Chodesh Tov/Rabbi Hanoch Teller

If you expect more, you will be less grateful; if you expect less, you will be more grateful.

In one particular synagogue, however, the shamas would rely on the out-of-town beggars who normally arrived during the night to light up the oven. But many times, the beggars would not show up, and the synagogue would be freezing in the morning. People began to complain.

Witnessing the British brutality was an exclamation point for UNSCOP. Wherever the delegates went in Palestine they saw elaborate military precautions, barbed wire, armored patrol cars, searchlight beams at night – all compelling evidence of a doomed political entity.

Norman responded, “Captain, nobody is going to storm City Hall, but go and tell the mayor that he’s got to come out and see all of us.”

Goldman's case would be the first time the Supreme Court considered a service member’s right of Free Exercise as protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution.

Rubashkin’s idea was sound. A kosher slaughterhouse located in Pottsville, Iowa provided many benefits for consumers of kosher meat and the local economy.

Somehow, Simcha Goldman wearing a yarmulke in uniform was perceived as an act of insurrection that could weaken the very foundations of the military. But how?

The sense of brotherhood is so genuine because aside from the fact that Israel is now caught in an existential struggle, it is fighting as a family.

The ongoing saga of the incarceration and punitive pursuit of Shalom Rubashkin.

For the washing machine to conceal the noise and smell of the factory, it had to be in use 24 hours a day – which adds up to a lot of loads for a small kibbutz. Even the clothing had to do its share for the nascent State...

Another installment on the ongoing assault against Agriprocessor. This week's article discusses unions taking on the Rubashkins.

Exodus passengers were separated on the port into men and women, invoking the worst associations to these concentration camp survivors.

I felt terror posing questions to Rav Elyashiv doing so only twice in the 9 years I was in his shiur

Nelson’s pocket contained a bloody switchblade with the word “killer” inscribed on the handle. In that same pants pocket were three bloodstained one-dollar bills. The bloodstains were consistent with Rosenbaum’s blood type but not Nelson’s.

After Reb Elimelech had restored the glory of his colleague, Reb Shmelkeh of Nikolsburg, he departed home to Lizhensk. He was en route when a voice descended from Heaven and proclaimed, “In the merit of your helping Reb Shmelkeh you have the privilege of blessing whomever you desire during the next 24 hours. And your blessing will be fulfilled.”

One-out-of-three is not the kind of language that Dr. Weinblatt would ever employ, let alone even allow himself to think. The man is a fount of hope.

In 1648 and 1649 Bogdan Chmelnitzky and his hordes of Cossack warriors perpetrated an annihilation campaign against the Jews of Poland and the Ukraine....

Another installment in the ongoing Rubashkin saga

Just days before the celebrations, the situation had all the makings of a powder keg that would inevitably leave one family, and particularly one young man, feeling slighted and deprived.

My initial search for heroes of Kristallnacht came up empty. Surely there must have been upright Germans who shielded their Jewish friends and neighbors from the angry mobs seeking them out. Sadly, my detailed research yielded only a pitiful, nameless few.

As has been noted in a previous column, Reb Elimelech – like the Baal Shem Tov before him – asserted that pessimism and depression cause sin and spiritual apathy. Repentance (yes, even repentance!) that causes depression and sadness distances the Holy Presence.

The conclusion to the legal saga of whether Dr. Simcha Goldman could wear his yarmulke while serving in the US Air Force. Chodesh Tov!

Do you mean to tell me, I gasped, unable to contain the note of exasperation from my tone, that I waited nearly two hours on the line only to find out that I had called for nothing?

It is quite a mind-shift to look at your life from the future. This entails thinking about your greatest legacy, how will one be remembered?

Where were the righteous gentiles – the “Schindlers,” if you will – of Kristallnacht? My quest to answer this question revealed information I had not anticipated.

The Yale 5 became the cause célèbre of liberals who maligned & conservatives who triumphed the cause

How the "Broken Windows Theory" helped solve graffiti on NYC subways and led to a more orderly NYC.

Eight days after he was sworn into office, Truman was visited by a Zionist delegation headed by Rabbi Steven S. Wise. Truman told his visitors that he supported the Zionist goals, but he was very concerned about the very vocal opposition of the State Department.

To the misnaged-opponent, chassidus was not perceived as a different strand of normative Judaism, nor as a movement to uplift downtrodden Jews – but as an existential threat to Judaism itself. And the threat was no longer viewed as a futuristic potentiality; it was a real and imminent danger, for the movement was no longer limited to just the commoner but had infiltrated the ranks of scholars.

One who fears that a task is beyond their ability, or too challenging for their comfort level, has racked up the odds against their excelling beyond their current state of inertia.