Features

After their success in the realm of physical ability, we are returning to the original purpose of the Jewish state, that is, to build Israel and Jerusalem as the spiritual capital of the world.

One part of us truly wants to improve and grow, while other parts of us are lazy and complacent.

Giving honor to another person doesn’t cost anything. Building up another is giving them life.

Sukkot was coming. By now I’d sat in too many wonderful families’ sukkot and craved my own.

We know that the original sukkah was built solely by Hashem, so clearly Hashem does not need our help to build the structure.

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Years of love and caring can be hard to remember when your reality changes. Yet, one internalizes the commitment.

"More German than the Germans" is what aptly described many German Jews from the 19th century up to and occasionally including the Hitler Era.

In Kol Nidre (1918), Reik begins with a recollection of visiting the home of a music-loving friend and having an inexplicably strong reaction to a haunting minor musical passage that sounded very familiar to him but which he could not place.

Shul is where the cycle of life happens.

As we know, the concept of shul may mean different things to different people. Hopefully, for most of us it means the place to daven with a minyan, connect to HaKadosh Baruch Hu and feel spiritually recharged.

While I'm not about to compare Yankee Stadium to shul, I do think about the process of intentionally creating spaces that are meaningful and people want to return to time and again.

Even where minyanim gather in less grandiose houses of worship, the sums of money they expend for beautification and refurbishing are staggering.

Literary evidence from the time of the Second Temple, such as the works of Josephus and Philo, and even archeology, indicates that it was a place of instruction and learning.

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I have chosen to release the chapters in the order they were written, to fully explain the changes which occur with time both for the patient and for the caregiver.

Describing the situation in 1918, R. Itshe Mater Korman, a Breslov hasid from Poland recalled, Then began the great dangers surrounding the Gathering in Uman – even from within the Ukraine – due to the bands of murderers, may their name be blotted out.

In this article, I present some of my more “off the beaten path” items that I think might be of interest to readers.

You can feel scared and excited, regretful and inspired to do better, broken but hopeful.

The previous rebbe of Chabad explains that the main thing is not the content of the cry, Father, save me, but rather the cry itself.

The shofar blasts remind us that Hashem is the infinite and all-knowing king and judge.

One of the lessons that I teach is that to blow a teruah, you need to blow 14 small sounds.

Sometimes our most inner yearnings cannot be adequately contained in words.

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R. Haim Meir Mizrahi overcame many tribulations to be able to print this volume. A large portion of his writings were destroyed in the great fire in Izmir, which occurred on the 11th of Av, 1851.

The cornerstone for the Knesset was laid on October 14, 1958, but the building was not formally dedicated until almost eight years later on August 30, 1966.

There is just something very Jewish about lox. Whether you are European or South African, any Jew anywhere can identify with lox.

Our fascination with being able to consume the same delectable non-kosher offerings gave rise to kosher pizza, kosher Chinese food, and of course what simcha would be complete without sushi?

Less sublime, however, is the phenomenon of bagels and lox Judaism, when these foods become a stand-in for being Jewish as a whole.

In Israel I discovered that lox is a delicacy and quite expensive, so I don’t indulge very often.