Man Plans… G-d Laughs
This old saying, which is a clever rhyme in the original Yiddish, comes to mind when considering the ongoing nuclear crisis in Japan. “Many are the thoughts in the heart of man, but it...
Massacre of the Innocents
by Jeff Jacoby LAST WEEKEND in Itamar, an Israeli settlement in the Samarian hills, terrorists infiltrated the home of Udi and Ruth Fogel and perpetrated a massacre of the innocents. The killers started with...
Purim in the Air
Not 70 years since the Holocaust, we remain the same boogiemen, scapegoats and plotters that we were in the fevered imagination of moronic medievals.
Introduction to Chumash Vayikra
Two not-so-obvious resources to better get you in the mood for the next Chumash. One provides a jump-start to understanding the symbolic system of the avodah. The other very elegantly expresses what the entire...
Pulling The Plug – Like It Or Not
“Death squads” are alive and well. And they have nothing to do with the President’s health-care system. A teen in New Zealand was forced off life-support, and lived to talk about it. Here is...
Chess As A Spiritual Paradigm of the Universe
I found this elegant and attractive: Once, at a Sabbath gathering (farbrengen in Yiddish), in 1948, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, zt”l, in recognition of the presence of Sammy Reshevsky (world-famous chess master), explained the spiritual...
Shop ’till You Drop
How would you explain the Shabbat laws in Israel to a group of visiting mid-career journalists, Jewish and non-Jewish Americans? Led by University of Southern California Professor Diane Winston, nine mid-career journalists will be...
Gallup on Happiness, Continued
Jews are the happiest group in America, and frum Jews are the happiest Jews! The New York Times continues in its coverage of the Gallup Well-Being Study The bad news is that fewer Jews...
The Silicon Emperor’s New Soul
But we are neither wallabies nor Watsons. We don’t just feel; we emote. We don’t just compute; we conceive. We don’t just act; we choose. Our reflections in a mirror mimic us too. But they’re not us.
Mishenichnas Adar; The Mercaz HaRav Massacre
By Rivkah Moriah As my son’s third yartzeit approaches, I can hardly believe it has been three years already. It seems like just yesterday I would wait in anticipation for him to arrive home...