded in 1939. I arrived in this world about a...
A Multi-vocal Conversation
I’ve been trying to gather information, from 6,000 miles away, in order to form some opinions on what appears to be a complex situation in Beit Shemesh. I’m still in the midst of absorbing...
Isms of a Modern Age
I was honestly humbled by the participation of the speakers who preceded me at the Sunday morning session of Agudath Israel of America’s most recent national convention. They were: the venerable Malcolm Hoenlein (whose...
Questions Aren’t Fatal
When, as a teenager, I first read about the Code of Hammurabi, the ancient set of social laws dating from the time of our forefather Avraham, I was greatly troubled. Elements of the code,...
Annoyance and Opportunity
The mosquitoes are gone, thank G-d. Not only the determined one who pestered me one summer morning in shul during davening, but all of her friends and relatives too. Gone for the fall, winter...
Running, Racism and Resentment
When I recounted seeing a small group of unusually dressed men in shul last Sunday in Staten Island and realizing that they were trying to catch a minyan before participating in the New York...
Exercising the Empathy Muscle
Politicians are often subject to derision, often for good reason. Recently, though, a Catholic cleric hurled an unusual and creative insult at local politicos: They are like Jews. Edward Gilbert, the leader of the...
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