Al Zeh Hayah Daveh Libenu
Sometimes it all comes down to a single story. Even an entire war. Many hundreds of us stood cheek to jowl in a Los Angeles shul on Sunday for a neighborhood prayer gathering. The...
What do They Know that I Don’t Know?
I was holding up fairly well under the pressures of this war until four things occurred. First: e-mails and calls from family and friends in the US who wanted to know how we were...
An Elegant Credo
Profound and complex ideas do not the most memorable speeches make. In reaching the crowd, the speaker is better off framing simple, straightforward ideas in effective language. Think Gettysburg Address. British Chief Rabbi Sir...
Charedim LaMatzav — Trembling about the Situation
Friday’s Yediot Acharonot carried an extraordinarily positive article about the Charedi community’s reaction to the current situation in Israel. For those unable to read the Hebrew, here are the first three paragraphs in translation:...
Feeling Good About Tisha B’Av
Only one voice of optimism carried over last week’s sustained background of sadness and despair. Jonathan Rosenblum, writing in Yated, cobbled together some of the positive consequences that have emerged from the current war...
The War, Tisha B’Av, and a Season for Self Assessment
Since childhood, we have been taught how to behave. We have been trained well in the arena of do’s and don’ts. We have also been taught which emotions are appropriate and which are not....
Qana: What Happened for Eight Hours?
The IDF is trying to figure out why the building housing 60 Lebanese in Qana collapsed at 8 AM, when the only target in the immediate vicinity was struck between midnight and one AM....
Tehillim Pey-Gimmel (Psalm 83) found in Irish Bog
Some people are calling this an important omen. Irish archaeologists Tuesday heralded the discovery of an ancient book of psalms by a construction worker while driving the shovel of his backhoe into a bog....
Saving Tommy
I had to rub my eyes as I tried to absorb the news. Prime Minister Olmert could not be that insensitive. But no matter how many times I rubbed, the story remained the same:...
Nasrallah: We Told Lebanese We’d Abduct Israeli Soldiers
MEMRI (The Middle East Media Research Institute) is a great resource, because they have this nasty habit of showing and translating what the Arabs say in Arabic to other Arabs. For example, a recent...