Posted on: December 10th, 2008

I lived in Mumbai for six months last year and would go to the Beit Chabad with friends for a Shabbat meal about every second week. Over the course of six months we got to know the rabbi and his wife quite well.

Posted on: December 10th, 2008

Eliezer, Avraham’s servant, was a great man. Head of his master’s household, he was entrusted to find a wife for our father Yitzchak. He was the man who asked God for guidance and his prayer was immediately answered as Rivkah appeared and offered water to him and to his camels. He was treated like a potentate in the house of Besuel. And yet, the Torah repeatedly refers to him as a “slave.”

Posted on: December 10th, 2008

Islamo-Nazis came to Mumbai, and besides attacking major hotels, centers of commerce, and tourist attractions, they went Jew-hunting.

Posted on: December 10th, 2008

The Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival recently rejected Robin Garbose’s masterful “A Light for Greytowers” – the first feature-length musical film marketed “by women, for women” in accordance with halacha (Jewish law) – on the basis of gender discrimination.

Posted on: December 10th, 2008

Natan Sharansky is a modern-day Jewish hero, no doubt about that. Every Jew should know of his imprisonment by the Soviet Union for his human rights and Zionist activism. Years ago my father gave me a copy of Sharansky’s autobiography, Fear No Evil, to use for a sixth-grade book report.

Posted on: December 10th, 2008

American Jewry – certainly when compared to earlier generations – has become indifferent to the fate of Israel as well as its own. No doubt, poor and uninspiring leadership in both Israel and the United States is a major contributing factor, but it goes further.

Posted on: December 10th, 2008

It doesn’t take very much to lose a neshamah. The young woman was witty, charming, frum, and a Harvard Law School graduate. She was also black, and lived in an Orthodox neighborhood. One Purim, she was treated in a neighborhood shul to the sight of a young mother with a few children in tow. As her Purim get-up, the mother had chosen to adorn herself and her kids with blackface and thick lips. The connection to Purim was not clear.

Posted on: December 10th, 2008

Ehud Olmert, facing criminal prosecution for corruption, is using his final days in office to subvert Israeli security and impose his own policy notions on the country - notions rejected by the overwhelming majority of Israeli citizens.

Posted on: December 3rd, 2008

I am still severely shocked in the aftermath of the heinous massacre that took place in Mumbai last week. Despicable Muslim terrorists carried out a well-planned, deadly assault on civilian targets, killing hundreds of innocent people.

Posted on: December 3rd, 2008

All terrorism is monstrous, but the murder in India of Rabbi Gavriel and Rivkah Holtzberg stands out for its unspeakable infamy.

Posted on: November 26th, 2008

I cannot recall in my lifetime a man elevated to the presidency who was abandoned by his father as a small child.

Posted on: November 19th, 2008

It is hard to imagine a scene as joyous and religiously charged as Machpela on the Friday night of Parshat Chayei Sarah. Every year, many thousands of Jews from all over Israel, and hundreds more from Europe and America, flock to the tomb of our patriarchs, which Abraham purchased for Sarah’s burial nearly 4,000 years ago.

Posted on: November 19th, 2008

Barack Obama spent his first week after being elected president planning the next four years. And even though the Oval Office is occupied by someone else until January, the pundits were already predicting the next administration’s trouble spots.

Posted on: November 19th, 2008

At first glance, it’s not surprising that I voted for Barack Obama for president this election. I’m a New Yorker and a Jew, and so any pollster would have predicted my choice.

Posted on: November 19th, 2008

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus believed that reality is ever in flux. “You cannot step into the same river twice,” he taught, emphasizing that the only constant is change.

Posted on: November 19th, 2008

Liberal Jews have invented the myth that Judaism is a synonym for the pursuit of "social justice."

Posted on: November 12th, 2008

The assassination of the third secretary of the German Embassy in Paris, Ernst Vom Rath, by 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan in early November 1938 was unquestionably a crime. Under normal circumstances, young Herschel would have been arraigned in a court of law.

Posted on: November 12th, 2008

Well, it's finally over – and about time, too. After two years of seemingly endless campaigning and eight of partisan bickering and recriminations, the country appears to have turned a historic corner.

Posted on: November 12th, 2008

Over the next few years, the Jewish community will face serious challenges. Throughout this presidential election, we always understood that whoever was elected president would shape how our country deals with these challenges.

Posted on: November 12th, 2008

November 4, 11 p.m., Times Square - Taxis horns are honking, young people are jumping. Barack Obama has just been declared president-elect of the United States.