Tag: sense

Everyone knows the feeling you get when you want to do something you can’t do. There is always that temptation to do - especially because you know you can’t. Or sometimes it’s because you want to prove you can. Sometimes it’s because people expect it of you. Sometimes it’s a combination.

And so it was, every 9th of Av, the men would enter the mass grave for the night and another 15,000 would perish by the morning. The night of the living zombies. 15,000 men for 40 years. In the 40th year, the remaining men entered the mass grave but nothing happened. They remained there through the 15th of Av, when they realized that nothing was going to happen. The decree of the plague had ended! So they climbed joyously out of the grave. This was on Tu B’Av.

As'ad Abu Khalil, tenured Professor of Political Science at California State University, Stanislaus: My favorite Zionist delusion is the notion that the Arab people don’t hate Israel but that the Arab governments incite the people to hate Israel, when it is the other way round.

Within the last few days, with weeks of summer still ahead of us, I have read and seen news reports regarding very young children who tragically drowned in backyard swimming pools, despite being in relatively close proximity to parents and other adults.

As a frequent traveler abroad, I rarely see a community where everyone is alike. Though the comfort of "living with your own" is understandable, there is much to be said for a Jewish community in which Streimlach walk on the same sidewalk with Kippot Serugot, and girls wearing heavy stockings walk to shul on Shabbat together with those wearing sandals without any socks.

I have said this before. The previous generation of Gedolim, of which Rav Elyashiv was a member, were in a class by themselves. They had continued a tradition of Gadlus that existed in pre-Holocaust times. They were ‘old school’ in the best sense of the word. With Rav Elyashiv’s passing that generation is almost gone.

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.

The period of the Obama tenure, and now the 2012 election, are forcing Americans to reconsider, in a way I’m not sure we have for a good 200 years, what the vote means, and what politics means to our lives. Since 1792, the sense has gradually crept upon us that when we elect a president, we are electing our collective future. That sense took a giant leap forward with the FDR presidency, and frankly, it took another one when Reagan entered office.

A homeless man feeds a cat on the streets of Nachlaot, Jerusalem. We were looking for a cheerful image this morning, but one that won't...

In retrospect, the Cult of Obama had much in common with other cults. Like them it recruited young volunteers on campus. Its recruitment materials leaned heavily on books by its beloved leader. It promised them that a new age was coming and that they could be a big part of bringing it about.

Question: Many people stay awake Shavuot night and learn Torah. Is this proper considering that one’s davening the next morning may lack kavannah as a result? Wouldn’t it make more sense to get a good night’s sleep and then learn with more fervor the next day? No Name Please (Via E-Mail)

Sefer HaChinuch: The Torah commands us to count the Omer so we can relive the Exodus from Mitzrayim. Just as the Jews back then anxiously anticipated the great day when they were to receive the Torah, so too we count the days till Shavuos, the Yom Tov that commemorates the giving of the Torah. To the Jews then, accepting the Torah on Har Sinai was even greater than their redemption from slavery. So we count each day to bring ourselves to that sense of great enthusiasm, as if to say, “When will that day come?”

Our roundup today concludes with parental anxieties, which all of us with and without children share. It reminded me of the joke about a...

The Obama Administration's policy toward Syria is turning into a scandal on both strategic and humanitarian grounds.

Several different Tel-Aviv Segway touring companies take folks on this unique atroll along the First Hebrew City's marina, port and beach promenade, the Tayelet....

Connecticut Senate Majority Leader Martin M. Looney, D-New Haven, announced Tuesday that in order to avoid a repeat of what Barbara Cadranel had to...

The Palestinian news agency Ma'an reprts that Islamic Jihad leader Sheikh Nafeth Azzam on Monday urged PA President Mahmoud Abbas to walk out on...

Growing up, I remember my father’s Rosh Hashana ritual. He read the story of Rabi Amnon of Mainz, who had his tongue, hands and legs cut off for refusing to convert to Christianity – for choosing to remain a Jews. I would run away from the table sobbing in terror. Even at the tender age of six, I knew that being Jewish made oneself a member of an endangered species.

Mrs. D., the mother of two children under the age of four, came to see me – she was in the seventh month of her third pregnancy. This baby was unexpected. She had “difficulty” after her last pregnancy, and already tearful, she wanted me to get to know her now, so that I could help her later, when the depression hit. She was not sure she would be able to handle it all again.

To view government as a form of deity or an inevitable friend of the poor and downtrodden is an illusion. Government is not a magic box, but a can of worms. To see it as a player, with its own interests, that should be as distrusted as any bank or corporation is the purest form of common sense, the very triumph of common sense over ideology and dogma that made America great, its people free, and real democracy possible.

The world is full of people without a sense of humor, as was discovered recently by Vanya Heiman, Anat Vershovsky and Amit Shimoni, all students from the "Bezalel" Academy of the Arts, who created the clip "Der Mensch" for the Visual Communication Department at the Academy. It was only supposed to be a genre exercise…

US Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-Queens, Manhattan) released the following statement on the retirement from Congress of her friend and colleague, Congressman Gary Ackerman: "Gary Ackerman...

Shortly after returning from France, MK Rabbi Israel Eichler (United Torah Judaism) said anxiety surrounds the French Jewish community: "There is a constant tension, the Jewish community is living in a prison-like situation." Eichler said France poses "a great danger to Jews."

Outside the battered wall of the kindergarten, we met with registered nurse Carol Simantov, from Levittown, Pa., who has seen up close the wages of this war. But to my surprise, she harbored no resentment, not even anger. Instead, she spoke wistfully about her friends back inside the Gaza strip, who are suffering under the yoke of the Hamas government.

The Iron Dome is another, hi-tech manifestation of the siege mentality that guides Israel's cultural and political narrative. From media to academia to politics, Israel’s celebration of this so-called “strategic” weapon system - that neither neutralizes its threats nor enhances Israel's geo-political position – is an indictment of the degree to which Israel has accepted this siege mentality, and of its resignation to a permanent defensive posture.

Klal Yisroel stood at Har Sinai and accepted the Torah in a state of supreme purity and complete unity. Every Jew reached a level of prophecy and witnessed an unparalleled revelation of G-d. Then Moshe ascended Har Sinai for forty days so G-d could teach him the laws and details of the Torah.

The Jewish nation has no such concept as “religion” in the formal sense of the term, as we reject the notion of anything lying outside the realm of HaShem. It is Israel’s mission to elevate every sphere of Creation by infusing it with kedusha and bringing it to its highest potential in our world.

If Syrian TV News can't be trusted, who can we trust?

After a day with Lubavitch Hasidim, Oprah Winfrey says Jewish Life offers a wealth of lessons for the world.

After a “natural” disaster, people speak with reverence. Even arrogant individuals, after living through a hurricane, tidal wave, or earthquake, have a sense of humility. Their reality has been changed, and they view life differently. Yet, when Pharaoh and Mitzraim experienced the makkos, that wasn’t their reaction.