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When Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch started dating his wife, they realized she was four years his senior. She, being a good German woman, suggested that maybe they call if off because she was older than him. He looked at her and said, "Lady, for what I have planned I need a mature woman."

Allow us to introduce you to young Kochav Segal Halevi. The 26-year-old Israeli is receiving death threats. In fact, he had to go into hiding. His offense? He purchased an apartment in the Arab town of Ibillin, not far from Haifa.

Every year Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein and the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews raises about $100 million, mostly from evangelical Christians in the United States, for distribution to social-welfare projects in Israel and the former Soviet Union. This is a staggering sum, making the fellowship arguably the largest foundation for Jews in need in the world.

Ever wonder why the Jewish New Year begins with three back-to-back-to back holidays and then no biblical holidays for another six months?

The time has come for us to take the new technology available to terrorists seriously. The United States recently crowned Anwar al-Awlaki the newest "most dangerous terrorist in the world." And yet an American company, YouTube, has been giving al-Awlaki open access to the world's largest bully pulpit.

President Obama's trip to India last week highlighted India's growing importance to the United States. Similarly, cooperation between India and Israel is expanding, as the importance of each country to the other increases.

"This kind of activity is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations," President Obama saidlast week at a press conference in Indonesia. He was referring to the approval issued in Israel for building 1,300 homes in two East Jerusalem neighborhoods.

This article was written by Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, z"l, the Seridei Eish, about my grandfather, the Gaon Rabbi Bezalel Ze'ev Shafran, z"l, of Baku, Romania, author of She'elot U'tshuvot R'BAZ. He died on the 14th of Kislev 5690 (1930).

Kudos to international law enforcement for thwarting last month's terror plot by alleged al Qaeda-linked factions in Yemen against the United States. The plot was foiled when good intelligence and coordination led authorities on three continents to seize two packages of explosives addressed to Chicago area synagogues.

Israel's radical left is obsessed with the word "fascist." Israel is the only country in the Middle East where people vote and enjoy free speech, a free press, due process and habeas corpus, but none of that makes any impression on an increasing number of Israeli left-wingers whose definition of fascist seems to be any government that doesn't adopt left-wing policies.

On November 11, 1918, at 11 a.m., an agreement signed between the Allies and Germany at Compiegne France, ended hostilities on the Western front and signaled the end of the First World War.

Even as political commentators speculate that the power of the Obama presidency has been severely curtailed as a result of the Republican victories in the House along with increased GOP representation in the Senate, the Obama/State Department juggernaut continues to grind away at Israel's security and sovereignty.

Last week's historic "shellacking" suffered by the Democrats was a stark and humbling reminder to all elected officials of whatever party that they serve at the will of their constituents.

This election season in the United States was not a great one for the U.S.-Israel relationship. Republicans and the tainted Emergency Committee for Israel launched mendacious ads and campaigns against pro-Israel Democrats across the country threatening the historic bipartisan support for Israel that has existed in Washington. The lies in these campaigns have been called out by an array of independent journalists from The New York Times to Salon, and politicizing support for Israel in this way has been condemned by key figures such as Israel's U.S. ambassador, Michael Oren.

If you scratch a Holocaust denier long enough, you may reveal an anti-Semite, but not always. You will, however, probably find someone like the morally repellant Kaukab Siddique, a Pakistani-born tenured associate professor of English and journalism at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, who seemingly puts great faith in conspiratorial dramas in which a crafty and all-powerful enemy (i.e., Jews) weaves oft-repeated claims about the Holocaust just to elicit the world's sympathy and promote Zionism and the creation of Israel.

In case you didn't notice, olive trees in Judea and Samaria are under attack. The alleged culprits are Jews living there. UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Serry called it "terrorism."

Clearly, fall has come to Central Pennsylvania. The crisp air, the vibrant array of autumn colors, and, yes, a whole lot of leaves to rake. With the arrival of my favorite season, I know Thanksgiving is just around the corner.

Although Israel's economy stands strong amid a world recession, the political future of the Jewish state has perhaps never looked bleaker. Iran's nuclear threat looms large, Israel's West Bank settlements may soon become part of a Palestinian state, and Jerusalem stands threatened with division.

In what country were you born? If you are a U.S. citizen born in Jerusalem, you'd better not look for the answer on your passport. That line is always left blank.

Every year at around this time, my husband and I have the same spirited debate: Public Displays of Judaism (PDJs) - good or bad?

The common wisdom is that CNN's Rick Sanchez was fired because he made anti-Semitic remarks. That's an understandable assumption, but it's also untrue. Sanchez was fired because he attacked a celebrity more liberal and more popular than he is. That he did it with racial overtones made it easy for CNN to pull the plug on him. But his real crime was that he had become an embarrassment, from a liberal perspective, and that's the only perspective in the media that counts.

Intermarriage is without doubt destroying the American Jewish community. There are approximately 5.6 million American Jews, some 2 million of whom live in households identified as non-Jewish. Better than half the Jewish children under the age of 18 are being raised as non-Jews or with no religion. Whereas before 1965 only 10 percent of American Jews who married did so outside the faith, that percentage has jumped over the past two-and-a-half decades to at least 52 percent.

We live in a world where there is an ongoing war against the Jews. For the first decades after Israel's founding, this war was conventional in nature. The goal was straightforward: to use military force to overrun Israel. Well before the Berlin Wall came down, that approach had clearly failed.

In recent weeks it has become abundantly clear that there is one pathological way in which Israel differs from all other countries. Israel is the only place on earth where large portions of the country's "intelligentsia" think it obscene and "fascist" to expect people seeking citizenship in their country to express loyalty to it.

Everything we experience in life serves as a hands-on lesson concerning our purpose on earth. Consider this: Thirty-three miners plunge into two months of darkness 2,000 feet below the surface, disconnected from their source. After 69 days of eternity, the moment they were praying for arrived. Their dream became a reality. They would finally see the light of day, the joy of freedom, the hug of loved ones, and the tears of their children.

Even a one- or two-month extension of Israel's ten-month settlement moratorium, senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has announced, won't suffice. Nothing less than a total freeze throughout the duration of Israeli-Palestinian talks would be acceptable.

If one makes his way beyond the outskirts of Kiev and continues deep into the forests of the neighboring village of Radomyshl, he soon enters an unmarked clearing.

Anyone who thinks Prime Minister Netanyahu, in order to improve relations with the U.S., should succumb to American pressure in return for a U.S. incentives package and extend the freeze of Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria is either mistaken or misguided.

Even before his eyes open in the morning, the kollel student has in his head the rapid-fire flow of verses, laws and teachings from the prior day's learning. The words of Modeh Ani exit his lips while he reaches to shut the alarm before it wakes his family. Soon he will be on his way, confronted with many topics of halacha and hashkafa.

Israel is a magical country, but to experience one of its greatest wonders you have to travel out to what the world calls the West Bank and the Bible calls Judea and Samaria.