InDepth

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.

The world's reaction to Israel's defensive assault on Gaza was predictable and quite telling - predictable in its hostility and revealing in its utter contempt for the lives and redemptive process of the Jewish people.

And yet the slurs continue. On December 31, Paramount Vantage released “Defiance,” which tells the story of Tuvia, Asael, and Zus Bielski, three Jewish brothers from a tiny village in Nazi-occupied Belarus. They formed a guerrilla unit in the dense woods, created a makeshift village from ghetto escapees and, in the end, saved some 1,200 Jews from Hitler. The Bielski brothers have long deserved to be mentioned with Oskar Schindler and the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

Yesterday I made an extraordinary and moving shiva visit at the home of the Netanel family, whose son Yonatan was killed last week in Gaza. Unfortunately, he and two other soldiers died when an Israeli tank mistakenly opened fire on a house captured by Israeli soldiers. His father, Rabbi Amos Netanel, was a student at our yeshiva in Kiryat Arba for several years.

Since claiming the presidency, Barack Obama has been universally praised by foreign leaders as a breath of fresh air for American diplomacy. On Dec. 27, however, world leaders' jubilant anticipation of his inauguration took a back seat as Israel began its current operation in Gaza and questions arose as to how the incoming president would respond to the conflict.

We are at war. We are all at war, not just our brothers and sisters in Gaza and southern and northern Israel. We are surrounded. The Children of Israel are surrounded, both inside and outside the Land of Israel.

After nearly three weeks it is clear that Israel's military operation in Gaza is a just and necessary undertaking. The operation followed the termination of a so-called cease-fire that was in any case frequently violated by Hamas.

An op-ed column in last Thursday’s (Jan. 8) New York Times by Columbia professor of Arab studies Rashid Khalidi, while fairly unremarkable in its boilerplate condemnation of Israel’s military operation in Gaza, ended dramatically with a citation of the following 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.”

She was a very small woman physically, but she was a giant in Mitzvot and chesed.

The war in Gaza overshadowed what should have been the recent headline-making arrival of Jewish-American Olympic gold medalist Ben Wildman-Tobriner to the Jewish state, as Taglit-Birthright Israel's 200,000th participant.

Mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationships do not have to be "complicated," but in many cases they are.

Polish writer Henryk Halkowski, z"l, one of Poland's most notable contemporary Jewish personalities, died suddenly on January 1, just days after celebrating his 57th birthday.

Last Shabbos Jerry Bechhofer was standing in shul as always - two rows in front of mine, tall and smiling.

The war of aggression waged by Hamas, against which Israel has commenced a robust response, must not be seen in a vacuum.

The ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization brings front and center the nature of this conflict: Palestinian unwillingness to accept the permanent presence of a Jewish state in the Middle East.

We need a Kiddush Hashem, a sanctification of God’s name, so big it will be a giant burst of light in this dark world. And we are going to get it.

No sooner had Israel launched its offensive against Hamas than the moral arbiters of acceptable behavior were condemning the Jewish state for its perceived abuses in executing its national self-defense.

Like many others, I spent a lot of time this past week agonizing about Israel’s public-relations battles and image problems. And I remain extremely worried.

It takes a time like this for the full fury of Israel’s leftists to erupt in the face of their own country and government. While it’s true that, at least for now, Israel’s anti-Hamas offensive has garnered widespread domestic support, that’s hardly been the case among the country’s left-wing elite.

Our new president seemingly understands something of very great importance: The state of our union is intimately intertwined with the state of our world. Our fate as Americans will ultimately depend upon our willingness to identify more broadly and openly as citizens of the entire planet. Reciprocally, the fate of all others on earth will be impacted more or less by what happens next in American politics. But the final outcome of all such interdependence will be determined by what is ordinarily called "human nature."

"We dreamed that the new state would be a place in which the next chapter of the Bible would be written as a prelude to world-wide redemption. After all, you are the Treasured Nation. We had great expectations. But now look at what you have done."

With all the missiles and rockets being fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip by Hamas and the retaliatory bombing of Hamas targets by Israel there has been a very large rise in anti-Israel demonstrations around the world.

With all the missiles and rockets being fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip by Hamas and the retaliatory bombing of Hamas targets by Israel there has been a very large rise in anti-Israel demonstrations around the world.

The jets bombed the daylights out of them. The ground forces invaded. At long last the murderous suicide-bombing terrorists were being suppressed in a military campaign.

On a windy day in Boro Park, if you listen closely you will hear the trees ( the few that survived the timberman's axe) rustling praises to their Creator - some in nusach Ashkenaz, others in nusach Sfard - but all rising to the heavens in unison with their human co-daveners.

How many times have you heard it said that the American system of government stems from Judeo-Christian principles? The truth is that the United States Constitution is almost entirely rooted in the Judaic tradition. The government envisioned in the Constitution is structured on a foundation laid more than three millennia ago.

In passing Resolution 1850 on December 19, 2008, the United Nations Security Council solemnly noted that “lasting peace can only be based on an enduring commitment to mutual recognition, freedom from violence, incitement and terror and the two-State solution….”

Rav Pam, zt”l, said the best antidote to divorce is a good marriage. Unfortunately, there is no denying that divorce has become considerably more of a problem than historically was the case in our communities. Thankfully, the phenomenon is receiving some much-needed attention.