Tag: Orthodox Union

Rabbi Lightstone has served as a regional director of New York NCSY and is a graduate of Yeshiva University.

How do we expand leadership roles and titles that the OU and its Rabbinical Panel recommend while developing and continuing a halakhic conversation about the exact parameters of those roles and titles?

Rabbi Emanuel Holzer was one of the first and most active in helping to grow the "kosher food industry" at the OU.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee unanimously approved a resolution condemning the PA's anti-Israel incitement.

The Palestinian Authority thinks, or makes believe, that the white "kittel" worn on Yom Kippur is a "priestly garment."

Rabbis will appeal to Congressmen, especially the Jews, immediately before the Rosh HaShanah New Year.

The OU respects the process which led to the Obergefell decision, but prays religious liberty won't be sacrificed.

His mission was to have vodka produces from the seven species of the land of Israel - figs, dates, pomegranate, wheat, barley, olive and grapes.

The Orthodox Union, B'nai Brith and the Houston Federation are pitching in.

Today’s hijab ban could be tomorrow’s kippa ban.

The OU criticized White House and State Dept. Spokespeople for suggesting Jews buying houses in Jerusalem is 'provocative.'

The news that the Chief Rabbinate withdrew kosher supervisors from Turkish plants in the face of Israel’s war in Gaza is part of what...

Before, we were unified in prayer and hope for the boys’ safe return. Now, tragically, we are unified in grief.

Jewish groups across the religious spectrum praised Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines on accommodating religious attire in the workplace. The guidelines published Thursday are for...

Congress budgeted $13 million for a nonprofit security assistance program that mostly aids Jewish institutions. The money was allocated in the $1.1 trillion budget passed...

Now quinoa is OK for Pesach says the OU.

Snack food manufacturers are increasingly turning to the Orthodox Union for kosher certification to expand their markets during the Passover holiday. Classic Foods announced last...

An array of liberal Jewish groups lauded the U.S. Senate for passing a bill that would extend federal anti-discrimination protections to gays. “Today’s bipartisan Senate...

Approximately 90 percent of the $10 million in funding for non-profit organizations announced by the Department of Homeland Security to help nonprofit organizations protect...

Secretary of State John Kerry met with what the Jewish Telegraph Agency described as "Jewish leaders" to "brief" them on the resumption of Israeli-Arab...

Private Jewish day schools and yeshivas get hundreds of millions of dollars through tax credit programs.

Israeli restaurants and hotels are more interested n seeking kosher certification from the American-based Orthodox Union (OU) in order to attract foreign tourists, according...

The U.S. Department of Education outlined new efforts to bring non-profit schools into federally funded programs, an initiative that had been sought by Orthodox...

The law will correct a defect in the current FEMA legislation by making clear that houses of worship are to be included amongst the nonprofit recipients of federal disaster relief aid

The call to Abraham, with which Parshat Lech Lecha begins, seems to come from nowhere: “Leave your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house, and go to a land that I will show you.”

Is there such a thing as an objective basis of morality? For some time, in secular circles, the idea has seemed absurd. Morality is what we choose it to be. We are free to do what we like so long as we don’t harm others. Moral judgments are not truths but choices. There is no way of getting from “is” to “ought,” from description to prescription, from facts to values, from science to ethics. This was the received wisdom in philosophy for a century after Nietzsche had argued for the abandonment of morality – which he saw as the product of Judaism – in favor of the “will to power.”

Yom Kipper, the Day of Atonement, is the supreme moment of Jewish time, a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment. At no other time are we so sharply conscious of standing before God, of being known by Him. But it begins in the strangest of ways.

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is a kind of clarion call, a summons to the Ten Days of Penitence that culminate in the Day of Atonement. The Torah calls it “the day when the horn is sounded,” and its central event is the sounding of the shofar.

Near the end of Parshas Va’etchanan, so inconspicuously that we can sometimes miss it, is a statement with such far-reaching implications that it challenges the impression that has prevailed thus far in the Torah, giving an entirely new complexion to the biblical image of the people Israel:

During The Three Weeks between 17 Tammuz and Tisha B’Av, as we recall the destruction of the Temples, we read three of the most searing passages in the prophetic literature, the first two from the opening of the book of Jeremiah, the third, next week, from the first chapter of Isaiah.