Martyrs and Memory
Thirty years ago - Friday evening, May 2, 1980 - in Hebron. Inside Me'arat HaMachpelah, the massive 2,000-year-old Herodian edifice above the tombs of the biblical patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish people, the Shabbat service had just concluded.
The Thin Line Between Joy and Tragedy
"There is a thin line between love and hate," the saying goes. Two opposite emotions, yet one can so easily transmute into the other.
Arab Refugees: The Real Story
Editor's Note: Monday, April 19 (5 Iyar), is Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day. To mark the occasion, we've excerpted portions of an address by then-Israeli Ambassador Abba Eban to the UN General Assembly's Special Political Committee on November 17, 1958.
Condemned to Perish
It was evident, in the years preceding World War II, that humanity had no desire to throw a saving rope to the drowning Jewish people.
Short Trip, Long Journey
Late last year, I was flying from Los Angeles to San Jose - a trip I have made many times in the course of my professional career. Over the years, I have watched the San Jose airport transform itself - from a one-building terminal with rental cars parked on the curb to an international airport with rental car facilities much larger than the entire airport I first visited many years ago.
The Rise of Orthopraxy
A few months ago, football's New York Jets willingly accommodated Jewish fans by moving their home opener from the evening to the early afternoon of the same day. That evening - Yom Kippur - would have presumably found thousands of the Jets faithful in synagogue and not at the Meadowlands or glued to their television sets.
Welcome to Haifa, Mr. and Mrs. Corrie
The city of Haifa is still recovering from the trauma of the summer of 2006, when it, along with the rest of northern Israel, was targeted by thousands of Katyusha rockets, fired from southern Lebanon by Hizbullah terrorists. Haifa has also been targeted by several suicide bombers who carried out mass murders against civilians in buses and restaurants.
A Sign With Soul
Mishenichnas Adar Marbim B'Simcha scream the colorfully illustrated posters hanging in Jewish homes and synagogues all over the globe during the month of Adar, in literal affirmation of our escalating sense of joy.
Jew vs. Jew
It sounds like a contradiction in terms. An oxymoron. If only it were.
Jewish anti-Semitism is a modern disease. The world is experiencing an explosion of it. Among the most malicious and venomous of all bigots, Jewish anti-Semites are at the forefront of just about every smear campaign against Israel and other Jews.
50 & 10: The Jewish Press and Rabbi Sholom Klass
I see him now in my mind's eye. He is sitting at his desk in his office at The Jewish Press, a Gemara open before him, other scholarly tomes on the side, engaged in what he loved best: learning Torah.
Hebron Jews: A Community of Memory
No Jews are as relentlessly reviled as the Jews of Hebron. Vilified as the pariahs of the Jewish people - "zealots," "fanatics" and "fundamentalists" who illegally "occupy" someone else's land - they are the militant Jewish settlers whom legions of critics in Israel, the United States and throughout the world love to hate. It is seldom noticed that their most serious transgression, settlement in the biblical Land of Israel, defines Zionism: the return of Jews to their historic homeland.
Renaissance Rabbi
The term "Renaissance man" is used to describe a person who excels in a wide variety of subjects or fields. Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach's biography of his father, Rav Dr. Yoseph (Joseph) Tzvi Carlebach (1883-1942), provides fascinating information about the life of a man who deserves to be described as a Renaissance rabbi.
The Cup Of Benjamin
When the sons of Jacob went to Egypt for food they became victims of a cruel ruse. As we recently read in the weekly Torah portion, when the provisions the brothers had acquired were loaded on horse and wagon for the return trip to Canaan, the Egyptian viceroy's cup was stealthily planted into the sack of the youngest, Benjamin.
Israel’s Fair-Weather British Friends
For all the undoubted statesmanship implicit in Arthur Balfour's Declaration of November 1917, promising "a National Home for the Jewish People," Britain has never been much more than a fair-weather friend to Jewish national aspirations.
The Secrets In The Flames
On Rosh Hashanah it is a mitzvah to assume a bowed posture as we offer tearful prayer to God and beg for His mercy and forgiveness. We are hopeful that our humility and remorsefulness will earn us a favorable verdict, but should we, Heaven forbid, fall short, Hashem in His infinite kindness extends our time of teshuvah through the duration of Chanukah, when it is a mitzvah to light the Chanukah candles that give rise (literally) to the flames that shoot straight upward, in affirmation of our spiritual ascent.
