Madonna and Kabbalah Don’t Mix

Posted on: September 21st, 2012

The more you learn Torah, the more t’shuva you will be inspired to do — and the more t’shuva you do, the more Torah you are able to learn.

Media Using Gaffe Charge to Drown Out Romney’s Truth

Posted on: September 20th, 2012

The media are still doing their best to pretend that a gaffe is a mistake, when they are actually using it to mean the telling of inconvenient truths. Obama's reign of error is a constellation of inconvenient truths, economic, security and legal, that cannot be discussed in public. The telling of these inconvenient truths has been met with cries of racism, no matter how little they have to do with race. Now they are being met with cries of "Gaffe, Gaffe," when Romney brings them up.

There’s Still Something Wrong with this Picture

Posted on: September 20th, 2012

Charedi schools like Darkei Sarah now realize that the Charedi family can no longer survive on the kinds of menial jobs women can get without a decent education.

Jihadists Make No Secret of Their Ambitions in Sydney

Posted on: September 20th, 2012

The mainstream Australian media are reporting with astonishment on the sight of elementary school children being pushed front and center by radical adults to embody the lust for Islamist jihad and to advocate the killing of unbelievers.

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

Posted on: September 20th, 2012

Whatever is meant to happen, will happen. The best thing we can do is simply have faith.

It’s A ‘Deir Yassin’ in Syria

Posted on: September 20th, 2012

Assad is really in trouble now: At least 10 Palestinian refugees were killed Wednesday in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, activists posting to a Facebook account for the camp reported. According to media from the camp, 15-year-old Jalal Yousif Salih was shot dead by a Syrian government sniper near the Palestine Hospital in the camp. [...]

Rocket Ship of T’shuva

Posted on: September 20th, 2012

Sudden t’shuva is different. It seems to come about all at once with superhuman energy and willpower.

Saturday’s Chicago Bar Car Bomb Latest in Ongoing Muslim Attacks on American Targets

Posted on: September 19th, 2012

Thinking that he had loaded a car bomb into the Jeep Cherokee that he was driving, he parked it outside a bar in downtown Chicago and walked away into an alley after doing everything he thought necessary for it to detonate. Safely distant, he then pressed the trigger mechanism in the presence of the agent, intending an explosion and deaths to follow. He was then arrested. Unknown to him, the bomb was inert and was designed not to explode. A preliminary hearing is set for Monday at a U.S. courthouse in Chicago.

For Victims of Abuse – A Warm Embrace

Posted on: September 19th, 2012

In part the altered lives victims of abuse and molestation live are a result of the abuse itself. But it is in part also because of the unfortunate negative reaction to the victims by their own community.

U’netanneh Tokef – the Hymn of Israel

Posted on: September 19th, 2012

Unetanneh Tokef is part of our Israeli heritage. It was written here in the Land of Israel, by Israeli poets, for Israelis.

How our Media Blew a Story

Posted on: September 19th, 2012

The "Innocence of Muslims" film was a pretext to boost radical Islamists. The media are downplaying this angle, because it suggests that the administration policy toward the Muslim world expressed in the President’s Cairo speech of 2009 is dangerously wrong-headed.

With Romney Stuck Practically Everywhere, It’s Obama’s Race to Lose

Posted on: September 19th, 2012

Obama's overall favorable score is now a healthy 50.4% vs. 43.4% unfavorable, a spread of +7.0%.

The Key to Success

Posted on: September 19th, 2012

Rabbi Kook has good news. If you are a loser, all is not lost. You too can be a winner. You too can succeed. How? Through t’shuva.

Israeli Ex-Defense Official: Hezbollah has 60-70,000 Rockets; Iran’s Pursuit of Nuclear Weapons is the Main Threat

Posted on: September 16th, 2012

Hezbollah now has 60-70,000 rockets, according to Maj.-Gen. (ret) Amos Gilad, a former IDF Spokesperson and Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, who delivered a major speech last week at the World Summit of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism in Herzliya, Israel, which ended yesterday. "The next war will be aimed against the home front," he said. But Iran, which backs and has been arming Hezbollah may be a greater threat. In a paper from May 2012, Gilad said however that the "the main issue today is how to prevent a nuclear Iran."

Postcard from Israel – Hatzav

Posted on: September 16th, 2012

Drimia Maritima, or the Sea Squill, is known in Hebrew as Hatzav (from the word Hatzeva; quarrying, hewing or tunnelling) probably due to the ability of its long roots to penetrate cracks in rocks, and even widen them, in order to reach water or damp ground. In Israel, this tall, impressive plant – which flowers right [...]

Just Say No… to the Nonsense of the iPhone Smashing Rabbis

Posted on: September 16th, 2012

Rabbi Lior Glazer smashed an iPhone with a hammer in a show of protest. Like virtually every other Rav in the very right-wing Charedi world of Bnei Brak, Glazer blames personal tragedies on technology and not the abnormal psychology of the individual. I am beginning to find that the more I see a story like this, the more I just want to fold up my tent, and go home. No matter how much one wants to be Dan L’Kaf Zechus and judge people and their actions favorably, a story like this comes along which makes it extremely difficult to do so.

Swing States: Obama Ahead Everywhere but N. Carolina

Posted on: September 16th, 2012

There's only one bit of good news for the Romney campaign in the all-important swing state polls this weekend.

Let Abbas Bail Out the Palestinian Authority

Posted on: September 16th, 2012

Abbas is reported worth millions. So why not let him save his own skin, instead of having Israel repeatedly bail the Palestinian Authority out?

To Inform or Not to Inform – That is the Question

Posted on: September 14th, 2012

With all the bacteria a mouth is known to contain - and the possibility that it might contain bacteria or viruses that are very harmful to a vulnerable 8-day-old child while an adult carrier might not even be aware of it - it is not exactly rocket science to know that putting your mouth on an open wound is not a good idea.

What Seven Years Have Wrought

Posted on: September 14th, 2012

In the past seven years since the Disengagement from Gaza, we have been witness to the conversion of Gush Katif into an armed camp, an arsenal from which some 9,400 rockets and missiles have been fired at the Israeli civilians and communities on the other side of the fence.