Columns

While the Ukraine was the birth place of the Chassidic movement, Poland and especially the Galicia area soon became the hub for most Chassidic activity after only two generations.

Every Jew is familiar with Deuteronomy 30:19: "I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Therefore, choose life, that you and your descendants may live." This Torah obligation is binding not only upon individuals, but also upon states - especially the always imperiled State of Israel.

The town of Gostynin is located 14 miles southwest of the city of Plock and approximately 60 miles northwest of Warsaw.

For the president of Iran, threats to annihilate Israel are now a daily ritual. Were it not for his country's complementary capacity to inflict genuinely existential harms, these threats would not be worrisome. But Iran's capacity to become fully nuclear is now more imminent than had ever been recognized by our own intelligence communities. It follows that a persistent refrain of genocidal intent issuing from Tehran must now be taken with utmost seriousness in Jerusalem.

Israel now faces existential destruction from two main sources: The Islamic Republic of Iran and the aspiring Islamic republic of "Palestine." One source is an established state with an expanding near-term potential to inflict nuclear harms. The other is a Hamas-led configuration of terror groups that seeks to become a state for the immediate purpose of annihilating an existing state. Neither Iran nor Hamas is particularly subtle or circumspect about what it hopes to inflict upon Israel. On the contrary, both are entirely explicit about their unrelenting intent to commit genocide.

Last week saw the greatest modern (post-Holocaust) celebration of Jewish culture in Europe at the Krakow Jewish Cultural Festival.

With steady Iranian nuclearization correctly at the forefront of world public attention, no country has more to fear than the State of Israel. Less than half the size of Lake Michigan, Israel fully understands that the Iranian president's incessant bluster about wiping the Jewish State "off the map" is far more than mere posturing. It is, rather, an unambiguous declaration of criminal intent to commit genocide.

Located just north of Warsaw on the Narew River, Pultusk is a small rural town described as being located on an island in the middle of a river.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert now gives guns to Arab terrorists while planning to surrender more of his country's essential heartland. The apparent rationale of Israeli arms to Fatah is to diminish the contending power of Hamas. Inevitably, these same weapons will be used to murder individual Jews. Surely they will do absolutely nothing to help Israel.

July 4th is an important date in history. In the United States it is a day to celebrate independence from England.

"There is but one truly serious philosophical problem," says Camus in The Myth of Sisyphus, "and that is suicide." Nowhere is Camus' observation currently more correct than in the darkly reciprocal relationship between Israel and Hamas.

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Abe Schwartz of Detroit.

The new Sanhedrin first met in Tiberius because it was foretold that it would be renewed there and would be relocated to Jerusalem.

Last week Pope Benedict XVI went to Poland to honor his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

The following remarks on Iranian nuclearization were delivered by Professor Louis Rene Beres at the National Press Club, Washington DC, May 10, 2006, on behalf of the Iran Policy Committee. They were televised nationally and internationally, including in Iran where, via the Iranian resistance movement, they were viewed by millions.

Part I of this article discussed the background and early days of the new Sanhedrin.

Part I of this article discussed the background and early days of the new Sanhedrin.

The issue of restitution for private property owned by Jews in Poland has long been a sore spot for many Jews of Polish origin.

We must learn to read widely beyond the mainstream press, which is often ignorant of facts on the ground, or worse - is maliciously inclined toward Israel. In this connection, American Jews must really learn history - Jewish history; Israel's history; Arab history; and Islamic history.

"May we be worthy of our role." So ends the author's dedication of The Jewish Revolution (1971) to his son, Aryeh. Scholar, writer and active Zionist, Israel Eldad warned the Jewish people against relying on others to defend them. Boldly recognizing that it had been the consistent miscalculations of "Jewish diplomacy" that hastened the fate of millions during the Holocaust, Eldad's great wisdom underscores the terrible folly of current and ongoing Israeli concessions for "peace."

I recently had the pleasure of sitting in on a meeting of the "Lishka" of the renewed Sanhedrin in Israel.

The first mention of Szczuczyn, located in northeastern Poland, was in 1466 when it was mentioned in documents as a village that belonged to private owners.

Although Arab/Islamic "suicide bombing" terrorism can prove to be quite useful in political, strategic and tactical terms, its true rationale always lies elsewhere.

Recently I received a letter with an inquiry about the town of Mishnitz.

The Bash-Israel media and the Arab terrorist amen chorus have been repeating for so many years that Palestinian terrorism and barbarism are caused by Israeli "occupation" that few are still capable of examining that "theory" critically.

The April 17 suicide bombing in Tel Aviv included the usual breakdown of casualties - the steadily rising number of dead and of those casually described as "merely wounded." But what, exactly, does it mean to be in the second category? Consider just a few of the carefully documented medical answers.

The conservative minority government of Poland's Law and Justice party has agreed to enter a coalition with two extreme-right parties.

Israel would be entirely correct that the Declaration of Principles (DOP) was intended to establish an "autonomy," not a state. Further (according to Ambassador Shoval), "Palestinian statehood is contingent on the Palestinians destroying their terrorist infrastructure, of which Hamas itself is an integral part." However, the Palestinians themselves will certainly understand something very helpful to their cause. That is: there are applicable norms supporting statehood that exist outside the narrow legal context of the specific Israeli-Palestinian agreements.

This week the Jewish world commemorated Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, on the anniversary of the fall of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Mati Pavlack, a rabbinic student studying at Yeshiva University, returned to Poland for Pesach to help the local population prepare and celebrate the holiday.