InDepth

When I was asked to assume a pulpit in San Jose, California, about a year ago, I was not quite aware of the many new experiences I would find here.

What’s the state of the republic one month into the Obama presidency? It’s a state of deep confusion. Here are some polls to ponder. Brace yourself.

There are two types of people in the world – those who are inspired by Mussar and those who are turned off by it. Mussar is a school of study that teaches religious self-improvement. Traditional Mussar, as practiced in many yeshivas to this day, has a rabbi exhorting his listeners, often yelling at them, to be more careful in their actions and attitudes. This is frequently accompanied with a Torah insight and maybe even a good parable. But it can be scary: fire, brimstone, judgment day – all the horrible implications of religious failure, in graphic detail.

Rabbi Avraham Isaac HaCohen Kook (1865-1935) was an extraordinary Torah giant. His genius was astounding – there was no field of Torah study he had not mastered. His recall was astonishing – great scholars related that no matter what Torah subject they discussed with him it would appear as if he had just recently learned the issue in depth.

It's been a while since the Monitor’s last listing of worthwhile websites and blogs. As always, there’s no particular order to the list, and the views expressed on the various websites and blogs do not necessarily reflect those of the Monitor.

"Now we have the possibility of permanently stopping the yearly gay pride march in Jerusalem," Rabbi Yehuda Levin of the Rabbinical Alliance of America told The Jewish Press at the end of a two-week trip to Israel, which ended earlier this week.

The multiple ironies are staggering. On December 15, 2008, just before mounting his indispensable and purposeful Gaza operation against Palestinian terrorism, Prime Minister Olmert had released 230 Palestinian terrorists. To be sure, these freed terrorists were supposedly Fatah, not Hamas, but Mr. Olmert's underlying strategic calculation was still unreasonable and wholly self-destructive.

I am constantly asked if there are things to do in Poland other then those that are Holocaust related.

I am constantly asked if there are things to do in Poland other then those that are Holocaust related.

The Israeli election was on the surface a tie between Likud, led by Benjamin Netanyahu, and Kadima, led by Tzipi Livni (who replaced Ehud Olmert as party chief). While Livni loudly proclaimed victory because Kadima had come out one parliamentary seat ahead, the election was largely a victory for the Israeli Right.

Jimmy Carter’s recent comments about Israel are another chapter in his book on how not to be a former president.

Dear Mr. Madoff, Having kissed my daughter goodnight, I sat in the final quietude of the raucous street crowd’s secular New Year's celebration. I could not help but hear her earlier words as we watched the fireworks in Central Park from the roof of our building.

The United States and much of the rest of the world are in a depression, a word that apparently must be avoided, perhaps in the hope that if we do not say it the bad news will go away.

It’s very difficult when a democratic country has to confront an illegal terrorist group. Whatever we do is being photographed; whatever they do, nobody sees. For example, when they throw a rocket on a settlement in Israel, it’s not being photographed. You cannot see a mother trying to defend her child and the resultant sleepless night. Have you ever seen on television a sleepless night?

Initially dismayed at the phenomenon, we have by now grown used to seeing pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas demonstrators behave like Holocaust-era Nazis. These haters goose-step, Nazi-style, and shoot out their arms as they deliver the Hitlerian sieg heil salute. They also chant and scream such charming slogans as “Jews to the ovens,” “Hitler did not kill enough of you” and “Jews to the gas chambers.”

It took The New York Times long enough to issue a correction concerning Rashid Khalidi's Jan. 8 op-ed column. Those of you who read the Monitor’s Jan. 16 column (“What Did Moshe Yaalon Really Say?”) will recall that Khalidi, the Columbia University professor of Arab studies and Barack Obama’s longtime friend, acquaintance or friendly acquaintance (depending on whom you asked and when) cited an incendiary statement allegedly made in 2002 by former IDF chief of staff Moshe Yaalon: “The Palestinians must be made to understand in the deepest recesses of their consciousness that they are a defeated people.”

The George W. Bush years are now behind us. But Barack Obama, while still waging an American war on terror, will almost certainly remain committed to a so-called "Two-State Solution" in the Middle East.

In America elections usually involve two major parties and two or three minor parties.

Among the many posthumous additions to Rav Joseph B. Soloveitchik's literary legacy, one book always seemed conspicuously absent: a Soloveitchik Haggadah in English.

NEW YORK - Rabbi Noach Weinberg, the founder and dean of the sprawling global outreach operation Aish HaTorah, was being called a "unique visionary" following his death in Jerusalem.

Editor's Note: Several years ago, the bestselling novelist Christopher Buckley, accompanied by his late father, the writer and iconic conservative intellectual William F. Buckley Jr., visited Auschwitz. He had never published his haunting account of that experience, but the current furor over Bishop Richard Williamson's claim that the Holocaust is largely a myth and "not one" Jew was gassed at Auschwitz compelled him to do so on The Daily Beast website, where he is a regular contributor.

Other than God Himself, Judaism values nothing greater than life. Life is the ultimate gift from God. Without life, none of the riches of creation is available to us. Without life, the great adventure of our lives – our embrace of the Holy – is impossible.

Moshe was looking for employment (he wasn’t cut out to learn full-time), and was having a difficult time finding the right fit. Sometimes he went weeks without even landing an interview, and he rarely made it past the first round. People began to speculate that there was something wrong with Moshe, and his self-esteem took a blow every time he heard of someone else who found a job.

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.