InDepth

I regret to report on the ascendance of an American Jewish version of Replacement Theology and a corresponding new American Jewish Bible. These have been adopted primarily in the Reform and secular sectors, as well as in the overlapping wider societal groups of Democrat Party faithful, academia, and the media establishment.

The Monitor tries to warm the winter cold with one baseball-related column a year, and what better time than now, with the Super Bowl over and pitchers and catchers set to report to spring training camps next week?

To be sure, it is time to call all things by their correct names. Just as Israel seeks to bring great beauty into the world, its sanguinary Islamist enemies thrive reciprocally upon violence and horror.

On January 14 the North American Council for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews held an evening of theater in support of the Museum.

Techeles, the blue strings the Torah requires Jews to wear on their ritual tzitzis garments, has long been thought of as a "dead" mitzvah. Sometime in the 7th century apparently (possibly due to the Arab conquest of Israel) Jews stopped producing techeles strings and the identity of the chilazon, from which the blue dye originates, was subsequently lost.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had a temper tantrum at the Davos forum on world economics.

There is no rain in Israel. The weather is sunny and warm.That is bad news.

Delectable, delicious, delightful - and available to us in a smorgasbord of flavors and consistencies.

Everyone knows the story. Moshiach finally arrives and goes from shul to shul telling the Jews it’s time to go home to Eretz Yisrael. But wherever Moshiach goes he is rejected because of his dress, his yarmulke, his hat or his accent. Eventually, in frustration, he simply leaves.

Do you “get shul?” Do we as a community of people praying in shul for thousands of years actually get what it is, or what it is supposed to be? A year or two ago I would have answered one way. Now, having served as director of the Pepa and Rabbi Joseph Karasick Department of Synagogue Services at the Orthodox Union for almost a year and a half, my answer has changed.

The guns are now stilled. Criticism and debate, suggestion and advice, censure and fault-finding are being unleashed – as befits a Jewish society to which analysis and self-search are as natural as sunrise and sunset are to the realm of nature.

The end of George W. Bush’s presidency coincided with the 20th anniversary of Bush’s father taking the oath of office, and it got the Monitor thinking of how one televised performance on the part of Bush Senior cemented his reputation as a president indifferent or even hostile to Israel.

From the start, our "international community" has stood by disingenuously as Iran prepared its atomic engines.

Since the end of the Shoah there has been a debate of what to do with the various death camps in Poland. Today more then 60 years after the end of the Holocaust the debate continues.

President Barack Obama must think very highly of the Fatah terror group. In his first foray into foreign affairs after being sworn into office last week, Obama telephoned Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and pledged his support for Palestinian statehood.

Esther Kandel, an Orthodox Jewish mother of three, was a Zionist her whole life. But only recently has her heartfelt love of Israel burst forth in an explosion of activism.

Israel was at war, and though I live across the ocean, I felt like I was on high alert. Strangely enough, I was actually grateful to have experienced this feeling during the crisis.

The great untold story of Operation Cast Lead was the level of euphoria and national unity that gripped Israel.

Dear Dad, I had planned to write a different article for your ninth yahrzeit, but everything that has happened this past year has led me instead to contemplate the wonderful teachings you and Mom (may she live and be well) instilled in us, both by word and by example.

Five years ago, George W. Bush finished the last good year of his presidency. Things were looking up. The Democratic front-runners seeking their party’s presidential nomination lauded the historic accomplishments in Iraq, particularly Saddam Hussein’s capture.

Over the past few weeks Jews have been in the news and made headlines around the world, creating immeasurable reverberations. The impact of three particular Jews has been tremendous – but the difference in that impact has been at least as important as the impact itself.

Throughout his presidency, George W. Bush was a stalwart friend of the Jewish people. His support for Israel was as rock solid as his opposition to anti-Semitism, levels of which have been rising alarmingly around the world in recent years.

We are all familiar with the general impact the weak economy has had on our lives or on the lives of those around us. What we may not appreciate is the way it has affected personal relationships, within our own community and throughout the world.

In figuring out the core weaknesses of our troubled financial markets, there is far more than meets the eye. On the surface, Wall Street's seemingly interminable wild ride is the obvious outcome of purely economic factors. Yet, at a deeper level, the problem of market weakness and volatility is not really fiscal, but human.

Dear Dr. H:You write about how Judaism is devoted to the pursuit of peace. You bring assorted citations from the Bible and Psalms about how nice peace can be. You emphasize that Judaism grants peace priority over competing goals. You find biblical quote after biblical quote about how good peace is.