On Account Of An Apple: Chanukah in Buchenwald
Various types of fruit cross our doorstep during the course of the Jewish year. But for me, the symbol of Judaism is the apple. Not the Rosh Hashanah apple dipped in honey but the one I learned about from my father, which began a chain of events that became a lesson of faith during the darkness of the Nazi years.
Online Kosher: A Brave New World
Once upon a time, your bubbie would have cooked up her flavorful masterpieces by throwing in a pinch of this, a handful of that, recreating recipes passed down from her own bubbie, which she had learned at her mother's side.
Failed Assassins
Between 1920 and 1944 there were nearly fifty attempts on the life of Adolf Hitler. Many of the would-be assassins sacrificed their own lives as a result of their determination to free the world of one of history's worst monsters.
Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg: Two Brief And Shining Lives
Editor's Note: On Nov. 26, 2008 - the Hebrew date was Cheshvan 29, which this year fell on Monday, Nov. 16 - Islamic terrorists went on a savage killing spree in Mumbai, India, murdering 179 people including Chabad emissaries Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg. The following tribute to the Holtzbergs was written by Rabbi Holtzberg's sister.
Last to First: Israel’s Economic Miracle
With the history of twentieth-century science and technology largely a saga of Jewish accomplishment, in retrospect it might seem foreordained that after World War II the rising Jewish nation in the Middle East would emerge not only as a financial power but also as a scientific and technological leader.
The Man The Gulag Couldn’t Break
Fall arrived late this year in Budapest, where I am visiting from Israel, and it is still very warm on Yom Kippur. The largest Orthodox Yom Kippur services in the city are being held in a downtown hotel. A plaque marking what had been the offices of controversial Judenrat leader Rudolf Kastner is on a building just a few steps away.
Have You No Shame? Have You No Decency?
The following is the complete transcript of Prime Minister Netanyahu's address to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, Sept. 24.
To Each… His Own
If only each of us paid heed to the words of the powerful prayer we silently read through remorseful tears, perhaps we would think twice before allowing negative emotions - such as envy - to bring us to ruin.
When Satan Came To Melitz
Melitz (or Mielic) was a small shtetl in Poland. The following article is based on authentic Yiddish quotes from the original Melitz archives (courtesy Yad Vashem in Jerusalem). All the names are real.
Rosh Hashanah In a Nazi Prison
"I was arrested by the Gestapo on the 9th of September 1939, and taken out of the house to a prison in Frankfurt a/M. There I met quite a number of people in the same situation who had been arrested in and around Frankfurt and they knew as little as I did about what was happening, except that we have been arrested by the Gestapo."
Ethnic Politics and the Bombing of Auschwitz
Breckinridge Long, the State Department official in charge of refugee matters in the 1940s, did not think much of Jews. He called them "exponents of Communism and chaos."
Two-State Solution – Or Potemkin Peace?
The creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel would be a major step in the escalation of the Arab war against Israel even if the resumption of that war is delayed for a brief time while the world celebrates the outbreak of a Potemkin peace in the Middle East, produced by the end of Israeli "occupation" of Palestinians.
The Hidden Letters: A Cautionary Tale
The idyllic countryside of Sobibor bears no resemblance to the large, efficient extermination camp once located in that remote corner of eastern Poland. Among the 250,000 Jews murdered during its 18 months of operation were the members of my mother's family. I didn't learn the details of their deaths until I was an adult, but I understood at a very young age that I had no grandparents, aunts, uncles or cousins because someone called Hitler had killed them.
Not Just Another Shidduch-Dating Article
Sometimes it's hard to tell which is worse - the vast and growing number of frum singles, or the equally vast and growing number of newspaper articles trying to address the problem. Seriously, though, it's not even close; our unusual system of shidduch dating inflicts significant damage on some members of our community. That's why I'm taking the risk of adding this piece to the glut of shidduch-dating articles already on the market.
Low-Level Victory
A week from Friday will mark the third anniversary of the cease-fire that ended the Second Lebanon War. And while the fortunes of war run to infinite varieties of the unexpected, there is one thing of which we can all be certain. Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah will appear, if he hasn't already by the time this article is published, on a video screen from the secret bunker he is afraid to leave, and in between chants of "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!" he and his supporters will again proclaim glorious victory over the infidel Jews.