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...
Welcome Words From a Spiritual Giant
It has been over thirty years since I met Yaakov Katz, and I’ve regretted ever since that I have not had an opportunity to stay in touch with him. Ketzalah, as everyone calls him,...
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...
Fighting Yesterday’s Battle – A View from the Beit Shemesh Front Lines
by Dov Krulwich On September 6 I became an activist. Parents at the Orot school in Beit Shemesh were complaining about Chareidi zealots demonstrating against the school, and commenting that their kids were afraid....
Gingrich Schools the Media — and we would do well to listen
Jonathan Rosenblum’s article on media manipulation was written before Newt Gingrich stared down CNN’s John King last night. Gingrich received not one, but two standing ovations for denouncing the media’s descent into smear campaigns...
Who picks up the tab for media manipulation?
Israeli journalists are among the most mobilized in the Western world: They view their jobs as a soapbox to teach proper thoughts to the hoi polloi. The media’s desire to shape the national agenda...
Of Fault Lines and Forgery
Many people, myself included, believe that the fallout from Beit Shemesh and Kikar Shabbos will have a longer half-life than others suppose. One item to keep an eye on is the fault line that...
A Response to Ami Magazine from Beit Shemesh
by Etana Hecht [Editor’s Note: Contributing to this blog, I know full well that editors must sometimes – often – pull the plug on discussion after fruitful exchange gets to the point of diminishing...
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...
The Volume That Speaks Volumes
What could be the connection between intensified Israeli media incitement against haredim and the appearance of a new Yom-tov prayerbook designed exclusively for Israeli Jews? On the surface, none. But let’s glance beneath the...