Tag: person

Our Sages tell us that HaKodesh Baruch Hu, the Holy One Blessed Be He, weeps when a Jewish home is torn apart by of divorce. Unfortunately, He must be crying quite a lot these days, judging from the vast number of divorcees you discover on the pages of Facebook.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was featured in a video message Tuesday night at the Independence Day celebration at the U.S. Ambassador’s home in...

What kind of investor are you? Do you try to time the market and jump in at the right minute? Or are you a more cautious kind of person who spends hours researching market performance before you consider buying or selling anything?

From elected officials to people in the street, from the highly educated secular upper class to yeshiva students to the working poor, numerous Israelis seem to share a lexicon and intellectual framework which denigrates and dehumanizes Africans, belittles their suffering, and trivialized their plight.

Question: It is known that some sephardim generally arrive at a simcha a few hours subsequent to the time noted on the invitation. Is there any logic behind this custom?

How do we teach our children to keep themselves safe from the adult predators in our midst? Are our schools teaching them what they need to know? Are parents teaching our youth what they need to know? Does your child feel safe enough to approach you if their personal space is being invaded? How do you know?

The Gemara in Kiddushin 41b derives from a pasuk in this week’s parshah the concept of shelichus (acting on one’s behalf). The pasuk says, “kein tarimu gam atem terumas Hashem – so you too shall remove the terumah of Hashem.” The Gemara explains that the word gam (too) is superfluous; thus we draw from this that another person may remove terumah for you on your behalf.

Your child’s wedding should be a simcha, and not a financial disaster.

Imagine that a camera was recording your every move on the computer – would you still click on immodest sites? Would you still go astray after your eyes if you knew that a video of your doings was going to be posted on Youtube for the world to see? You may not be caught in This World, but up in the big Movie Theater in the sky, when you come before the Heavenly Tribunal, your Youtube history is going to be presented on the Big Screen for all of the Celestial Judges to see.

Moments after hearing Ashkenazi and an impressive panel of individuals speak, hundreds of people began moving to a hallway and the next session. I walked in one direction, greeted two friends, and then suddenly found myself a few feet away from Gabi Ashkenazi. You have a split second to decide – talk to him or don’t. Say something, or not. In a session where everyone else spoke English, he understood all the discussions, but chose to speak in Hebrew. I did the same.

According to a survey of 5,993 individuals conducted by the UJA Federation, the Jewish community in New York City is growing, mainly fueled by an increase in the Orthodox and Chasidic community. The downside is, according to their critics, Welfare is a crucial ingredient in these communities.

Written in the form of a conversation between a Rabbi and a gentile king who is looking to find the true religion, The Kuzari lucidly explains the foundations upon which Judaism is based. What better time than “Book Week” to take another look at this wonderful classic? If you never studied its teachings, you’re missing a building block in your understanding of Judaism which the Gaon of Vilna made top priority for his students.

This entire farce of a trial is part of a larger problem that infects not only America but other Western countries as well: the criminalization of policy differences and of personal sin.

Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook used to refer to Rabbi Yehuda Hazani affectionately as "the assembler of great assemblies." Hazani was one of the people who nurtured Gush Emunim, the grassroots movement that worked to resettle Jews in the territories liberated from Arab occupation in 1967, but always behind the curtain. He was an unknown figure to most of the public, a person who took care to be known only by those who had to know him.

Do you have a teenager who is doing badly in school? Do you have a kid who hates to pray? Does the tiny kippah he wears come off his head the moment he’s down the block? This may be the reason. Nothing desensitizes a person from Torah more than an exposure to porn. Don’t delude yourselves – when it comes to computers, children are geniuses. They know how to navigate through the intricacies of the web like private eyes.

A former Libyan intelligence officer sentenced to life in prison for his role in bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, has died in a Libyan prison. He was 60.

Dear Dr. Yael, I gave birth a little over a year ago and, even though it was not my first child, I felt differently this time around. I have always been a happy-go-lucky person, but after having this baby I could not seem to return to my previous self. I was moody, short-tempered and gloomy. While some of these symptoms could have been chalked up to normal baby blues, they persisted and I was becoming scared.

In a famous photo, President John F. Kennedy is seen facing the windows of the Oval Office with his back to the camera. Slightly bent over, with his hands spread out on a credenza, he appears in deep and painful thought. The caption of the picture says it all: “The Loneliest Job.” Only the relatively few people who have been President of the United States truly understand the enormity of the job’s burden. It is for this reason presidents, despite their party affiliation, and often after leaving office, develop close bonds with one another, give the current office holder the benefit of the doubt and make themselves available to whoever may be president at the moment to help and advise.

When we are on our own land we are commanded to keep every seventh year as the shemittah year, and at the completion of seven shemittahs to add an additional shemittah year – the yovel. During this year, all land lays fallow. Homesteads return to their original owners, and all Jewish slaves are freed.

You want strange news? I'll give you strange news: According to a complaint filed in Federal Court, Nancy Genovese, a mother of three, was arrested...

A suburban New York father is suing his school district over the anti-Semitic taunting of his son. Robert Slade filed the suit last week alleging...

Students of Moriah Yeshiva of Englewood, NJ put together a Chessed project for children visiting New York Hospital Cornell

B’ezrat Hashem I will continue to share with you my challenging days spent at Scripps Memorial Hospital in San Diego. Whenever difficult days befell me, my revered father would always say “Hashem sends us tests so that we might know how to help others when they have to confront their trials.”

On a friend’s recommendation, I went to see the Broadway musical Godspell. I found myself watching Jesus get hoisted on a cross by Judas Iscariot, surrounded by an audience with tears and/or rage in their eyes. At that moment, being the only person in the room with a Kippah on his head…made me stand out. But I forced myself to stay. Because I had never experienced this as a Jew.

It seems that from time immemorial, or more specifically from some time after G-d first declared that a person’s days shall be limited to 120 years, at best (Genesis 6:3), Jews have been blessing each other with the wish “May you live to be 120.” I have noticed, however, that many people look at that goal with trepidation, as if it is not necessarily something positive to live for.

About a month ago, we began the Passover Seder by asking “the four questions,” which led to a narrative explaining how the Jewish people were freed from Egypt. We are now in the midst of a forty-nine day process of spiritual growth in which we prepare ourselves to receive the Torah.

The following is one unique halacha that is associated with arayos (forbidden relationships): Concerning most aveiros, if one is put in a predicament where he must choose between saving his life and fulfilling a mitzvah he must choose to live and transgress the mitzvah. The Gemara says that arayos are one of the three mitzvos that are yehareg v’al ya’avor (one must allow himself to be killed so as not to transgress the mitzvah), along with murder and avodah zarah.

Our Mission: When it comes to Chesed the Jewish people are at the front of the line. We’ve tackled Chesed and everyone is aware of the unbelievable work and generosity that we are involved in. Now it’s time to take on a new, more difficult challenge: Middot (character trait).

I do not dress like the average Orthodox man in my Brooklyn neighborhood. It’s not that I’m trying to make a statement by often going hatless and wearing blue and brown suits, it’s just that in becoming religious I have changed so much - there are certain things I don’t want to give up, especially since my religion doesn’t truly ask me to do so.

At the end of parshas Metzora the Torah discusses the halachos of when a woman becomes a niddah. The Torah says that a woman who becomes a niddah must count seven days from when she stops seeing blood, and then becomes tahor by immersing in a mikveh.