Felafel on Rye

Diaspora Jews pass on the whole spirit and soul of Torah and the messages of Passover, which is the attainment of true Jewish freedom through establishing a holy Torah Nation in the Land of Israel.

"I've come for my house," the man said. "My family wants to move back tonight." Ehud's voice stuck in his throat. He felt dizzy. He felt weak. Giving up his house was too much. Ehud felt his sons' eyes upon him, watching to see what he would do. "It isn't your house," Ehud said. "Yes it is," the man answered. "We bought it. We have a deed," Ehud insisted. "I have a deed too. The people you bought the house from weren't the legal owners."

Our Sages teach that when Chanukah comes around, we are to thank Hashem, not only for the miracles that He performed for us in...

Emunah, the very heart of the Torah, teaches us what God and the Nation of Israel are all about.

This is the Land of Miracles, where our Redemption is unfolding today.

Two Torah scholars were sent from Israel to Babylon. Upon their arrival, they took part in official ceremonies and didn’t reveal the purpose of their visit. They were received with great honor. Gradually, they started to vent their opposition. Finally, they entered a crowded assembly and said to the Jews of Babylon, “Behold, you are a great congregation. You can be independent. You don’t need Eretz Yisrael. You don’t need Mount Moriah.” Their sarcasm was purposely stinging in order to shock the Babylonian Jews. “And you’ve also got Rabbi Ahia here. Let Ahia build an altar, and let Haninah play on a harp. But know that if you detach yourselves from the centrality of Eretz Yisrael, you have no portion in the God of Israel!”

During the reign of King Solomon, the Nation of Israel was at its prime. We lived in peace in our own homeland. A Jewish government ruled over the country from the majestic city of Jerusalem. All of the people gathered for the Festivals at the Temple three times a year. Jewish law went forth from the Sanhedrin. Prophets communicated the word of the Lord to the Nation and the world. A powerful Jewish army guarded the country’s borders. Torah was studied in great academies of learning. Hebrew was spoken on the street. The leaders of foreign nations flocked to Jerusalem to pay tribute to the Jews.

By and large, American Jews are not really waiting for Mashiach to come.

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.

Without Eretz Yisrael, the Torah is a shrunken, truncated, mini-version of the complete Torah of Eretz Yisrael.

There is a special mitzvah on Sukkot to be “ach samaoch.” Only joyous. It is a happiness not dependent on anything external, beyond definition and words. Just to be absolutely joyous in one’s love and worship of G-d. Rabbi Kook describes the sukkah as a whirlpool of joyous energy which is constantly changing each second, reaching ever-higher levels of joy and attachment to G-d.

That’s right. I love Jews. All of them. I love good Jews and I love bad Jews. I love fat Jews and I love...

Just so the jolly little elves and white-bearded Santas don’t fool you, it pays to recall the truth about Christianity.

Some people will tell you that if you put on tefillin in Brooklyn, you’ve reached the pinnacle of the Jewish journey, but it isn’t true. Other people will tell you we have to stay in exile until Mashiach arrives. But that isn’t true either. Hashem isn’t waiting for Mashiach. Before our very eyes, Hashem has brought millions of Jews back to Israel on His own, without waiting for Mashiach to do all the work.

Rabbi Meir Kahane, perhaps the most dynamic Jewish orator of our time, a speaker capable of inflaming hearts and inspiring the masses, a par-excellence TV debater who chopped the glib intellectual banter of opponents into tiny insignificant scraps, he had a bothersome stutter in his youth, which had to be mastered in order to fulfill his dream of reaching out to the Jewish People.

Normally I hate the Germans, but I have to give them credit on this one! Let their banning of brit milah be a reminder to our Jewish brothers and sisters in the Diaspora that we don’t belong in foreign lands. Unfortunately, I doubt whether the new law will affect the Jews of Germany in any meaningful way. After all, if the slaughter of 6 million didn’t make them think twice about living in that polluted, blood-stained gentile land, this new measure isn’t liable to wake them up either.

We mustn't forget that the gentile nations do us a favor by allowing us to stay in their lands - until they expel us. One must realize that we are on foreign soil there. It is not our society, nor government, nor culture. Nothing is ours. Only in Israel are we at home with family, living according to our customs, and our uniquely Jewish year, living in the one place designed for our holiness, for our psychological health, even for our physical wellbeing.

It is no secret that American Jewry is being decimated by assimilation. The longer the Jewish community remains in America the more the assimilation will grow. So I ask – what’s the point in working to strengthen something that is destined to dwindle out and end? The exile is a curse which is not supposed to continue forever.

To all of my beloved Jewish brothers and sisters in America, go ahead and eat your hot dogs. Drink your beer. But don’t think that the Fourth of July is really Independence Day for you. Remember that your nation is Israel, not America. Your hearts should beat proudly when you see the Star of David blowing in the wind, not the Stars and Stripes. And always remember that you are only in America, temporarily, because of the curse of galut.

The expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden describes man’s existential plight. In effect, the sum of world history is mankind’s journey to return to the Garden. Not only man, but the world itself wants to return to its original state. This yearning is one of the most powerful forces of Creation. Thus the world “roars like a mighty lioness” to return to its original, ideal closeness to God.

Rashi informs us that 80 percent of the Jews in Egypt were stricken to death during the plague of darkness because they didn’t want to leave the cesspools of Egypt and go to the Land flowing with milk and honey.

With the Golden Gate Bridge symbolically in the background, the nuptial union between the pioneer Jewish anthropologist and the stunning, white wedding-gowned gorilla marked a historic bridge between mankind and the world of the primates, and another one of Judaism’s great contributions to human culture. Rabbi Christine Christy, dynamic leader of California’s Progressive Democratic Liberal Reform Jewish Movement, officiated at the tear-filled ceremony.

Did you have trouble reading the Hebrew? That’s exactly my point. Some readers say that I’m a crazy fanatic when I say that Diaspora Jews suffer from schizophrenia when it comes to their Jewish identity. For example, even though they are Jewish, many don’t know more than a few simple words in Hebrew. After all, Hebrew is the language of the Jewish People, not English, or German, or Russian, or Yiddish.

The previous two redemptions began when the Jews were very deficient in mitzvah observance.

To boost aliya, Israel will encourage Marshall’s, Costco, K Mart & Entenmann’s Bakeries to open here